For His Glory
The Other Side of the Prosperity Doctrine
Published Thursday, September 14, 2006 by grace4quiddity | E-mail this post
Carl Trueman on the prosperity problem:
"What always challenges me about prosperity doctrine is that many of us who
repudiate it in theory still practice it in reality. Every time we
suffer a minor setback and are tempted to curse God in our hearts,
that's practical prosperity doctrine. Every time we measure our success by the size of our churches, or the near-eschatological importance of our conferences by the number of attendees and the calibre of the speakers, or our
self-worth by the Reformed megastar names we can drop in conversation,
we make ourselves vulnerable to accusations that we too are committed
to a form of the prosperity doctrine, more subtle and all the more
deadly precisely because of that subtlety.
"We are what we arein Christ, nothing more, nothing less. And in his final hours, Christ
was friendless, an embarrassment to his disciples, with the fair
weather followers and even his closest friends having long since
abandoned him; and then, to cap it all, he was crucified. We shouldn't
be complacent about the prosperity doctrine; it's not just a problem
for 'them'; it's a problem for us too."
(HT:Justin Taylor)
"What always challenges me about prosperity doctrine is that many of us who
repudiate it in theory still practice it in reality. Every time we
suffer a minor setback and are tempted to curse God in our hearts,
that's practical prosperity doctrine. Every time we measure our success by the size of our churches, or the near-eschatological importance of our conferences by the number of attendees and the calibre of the speakers, or our
self-worth by the Reformed megastar names we can drop in conversation,
we make ourselves vulnerable to accusations that we too are committed
to a form of the prosperity doctrine, more subtle and all the more
deadly precisely because of that subtlety.
"We are what we arein Christ, nothing more, nothing less. And in his final hours, Christ
was friendless, an embarrassment to his disciples, with the fair
weather followers and even his closest friends having long since
abandoned him; and then, to cap it all, he was crucified. We shouldn't
be complacent about the prosperity doctrine; it's not just a problem
for 'them'; it's a problem for us too."
(HT:Justin Taylor)
