In most of the world churches are liable to be swamped by the so-called prosperity gospel, and in the richer parts of the world churches struggle to guard the gospel against metamorphosing into what we might call the therapeutic gospel. These two closely-related pseudo-gospels threaten to displace the authentic Christian and Biblical gospel.
The prosperity gospel, in its crudest form, is the message that God wants you to be rich, and if you trust him and ask him, he will make you rich. Preachers tell the congregation how God wants them to be rich and then richer and richer.
What happens to the prosperity gospel when I already enjoy prosperity? It metamorphoses into the therapeutic gospel. In its simplest form, this false gospel says that if I feel empty and I come to Jesus, Jesus will fill me. The promise of objective goods (money, wife, husband, children) metamorphoses into the claiming of subjective benefits. I feel depressed, and Jesus promises to lift my spirits. I feel aimless, and Jesus commits himself to giving me purpose in life. I feel empty inside, and Jesus will fill me.
This chimes perfectly with prosperous twenty-first-century society. While writing this, I had a survey from our gas supplier asking for customer feedback after a repair job. The survey began with the words, “We want to know how we left you feeling.” That is very contemporary. Not “We want to know whether we made your gas heating work, whether we did it promptly and efficiently” and so on (objective criteria), but “We want to know how we left you feeling” (the subjective focus). Did we help you feel good?
The therapeutic gospel is the gospel of self-fulfillment. It makes me, already healthy and wealthy, feel good. The book of Job addresses in a deep and unsettling way both the pseudo-gospel of prosperity and the pseudo-gospel of feeling good.
The prosperity gospel, in its crudest form, is the message that God wants you to be rich, and if you trust him and ask him, he will make you rich. Preachers tell the congregation how God wants them to be rich and then richer and richer.
What happens to the prosperity gospel when I already enjoy prosperity? It metamorphoses into the therapeutic gospel. In its simplest form, this false gospel says that if I feel empty and I come to Jesus, Jesus will fill me. The promise of objective goods (money, wife, husband, children) metamorphoses into the claiming of subjective benefits. I feel depressed, and Jesus promises to lift my spirits. I feel aimless, and Jesus commits himself to giving me purpose in life. I feel empty inside, and Jesus will fill me.
This chimes perfectly with prosperous twenty-first-century society. While writing this, I had a survey from our gas supplier asking for customer feedback after a repair job. The survey began with the words, “We want to know how we left you feeling.” That is very contemporary. Not “We want to know whether we made your gas heating work, whether we did it promptly and efficiently” and so on (objective criteria), but “We want to know how we left you feeling” (the subjective focus). Did we help you feel good?
The therapeutic gospel is the gospel of self-fulfillment. It makes me, already healthy and wealthy, feel good. The book of Job addresses in a deep and unsettling way both the pseudo-gospel of prosperity and the pseudo-gospel of feeling good.
--- Ash, C. Job: The Wisdom of the Cross.
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