Synopsis Job's reply in Job 6-7 did not sit well with Bildad. It was now Bildad turn to speak,
“How long will you say such things? Your words are a blustering wind. Does God pervert justice? Does the Almighty pervert what is right?" (Job 8:2-3)
According to Bildad, Job's children got what they deserved for their sin. He explained,
"When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin." (Job 8:4)
He continued,
"Such is the destiny of all who forget God; so perishes the hope of the godless. What they trust in is fragile; what they rely on is a spider’s web." (Job 8: 13-14)
He then concludes by a simple view of God's justice,
“Surely God does not reject one who is blameless or strengthen the hands of evildoers. He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy. Your enemies will be clothed in shame, and the tents of the wicked will be no more.” (Job 8:20 -23)
My reflections Despite his attempt to comfort Job, Bildad is wrong in relegating God to a simplistic view of justice. In his view, only the good are rewarded while the wicked are punished. In other words, physical health and material wealth is one way to know if a person is right with God.
But we definitely know that this is not true. In our lifetime, we definitely have witness injustice. There are healthy and rich people who are corrupt; while there are sickly and poor people who are honest. Bildad seems to be promoting a form of prosperity gospel.
I myself must not follow in Bildad's theology and promote such binary thinking.
“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see."
-- Revelation 3: 14 - 18
In Singapore we are blessed with prosperity. And maybe it's our Asian drive mixed with Western ingenuity that has led us to pursue success in every area of our lives. I mean we can easily define success as the amount of money we earn every month, the brand of the cars we have, or even how well our kids are coming. It can be even the less tangible things, such as the amount of options our education degrees gives us, or how happy we are with our current job.
We may even stretch this in the context of our Christian lives. Some people gauge the success of the church by the number of people attending, or the amount of donations. Others look at reputation, or highlight the number of celebrities at their church.
What if I were to tell you none of that mattered?
The costs of following Jesus Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.
-- Luke 14: 25-33
In my interactions with my fellow Singaporean Christians, there seem to be an idea that following God would results in blessings gained. However in the verse above, the message is clear: in following Jesus, we must be prepared to give up everything.
That is what has been missing from a lot of preaching I heard in Singapore. The idea that we will suffer, lose or even die when we following Jesus. To deny that is disingenuous to the early Christians or our suffering siblings in North Korea and the Middle East.
The genuity of worship But Samuel replied: “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams"
-- 1 Samuel 15:22
As shown in the verse above, God desires genuine worship. It is not enough to give money, time and effort if our intentions are not enough. So what if we are wealthy and give God 10%, 50% or 90%? So what if we hit all the right notes in the songs?
Sincerity in worship is more important. If I am allowed to be frank, I rather have a smaller congregation with real worshipers, than to be in a church with many numbers but little sincerity.
The choice between truth and peace Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
-- 2 Timothy 4: 2-4
If we are not careful, we may fill our ears and thoughts with things we simply like, and not what the Bible says. As the song goes, "the heart wants what it wants."
If we want someone to affirm Christian homosexuality, we can find someone to that. If we want to find a respectable person to support the idea that Christianity is about being wealthy and healthy, we can look for that too.
That would be contrary with what the Bible teaches. Christianity is not about peace at the expense of the truth of Jesus. It is about the truth that Jesus died for our sins, and the only way for reconciliation with God is through Him.
Often we are afraid to offend people in Singapore, especially since the country prides herself in religious harmony and secularism. Thus there is a tendency to treat all religions as equal. Even my ex-pastor recently went on a Buddhist meditation trip.
It may be unpopular, and even cost us our jobs. But we must declare that Jesus is the only way.
Conclusion
The truth is this -- in our lips we may condemn the prosperity gospel or claim we are following God, but in our hearts in may be different.
Dear friends, it is my plead that we all follow Scripture, even it is brings us to the unfavourable conclusion that we must change our lives in order to follow God.
One of the attributes of God is His omnipotence. However in Judges 1:19 (KJV), this is revealed,
And the Lord was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.
This verse seems to cast doubt on the power of God. Even the atheistic website, Iron Chariots adopt this Bible verse as their logo.
Objection!
As usual, even a cursory examination would reveal that the conclusions drawn for this verse (that God was unable to defeat iron chariots or that the Bible writers were making excuses for their lack of success) are shaky at best.
Pronoun
If you look closely, "he" refers to Judah and not God. When the reader is in doubt, he/she is more than welcome to look between translations. Often (but not always), God is referred as "He" and not "he".
Guaranteed success?
Some people may point out Judah should have been victorious since God was "with him". However, nowhere in the Bible says that when God is with us, we will be always successful. Let's look at Genesis 39:20-21:
Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.
But while Joseph was there in the prison,the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.
Granted, Joseph had been shown favour, but he was still in prison.
Conclusion
Although it is easy to nitpick on Bible verses, we must take things in context.
Before I talk about the theology of the prosperity gospel, I must define it to be clear. Prosperity theology is the belief that God provides material prosperity for those whom He favours. To be put it simply, adherents believe that they have a divine right to wealth and health and they can obtain such blessings via positive confessions of faith and regular tithes and offerings.
Note that I am not focusing on any one church (to be fair I only attended one service of one such accused church, and such a theology was not preached at that time).
Adherents quote certain passages from the Bible such as John 10:10 ([Jesus says,] "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.") or 3 John 1:2 (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.) to support the case for the prospersity gospel.
But let's take things into context. Some parts of the Bible are open to interpretation, but some interpretations are just incorrect. In John 10, Jesus was taking about the eternal life he was to give his followers (by dying for the sins of mankind on the cross), and in 3 John 1, the Apostle John was begining a letter with a greeting.
But let's look deeper.
What the prosperity gospel gets right
Despite how mainstream Christianity often criticises it, the prosperity gospel does get some things right. God may choose to bless certain people materially speaking. For instance, in Job in the Bible was blessed in such by God (a fact that Satan points out in Job 1: 9-11) and he was a faithful man.
From my personal experiences, I tend to limit God to certain blessings and excludes Him for others. And the porsperity gosepl is often a good reminder for me that God may chose to bless us in such.
What the prosperity gospel gets wrong
Despite its good intentions, the prosperity gospel gets many things wrong, and I want to look into a few of them.
1) The prosperity gospel misses the point of the God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit
John 3:16-- For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Let's be clear off the bat. I said it before, and I said it again. Jesus came to die for the sins of mankind. Not for us to be rich, healthy or adopt a certain political ideology. All these are secondary compared to our reconcilation with God.
As one of my good friends said, "If God wanted all Christians to be rich, God would have been a business plan, and Jesus, a bussiness man."
2) God is not a vending machine
One often chracteristics of prayer is asking for God for stuff. However God has every right to deny our requests. It does not mean if you pray eight times a day, God would heal your chronic lower back pain, or grant you a bank loan. If faith and blessings were always correlated, then either i) Jesus had very little faith or ii) dying on the cross was not painful for Him.
Furthermore, requests in prayers are only an aspect of prayer. We should also pray for (see the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6: 9-13) thanksgiving and praise, sharing and of course, forgiveness.
3) The object of faith
And one of my biggest concerns is this, why are we Christians? Is it because God will bless us for being faithful (as prosperity theology presents)? Or rather that a man called Jesus died for our sins?
If one is a Christian only because he/she gets material wealth and health in following God, then what happens when one become ill and poor, despite this well-meaning person's best intentions? Will he walk away? What happens if the object of the person's faith is God's blessings and not Jesus?
Yes, the prosperity gospel is not totally unChristian. But it is only a small part, and should never be made the emphasis of Christian faith.
A criticism on the attitudes from my mainstream Christian friends
Most of the time, my Christian friends would quickly divorce themselves away from the prosperity gospel. But the fact remains-- they are still our brothers- and sisters-in-Christ, and we are all guilty by association.
We are their keepers (Genesis 4:9), and we should continue to pray and look out for them.
Note: I do not agree with everything said in the video, but I agree mostly.
