Larry Shallenberger

“Name-It-and-Claim-It” feels hunky dory as long as everyone is getting what they want. If Joe claims the Audi in Jesus name and then manages to make those monthly payments, then God can his co-pilot, or GPS– whatever the slogan is on the bumper sticker, I mean Flair, these days. If Susan claims, by the Blood of the Lamb, that her children will grow up to love Jesus and one grows up to be a dope dealer or a congressman, then thinks start to get dicey between Susan or God.

One of the problems with the Prosperity Gospel is that it doesn’t account for the fact that we live in a broken world filled with pain, sin, and disappointment. What the Prosperity Gospel does offer is an acute sense of justice. Here’s the moral schema of the Prosperity Gospel:

1) God wants all of his children to be materially blessed. This is the entitlement of God’s children. All they need to do it to make faith affirmations and to give generously to the kingdom.

2) If you are God’s child, the fact that you have received the material blessing you claimed is validation that you are right with God.

3) If you have not received the material blessings you claimed, after a period of time the only conclusions one can make is that your faith is weak or that you aren’t generous. You are a faithless person

The person whose live isn’t working out, let’s call him Job, has another way of looking at things:

1) I’ve asked God to bless my life.

2) I’m a just and faithful man. My personal piety and devotional walk is impeccable. I know how much I give to the poor. It’s a private, but trust me, it’s sacrificial.

3) My life is a train wreck. I’m suffering and I’ve lost everything I’ve worked for an everyone I’ve loved.

4) Therefore, God has been unjust to me. He is an immoral God.

We all know how Job ends. God appears and overwhelms him with dozens of questions about the order of the physical universe that Job can’t answer. God follows that if Job is ignorant of the physical order of the world that he shouldn’t be surprised that the moral ordering of the universe is also beyond him.

So the prosperity Gospel demands justice and those who violate the formula to be held accountable. Justice is a fine thing but it needs to be anchored in reality.

The image is a painting by Guy Rowe.

There’s been a term that’s been around just under a decade– “slacktivism.” The word is a jab at “feel-good” measures, in support of a social cause that does little-to-no good, other than give the slavktivist a little self satisfaction. We’ve all been a slacktivist at one point or another. I’ve signed countless online petitions to save Dafur. We buy awareness bracelets imprinted with political slogans, put ribbon magnets on our cars, or joined facebook groups. We can join the “Buy Nothing Day” and “Earth Hour” movements and barely be inconvenienced. All these efforts make people slightly more aware of the cause. They help us manage our personal brand: I’m compassionate. But efforts like  But not much really changes for the better. The problem we claim to care about doesn’t lessen, and we aren’t reshaping ourselves into caring people.

We’ve even found a way to connect Slacktivism to consumerism. I can justify buying the red Ipod I really can’t afford because a percentage of the money does to the One Campaign. I can purchase the designer t-shirt without a twinge of guilt because somewhere a village in Africa will get a kickback. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing non-profits for doing what they can to raise funds for make positive change. I’m just fascinated by how we all seem to leverage these products to sustain our status quo. We’re still consumers, but dressed in activists clothing.

This is what makes the Prosperity Gospel so tempting: We get to accessorize our lives with God-talk but still chase after whatever it is we want. I want to be a follower of Jesus to the point that I actually have make inconvenient edits to my personal story. When a preacher comes around and tell us that we can have it all, deep down we know this person is a liar. But he’s offering a convenient lie, so we play along.

Maybe this is the test of knowing whether or not I’m chasing the right stuff: What if I took Donald Miller‘s advice and viewed my life like it was a story. I’d describe my ambitions, what my conflict was, and how I was going to fight to overcome that conflict. Now what would happen if I imagined that story taking place in a universe without God? Would I be forced to change anything in my story? If nothing in my story changes, then chances are I’m a spiritual slacktivist. I haven’t allowed God to shape my ambitions or how I approach conflict.  God isn’t anything more in my story than the trendy t-shirt that I buy to feel good about myself.

That’s part of the problem with the Prosperity Gospel. It gives us permission to want and chase after the same things we’d want if God wasn’t in the universe.

This week, we’ll be exploring the “Prosperity Gospel” and why it just doesn’t fit in with the Christian story. The Prosperity Gospel is a relatively new idea, at least in its current form. It came to prominence in American theology after World War II with the teaching ministry of the late Oral Roberts.

Prosperity gospel is the belief that Christians that believer are entitled to blessings of health and wealth on the merit of being a part of God’s family. The theory goes that we can unlock these blessing by making positive statements of faith (“Claiming” something in Jesus name),  and by “sowing of seeds” through the faithful payments of tithes and offerings.

There are several great books exposing Prosperity Gospel. One of the better one’s is Karen Spears Zacharias’ Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide? To keep these post brief, we’ll spend each day looking at one way this “gospel” doesn’t fit what we know to be true about God and the Christian story. Karen’s book will satisfy those who want to explore the topic more deeply.

The Prosperity Gospel doesn’t fit the Bible’s metaphor as God as Father. Prosperity Gospel teaches that monetary wealth is part of the birthright of a believer. Years ago I worked at a Christian book store. One day a customer thumbed through the bumper stickers and decided that he shouldn’t put on his car. He was driving a clunker and God’s will was that he drive a luxury car. He decided a Christian slogan covering a rusty bumper would confuse readers. God wants all his children in BMW’s. Heresy averted.

This line of thinking isn’t consistent with the metaphor of God being a a perfect father. I have three sons. If I gave them what they want, they’d grow up to be worthless adults. They want no restrictions on video games and television time.  My seven-year- old would live off Trix yogurt, chocolate milk, and Oreo cookies if he could hypnotize me to obey his will. I’ve valuable as a parent because I am generous and I withhold.

My children’s wants are in the here-and-now. There’s little future orientation. But Amy and I have other goals. We want them to be loving and compassionate adults. We want them to serve their future spouses’ dreams. We want them to have meaning jobs.

So, yes, we buy them stuff– music lessons and instruments. Yes, video games and cookies; in moderation. We intentionally withhold things, too. Midnight text messaging is out. There are curfews. Certain movies are nixed. They may not have the latest, greatest gaming system. We also introduce the mild form of suffering known as chores. Why? But God has charged us with developing our children into something greater and more mature than they are today.

The author of Hebrews makes this point. Here’s Eugene Peterson’s beautiful translation:

^4-11In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don’t feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as his children?

My dear child, don’t shrug off God’s discipline,
but don’t be crushed by it either.
It’s the child he loves that he disciplines;
the child he embraces, he also corrects.

God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children. This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God’s training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it’s the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.

So the Prosperity Gospel requires a lesser God than the one we find in the Bible. God would have to let himself go as a parent in order for this square peg gospel fit. He be God, but one we opportunistic kids would want to manipulate instead of worship.

How to start a movement: Reggie doesn’t primarily offer a curriculum, a conference, a strategy, or a tactic. When someone registers for Orange they are accepting an invitation to join a community of pastors who are committed to re-imagine how faith is passed from generation to generation. Orange participants remind me of Apple aficionados. Reggie’s “product” is a tribe for innovative pastors willing to break the mold in order to reach families.

How to lead process change: There are dozens of books that champion the family. Each book references the same key Bible verses and affirms the parents are central in a child’s faith development. Reggie’s book “Think Orange” stands out because it provides advice on how to navigate the departmental structures that get in the way of a church providing a unified strategy for helping families.  For my money, this is the genius of the book. Children and youth pastors are at the bottom of most church’s org charts. Reggie has provided a blue print for leading up well. If I ever had lunch with Reggie, I’d pick his brain about process leadership.

How to recruit “evangelists”: During the week’s that lead up to the Orange conference, Twitter and the blogosphere lit up with post about Orange. Pastor raved about their past conference experiences and what they were looking forward to experiencing this year. These “evangelists” created a buzz that made other’s curious. After each Orange conference, has a meeting with influential bloggers to get their opinions and to enlist their help in casting the Orange vision.

It seems to me that these three skills are invaluable for any leader. If I could learn from Reggie, I pump him for information on those three things.

A few days ago I posted a clever video clip that recasts Mary Poppins from lovable nanny to menace and started a discussion on why it is we edit the truth. I mentioned that we see this editing in politics often. Ms. Sherrod’s long ordeal illustrates this perfectly.

Decades ago Shirley Sherrod told the truth about herself. This was a truth that no one would have known about her had she not courageous chosen to be transparent. She had allowed racial consideration to be a factor in choosing how much personal effort she invested when helping a white family of farmers. Before she was honest with her audience at the NAACP, she was honest with herself. She disappointed herself and vowed to change. Her vulnerability transcended our nation’s ugly legacy of racial division. She had model a better way of dealing with racial tension.

That truth didn’t fit into a blogger’s view of the world, so he intentionally edited the truth. The blogger hid Sherrod’s story of personal transformation and revealed just the “before” scene. He needed proof that the NCAAP was a racially biased organization, so through editing he fabricated a version of Sherrod that would fit into his world of “Us- verses- Them” culture wars.

Editing Sherrod’s truth gave him power. His blog post received national attention. The clicks on that post skyrocketed along with his stature as a source of information. Advertising dollars were sure to follow.

Fox News scooped up the blogger’s story and ran with it, apparently without a single fact check. Apparently, they never asked to see the entire video. Sherrod was not contacted for comment. Edited Sherrod would increase viewer-ship and consequent advertising rates.  A cable network is not married to one or the other political party as much as it is to selling conflict. Fox just happened to concern the market for conflict from a right wing perspective. If unedited truth sold toilet paper ads, Hannity would have aired a special exposing the blogger for the con man he is. The truth test for Edited Sherrod wasn’t a disciplined fact check. The “truth test” was “will this incite?”

Although the USDA had years of first hand experience with Unedited Sherrod, they had to deal with the televised version of her, and it wasn’t convenient. Edited Sherrod was a liability that gave high ground to the right. The USDA had the choice of taking the time to listen to Sherrod’s protests and to watch her speech themselves. They had the option presenting Unedited Sherrod to the nation, a move that would have left Fox News embarrassed. Instead, they decided to cut their losses and jettison a faithful employee. Setting the record straight, apparently, was been to be too much effort.

The value of retelling this unfortunate news story isn’t in the opportunity to point fingers at any of the guilty parties. We were given a rare insight into how truth gets edited too suit our means. If I read this story and point at Fox News and condemn their editing and stop there, I’m missing the point. The USDA behaved like Pilate and turned an innocent person over to the angry crowd, not stopping to judge her guilt or innocence. But if my observations stop there, I’m missing the point.

Here’s the unaltered truth. We all edit and create versions of the reality that give us power and make us feel self-justified. We edit to discredit enemies so we can avoid dealing with their perspectives. We edit as churches to defend our own theological positions and practices. Meanwhile, Jesus– who describes himself as the truth– gives himself to us, and we’re tempted to edit him too.

I recently read the Gospel of John with a good friend and found a new favorite passage. In John 8:48-49 we see Jesus being confronted by his countrymen:

“The Jews answered him, ‘Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have demon? The Jewish people were concerned that Jesus was as heretic and a witch. The accusation of being a witch is easy to understand. Jesus constantly performed miracles, and he postured himself outside of the corrupt religious establishment. And so one had to wonder, Jesus wasn’t aligning with God’s ordained priesthood, so just maybe he was getting his power from a dark place.

But the charge of heresy is a bit more veiled to western eyes.  Samaria had fallen from grace during the time of exile. Babylonian armies took the best and brightest into exile. Those left behind created a kind of Creole culture by adopting the beliefs, customs, and values of Israel’s enemy, Assyria. This shift in culture led to the rise of the Samaritan sect. They still worshiped God. But they built their own temple. Their doctrine mutated. Some scholars speculate that their bad theology contained some elements that would eventually be known as gnosticism.

The accusation could be summed up like this: “You, sir, are a heretic and a witch.”

To which Jesus replied, “I’m not a witch.”

Jesus let the accusation of being a heretic stand. He didn’t spend a single sentence to make sure that everyone knew that his beliefs squared with scripture. Even more impressive was the fact that John didn’t come back after the fact and cover for Jesus’ glaring omission. John didn’t toss in a few sentences editorializing how that Jesus, being God, had his theology down pat.  Jesus offered no self-defense. John offered no blocking on Jesus’ behalf.

The accusation stood unchallenged and I guess it’s remained unchallenged for over two thousand years.

I don’t think it’s because Jesus doesn’t care about theology. I think it’s because he cares more about relationships than he does being understood. Jesus was willing to allow his reputation to be damaged for the sake of connecting with the Samarians. They mattered to him, to the point that he was willing to live with some bad press.

Donald Miller recently blogged about how being jerk is a type of heresy. What do you think: Isn’t defending your orthodoxy at the expense of relationship a form of heresy? If Jesus would have thrown the Samaritans to keep up appearances with his peers, how credible would he have been when he commanded his disciples to take the Gospel from Jerusalem and into Samaria?

Another question: Shouldn’t it be normal for people who follow Jesus to be intentional about forming relationships with people who have warped ideas of God?

I’m working through Eric Metaxas’ biography and I’m struck by the contract between the attitudes of Luther and Bonhoeffer regarding people with whom they had intellectual and theological disagreements.

During Luther’s later days, he developed an unconscionable anti-semetic streak. His earlier writings were hopeful that part of the fruit of the religious shifts that were taking place would be the mass conversions of the Jewish people. This did not come to pass and an older and, well, hateful Luther entertained persecuting the Jews and confiscating their property (Metaxas notes that Luther’s venom extended to other groups as well, most notably against the Catholics).  The Nazis found these writings of Luther and used them in their campaign to persuade the Germans that Judaism as the antithesis of Christianity. Luther’s larger than life personality was impressed upon the German nation: his Bible changed the nation, his theology changed their religion, and his hate helped give permission for unspeakable sins. It seems that love that only extends warmth with the goal of changing the Other is a subtle form of hate.

Within weeks of Hitler’s election to Chancellor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered a sermon outlining the how the church and state should relate. Bonhoeffer offered three suggestion for how the church should aid the state. First, the church should play a prophetic role to help the state be the institution that God intended. Secondly, Bonhoeffer argued that the church should “aid the victims of state action.” He declared “the church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. ” Bonhoeffer even want as far to say that the church might need to “put a spoke in the week of government” to end the injustices.

Bonhoeffer’s participation in the attempt to assasinate Hitler demonstrates the depth of his convictions. He loved the Jewish people without a thought to whether they would convert to Christianity. He saw them as people made in God’s image and therefore worthy of unconditional love and sacrifice, even if it cost him his life. Bonhoeffer didn’t commodify love and use it as a tool to leverage people to get in line with his thinking, no matter how true and right it was.

I can’t help but think that Bonhoeffer’s live is a better template for figuring out how the American churches should relate to the state than what we are doing right now.

Here’s some questions for discussion:

What groups of people does the church withhold love from because we haven’t figured out to change them?

Who are the victims of state action that the church should be defending, regardless of their beliefs?

Who are the people who are different from you that you are choosing not to love?

Who would become harder for you to love if you knew that you would never persuade that person to change their behavior or thinking?

My wife recently had me watch this funny YouTube Clip:

This clip shows the power of how a little video editing and new soundtrack can complete change our perceptions.  Marry Poppins, Disney’s lovable flying nanny, becomes someone to be feared. The editor selected what parts of the movie we would see and what would be withheld. The change of soundtrack sent the emotional message that Mary was dangerous.

It’s a funny clip, but I think it also teaches. I think that everyone of us has an internal editing machine that constantly in motion. We take in experiences and automatically edit them so we can make sense of them. We compare what we just witnessed to our memories of past experiences. We keep what makes sense to us and the parts of the experience that we can’t reconcile with our personal beliefs tend to hit the floor of our editing room.

I’ve been reading Miroslav Volf’s masterpiece Exclusion and Embrace. In his chapter, “Deception and Embrace”, he suggests that we all have other motives at play that drive our editing work. We edit truth to maintain power or to justify our behavior. We edit to make opponents appear unthinking or ungodly. Volf seems to be suggesting that perhaps we’re not interested in knowing truth as we are maintaining a “regime of truth” that makes us comfortable.

This shows up in our politics, doesn’t it? Take in an hour of Fox News or MSNBC and watch someone you disagree with ideologically. Notice how they edit their opponents on the right or the left. What motives do they attribute to their opponents? Notice the absolute speech they use to describe your political champions as a menace to the health of the nation. Now change the channel and watch your favorite pundit. He or she is doing the same thing.

Unfortunately, our editing machines are at work when we take in Scripture. We edit Jesus to paint those people as being moral deficient and to make ourselves absolutely pure. Their hearts are deceitful and wicked, but we have worked out right understanding of God. They edit. We perceive. In Jesus day people organized themselves as Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Herodians. Each group claimed to have an accurate map of God. each group was certain the others were deceived fools. Jesus, meanwhile, was the truth and defied all of their categories.

I’m not saying that truth can’t be known or that there’s no point in trying to know God since we’ll inevitably gum things up. I do think that we need admit that we are compulsive editors and that we all need to talk about God with more humility than we normally do. I’ll leave you with this quote from Volf:

“The first thing we need to remember as we seek to learn anything from Jesus Christ is that we are not Jesus Christ. Applied to the question of truth this means that, unlike Jesus Christ, we are not the truth and we are not the self-effacing witnesses to the truth. This is why we believe in Jesus– to help us see what we are not what we ought to be and to help us become what we ought to be. Our commitment to Jesus Christ who is the truth does not therefore translate into the claim that we possess absolute truth.”

Exclusion and Embrace p. 271

Back to the “I Could Learn From…” series. NFL camps are just around this corner and I’m a bit glum that Donovan McNabb will be absent at the Eagles camp after 10 years of being with the team. McNabb’s rise happened about the time my oldest son became aware of football.  My son is now driving and is a handful of years away from launching into adulthood. So McNabb’s Easter day trade marks time in my household as well as with the Philadelphia Eagles. Here are three things I could learn from McNabb:

1) Tuning out the Critics: McNabb is the NFL’s version of Job. He’s one of the good guys in the sport. He’s a family man, displays high character, and has virtually set every record in the Eagles’ book. Even so, he’s endured racially charged venom from Rush Limbaugh, the wrath of professional narcissist, Terrel Owens, and grumblings of an ungrateful Philly fan base. The only thing he is guilty of is not winning a ring, as if he’s capable of accomplishing that by himself.

In the face of all this, McNabb keeps his focus on the game. For the most part he’s refused to get drawn into responding to all these critics. He’s too busy bettering himself to play their game.

2) Keeping the Team Loose: I’m going to miss Donovan’s clowning around on the sidelines. No matter how big the game was, “5″ always had the ability to smile, joke, and keep his team mates from becoming overwhelmed with the pressure.

3) The Art of Redefining Yourself: When Donovan came into the game, he was green like any other rookie QB. Donovan had, at best, a pedestrian receiving core. So Donovan created plays with his legs. Over time, Donovan aged and suffered injuries. So he evolved his game and became a top-flight pocket passer. I could learn from his example. Rapidly changing times demand rapidly evolving leaders.

McNabb, thanks for the memories. I wish you the best. And hey, you really didn’t owe Philadelphia that apology. But it was a classy thing to do.

Who doesn’t love a little Christmas in July? Here’s a few chapters from my next book, A Nativity of Misfits.  A Nativity of Misfits is a spiritual memoir that tells of my struggles with connecting to the holiday and how I learned to take my place among the Christmas misfits. I’m having a little trouble getting this book placed. Books about the Incarnation are considered seasonal in our culture. That just adds to the challenge of finding the right publisher. But I’ll get there with some hard work.

In the meantime, here’s a sample of the book. I’d love to hear what you think.

ANativityofMisfits