Time wonders: Foreclosures: Did God Want You to Get That Mortgage?
Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That’s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”
The underlying sins here are greed, pride and idolatry. Too much focus on the pleasures of this world, a desire to have that which was not earned, and priorities that are completely off base. This John Piper video demolishes the despicable prosperity “gospel” but the key concept to keep in mind is that the gospel is the same gospel for everyone. If it doesn’t apply to the Christians being massacred in Darfur and persecuted in North Korea and the middle east, then it’s not the gospel at all. It’s voodoo.
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