Judged in theological terms, the Osteen message is the latest and slickest version of Prosperity Theology. That American heresy has now spread throughout much of the world, but it began in the context of American Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century. Prosperity theology, promising that God rewards faith with health and wealth, first appealed to those described as “the dispossessed” ”” the very poor. Now, its updated version appeals to the aspirational class of the suburbs. Whereas the early devotees of Prosperity Theology prayed for a roof over their heads that did not leak, the devotees of prosperity theology in the Age of Osteen pray for ever bigger houses. The story of how the Osteens exercised faith for a big house comes early in Joel Osteen’s best-seller, Your Best Life Now.
According to Osteen, God wants to pour out his “immeasurable favor” on his human creatures, and this requires a fundamental re-ordering of our thinking. “To experience this immeasurable favor,” Osteen writes, “you must rid yourself of that small-minded thinking and start expecting God’s blessings, start anticipating promotion and supernatural increase. You must conceive it in your heart before you can receive it. In other words, you must make increase in your own thinking, then God will bring those things to pass.”
There is nothing really new in this message. Anyone familiar with the New Thought movement and later books such as Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich will see a persistent theme. The important issue is this ”” Prosperity Theology is a false Gospel. The problem with Prosperity Theology is not that it promises too much, but that it aims for so little. What God promises us in Christ is far above anything that can be measured in earthly wealth ”” and believers are not promised earthly wealth nor the gift of health.
I agree with all this however I think the Osteens’ are reaching people in certain ways the Church could re-examine such as the emphasis on God’s intimate caring and opening our minds to that, and the importance of people who feel lost in the world. Hearing him seems to genuinely lift some people who could use that.
Osteen and his ilk may be reaching people, but my fear is that by promising the Janis Joplin Gospel (“Oh Lord, won’tcha buy me a Mercedes Benz…” in this difficult, broken world, the prosperity gospel touters are confusing the unchurched/unreached and fuelling the mistaken atheist argument that “If God exists, why are you poor/unemployed/suffering etc?”