August 30, 2006

The Disease of the Gospel of Wealth (w/Dr. Gordon Fee)

Maybe you’ve heard the expose’s of the TV evangelists, 5-Star hotel suites costing thousands a night, heavy on the gold jewelry and driving cars that cost in the 6 figures. I’m Charles Morris and this is Haven Today. Some preachers preach, but is it right preaching a gospel of wealth? We’ll be joined in a minutes by Dr. Gordon Fee, one of the world’s foremost biblical scholars and also an ordained Assembly of God minister. This is a program called, “The Disease of the Gospel of Wealth”. Later I’ll tell you about a book we have by Gordon Fee that talks about both health and wealth in light of the Gospel, in light of the Bible. Now let’s get started by worshipping the Lord together.

Song:
Performed by: Haven

This is Haven Today. I’m Charles Morris and I’m back again with Dr. Gordon Fee and this is a program called, “The Disease of the Gospel of Wealth”. Gordon welcome back to the program. I want to read a verse of scripture to you. You’ve heard it all your life. I’ve heard it a lot of my life. 3 John 2, “Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you even as your soul is getting along well.” I just read that from the NIV Bible. You’re one of the translators on the NIV and the TNIV. You’re a New Testament scholar. Now I’m going to read you a couple little quotes here.
GF: OK
CM: This is from someone who says they take the Bible literally. They say that the Bible teaches, “Serve God and get rich.” Here is another quote from someone else, “God wills your prosperity.” One final little quote, “It’s in the Bible, God says it so think God’s thoughts claim it and it’s yours.” That sounds like a gospel to me, but is it the right gospel, the true Gospel?
GF: I don’t know what you mean by the word “gospel” in this one Charles.
CM: some people think it’s good news.
GF: Gospel means good news and I’ve never ever been able to put together in my own head how earthly prosperity is to be related to godliness or God’s goodness or necessity or anything else. For many people it’s an accident of birth. For others it’s the accident of being born with a proper amount of cleverness to be able to do things that I certainly could never do.
CM: The entrepreneurial mind
GF: Yeah, entrepreneurial mind and I have no envy of any kind. I bless them and am glad that these people are around to do the things they can do. But the idea that somehow our relationship with God is related to material goods has always struck me to be a bit strange. What was that one of the, Roger Bacon, the essayist who said, “Adversity - prosperity best discovereth vice, adversity best discovereth virtue.” He was simply a British essayist 300 years ago recognizing the nature of human beings. I have met very few wealthy people who are happy, who are beneficiaries for others. I mean, I’ve met a lot of them that are,
CM: Yes.
GF: but I have met very few for whom wealth has been anything other than a noose around their necks. It’s irrelevant. I mean it’s, it’s an irrelevancy. What we’re promised is food for the day, strength for the day and beyond that what do we need? Everything else is extra. And for some of us the extras are marvelous. But everything is gift. Everything is gift. I keep reminding my friends, everything outside of hell is gift. And the moment one thinks of it as something that I do and I gain, that somehow I trust God and I get these things, which become toys. And then you start counting your toys and have bumper stickers that indicate that this automobile is one of your many toys. And what’s this all about except, except the part of a world view in which one third of the world own, what, 90% of the world’s material possessions. And the other 90% of the world who have need for so much continue to go hungry and they trust God as much as everyone in North America does but don’t have the opportunities and privileges. It’s an irrelevancy to have accumulated wealth and why anyone would want to stick this on God I’ll never know. In any form it’s grace. And why one would want it and then why one would think God is required to give it to me? That’s just a different world view from mine and I live in the New Testament too much for people to tell me that that’s a New Testament world view. It just is not.
CM: You’re right. You’re right. I mean, you can go to the Old Testament, go to the Proverbs, the end of the Proverbs and we’re told, “Lord, Yahweh, don’t give me too much, don’t give me too little, give me just enough. But in the New Testament itself, how does the New Testament view wealth?
GF: The New Testament doesn’t really view wealth, it’s there.
CM: Some people are, some people aren’t.
GF: Some people are and some people aren’t, that’s my point is that nobody’s making a point of either having or getting or giving. And so what happens is you meet wealthy people and you meet poor people. And the poor are having sufficient and the wealthy are learning to make good use of it. So the wealthy, like a person like Philemon who obviously a wealthy person because he has a household of a sufficient breadth and depth, that he has slaves and he probably has a large villa of some kind. The church meets in his house.
CM: It was big enough, right?
GF: Because it was big enough. So he blesses the world with his house church and he blesses Onesimus by giving him his freedom when he comes back as a runaway slave because the Gospel has so touched his live. But –
CM: The wealthy women too
GF: The wealthy women like Lydia
CM: who took care of Jesus, who provided and then the early church.
GF: Well, and the yeah, especially those women that provided for their needs. And if it were not for that single moment in Luke’s Gospel when he tells that there were more than 12 following Jesus. There are lots along with the 12 including wealthy women who made provision for them out of their wealth. And Luke blesses them by including them in his Gospel at that point. But no point is made of being wealthy or getting wealth,
CM: Or deserving
GF: Or deserving or anything, it just, it’s the way the world was when the New Testament was written. And it accepted the world the way it came to them. What it did was it went after the people who were either poor or wealthy and made them followers of Jesus and then either having or not having was an irrelevance. If they didn’t have it they didn’t want more and if they did have it they were free to give it to and to help those who had need, so the New Testament just doesn’t speak directly to this. What you have to do is you have to take a text out of context, another isolated phrase out of another place and put those together and say, “The New Testament teaches,” but that is not good exegesis. That is isogesis that is reading into text what is not the text’s purpose. This text in 3 John is a standard way of saying, “I trust everything goes well with you.” It’s a standard form that would be very much like when we start a letter and say, “Dear so and so, I trust this letter finds you well.” Now, there’s hardly an American who wouldn’t recognize that form.
CM: Right. Right.
GF: We’ve received letters like that. We’ve sent things like that. That’s their way of doing that in the 1st Century.
CM: so you can see a lot of letters have survived.
GF: A lot of letters have that, not by Christians. Just
CM: Right.
GF: Same language, same everything, just hoping that they’re doing well. After all these are friends. We want them to be doing well.
CM: Sure. So it doesn’t mean you could be rich too, as it’s been interpreted by 21st –
GF: Yeah, nothing to do with that at all. It had nothing to do with anybody being rich. You do understand that our English, “Hello” is an abbreviated form of “Health to you.” That is what hello comes from, health to you, “hello”. And when we say hello, we are not saying, “Well, God’s going to bless you with health”. It’s just, it’s just, it’s a formula that occurs in scripture that one person is wishing God’s blessing on another person, but there’s no promissory note there of any kind.
CM: I had a friend once Gordon, who was a judge. And he and his wife would drive around the city in which they live and look for their dream home. They finally found their dream home. They claimed that dream home for themselves. He told me they prayed in front of the house regularly, every week at least, they would drive by and claim this home. They never got the home. Their marriage dissolved and I haven’t heard from him in years. I’ve got a hunch there are a lot of people around that have somehow bought into a theology that says that’s biblical. But what I hear you saying, that’s a false gospel.
GF: Yeah, that’s a very painful story because it was based on false promises that have nothing to do with the New Testament at all. They have to do with taking words out of context but, the guy that opened the Bible and it said, “Judas hanged himself”. He didn’t like that text so he opened it again and it said, “Go thou and do likewise.” He needs to learn to quit using scripture that way. That is what the wealth and health gospel people are doing. They are finding text putting their finger on it and saying, “That applies to us.” That, out of context, nothing to do with the Gospel at all and then perpetuating this in ways that your story is only one of thousands of stories like this where people have been so disappointed in God because they were led to believe the wrong thing about God. Now on the other hand, they’ve got stories on the other side and I’m well aware of those stories. And I say well God is gracious after all, isn’t he?
CM: Yes, yes.
GF: And so it’s got nothing to do with –
CM: You and I could tell each other a few of those stories.
GF: Precisely. So it’s got nothing to do with my faith, it has to do with God’s goodness. And there are those moments when we, we do ask strange things of God. “Lord, this is selfish but this would be so pleasing if you would do this for the sake of my son.” And then God does it and you realize that he is gracious, not because I had some kind of a special prayer way of getting at him. He loved my son and did something gracious for him. So anyway, God would like to spoil us every now and then, I think. But the idea that somehow we can expect wealth because we are his children is really just the most unfortunate kind of non-gospel.
CM: Well let me take us another way. And if somebody’s just joined us, you’re listening to Dr. Gordon Fee. He is a New Testament scholar, and a highly respected New Testament scholar. Don’t you think there are people though, who are believers in Christ and are not Charismatics and they get it wrong too?
GF: Sure. I mean, that’s a part of the, that’s a part of the privilege of being redeemed fallen people. We’re not going to always get it right. That’s why, that’s why we all need a certain dose of humility, and I come across very strongly and I need my own dose of humility, but this is the one thing that is absolutely lacking in the proponents of the wealth and health gospels. There is no humility.
CM: You look at the lifestyle, the cars driven, the private jets; I mean we can go on –
GF: and the demands. That somehow we have the privilege of demanding and telling God how to run his universe! No, no, no. God runs his universe out of grace and out of love and mercy and it’s ours to be in touch with him, but not tell him how to do it. And then every once in a while he dips into that basket, as it were, and pulls out one of those wonderful gifts that just sends our head spinning with joy and think, “God is a gracious God in the midst of everything, “ but no demands. It’s like a child coming and saying, “Dad, you’ve got to get me that train set for Christmas or I’m not going to love you anymore.” Well, what kind of a child is that and what kind of a father would do that?
CM: Right.
GF: And what kind of a God would respond to that kind of nonsense? And yet that’s the kind of so called Gospel that’s going around. God is good all the time.
CM: And it’s, it’s as strong today as it’s been in years. It doesn’t seem to change.
GF: I’m afraid that that’s true.
CM: Wow. Is there a danger to our hearts by believing in a gospel of wealth, which you’re saying is a false gospel?
GF: Yes it puts our focus in the wrong place. It puts our focus on things and not on people. And I think anything that redirects our focus from people is a false gospel. It puts their focus on, on their things, on their toys as over against them as people. So what happens is that this gospel has created a colony of incredibly arrogant human beings who don’t think of themselves as arrogant, who simply make demands of God and then more painfully, tell someone else who hasn’t got an answer to prayer, who hasn’t got what they’ve got, they give them this, “You don’t have the right kind of faith. You’ve got to do this, do that,” and instead of helping them they become very critical and insensitive to people’s needs. I have no real stomach for this particular so called gospel because it is so false in every imaginable way. And that doesn’t mean that God is stingy and that God doesn’t give us good things. It’s just that there is no demand of any kind on the part of children. Children cannot demand of their parents that they get rich. And I just think that the whole thing is just distorted, twisted stuff that gets people going in the wrong direction and gets their eyes off God himself. And gets them – who wants things? I’m sorry, I just –
CM: When we are in relationship with Christ, stuff just doesn’t mean a whole lot.
GF: It just doesn’t. And I’m always puzzled by this, that when I have the right toys then I know that God loves me and he’s pleased with me.
CM: It’s a sign of his blessing – wrong!
GF: Yeah, well, wrong, yeah.
CM: God doesn’t promise wealth. What does he promise us?
GF: God promises that we are his children and that we’re his forever and that we can trust him. The one thing that we can believe is that God is trustworthy, worthy of our trust. And trusting him does not mean that I get everything that I want. It means that I can trust him with my life and that he will do good for me by his definition, not by mine. There are those moments when I back up and say I, I admit I’m not capable at the moment of seeing any good in these present circumstances. And I could tell some long stories about some of those. But that doesn’t take away from my trust in God. It takes away from my ability to see what might possibly be good. And maybe I’ll never see any good in the couple of events that I’m thinking about. But what they did do, they taught me to trust him the more, not the less. Difficult circumstances that I just didn’t, you know, I didn’t get it my way.
CM: Good point. We should pray. Gordon would you mind leading us in prayer for all of us that we would have a right sense of what it is to handle what God has provided us? Pray for all of us to know this love of Christ more and more richly and deeply every day. Lead us, Gordon, in prayer.
GF: Gracious God, we agree with those who say so loudly and clearly that you are a good God, but we do not presume always to know what good means. We just know that you’re good and that you shower benefits upon us far and above anything we can ask or think. And so we pray Gracious God, especially for those who have been caught up in this false gospel, that they will learn to trust you with their lives. Not trust in getting things, but trust you, so that they might live out the gracious giving nature of God in everything that they do and are. We thank you for not trusting some of us with too much wealth. We thank you for trusting some with that wealth who have been so able to benefit so many people. We pray for all of us that with what you give us you will also give us generous hearts that we might overflow with generosity to the needy, to those that have not been blessed as we. We pray that the overflow of your heart might overflow into our hearts and into other hearts and lives. And so we pray Gracious God that you will make us content in plenty and in need, that we might be content because we are yours and we are loved by you, and that we are your children and someday we will see you face to face and it will be all glory. Thank you for your goodness, through Christ our Lord, amen.
CM: Amen. Dr. Gordon Fee leading us in a prayer that we might see a biblical approach to health and wealth on a Haven Today called, “The Disease of the Gospel of Wealth”. I’m so thankful that he was willing to join us and help us just look at what the scriptures teach and not what some people say or try to intimate by taking out of context what scriptures teach. Let me just say this: I know from the letters, the emails, the phone calls we get that there are people in really dire straits financially, Christians, and there are also people that are very sick physically and we hear from you. And I want you to know that Jesus cares, I truly believe that. And we care too and we would like to pray for you. I’d like to first give you our mailing address where you can mail a prayer request to us and know that somebody, a real, live human being is going to be praying for you. Somebody on our prayer team will give it their full, undivided attention. So just write us at:
Haven Today
Box 79997
Riverside, CA 92513
And in Canada:
Haven Today
Box 6800
Vancouver, BC V6B4C9
Now perhaps no other issues more directly affect the lives of professing Christians as do the issues of health and wealth and their relationship to the will of God. Well, that’s what Gordon Fee looks at and what does the Bible truly teach in his book, “The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels”. You can get it online, that book plus the two interview programs we have with Dr. Gordon Fee by just going to haventoday.org. You can also leave us a prayer request as well when you go to haventoday.org. Also you can call us at 1-800-654-2836 for the book and the 2 programs, “The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels”. Call us at 1-800-654-2836. I’m Charles Morris. Thanks for being with me and Dr. Gordon Fee. I’ll be back again tomorrow talking more about what the Bible teaches about this disease of the gospel of wealth as we’re together in Jesus Christ here on Haven Today.