21 June 2005

The slippery slope to 'prosperity' teaching

As you may have picked up, I'm about to publish a book on the Lord's prayer. In setting up the accompanying wiki I found one of the advertising links intriguing, so I followed up and ended up with a 7-day procession of emails handing on a set of prayers. The first was "I love you God', the second was "Thank you God", so far so good. Then number 3 seemed okay too: ‘GOD YOU ARE INSIDE ME!’ [sic], there's a bit of a question about how we're to take that but that's a wait-and-see thing. Each of these prayers is given a supplement, and for number three it's a doozy...
"For your new prayer here's a powerful add-on:
'GOD I BELIEVE AND KNOW YOU
ARE INSIDE ME!'
'GOD, SINCE YOU ARE INSIDE
ME, YOU ATTRACT GOOD
THINGS TO ME AS YOU FULFILL
YOUR PURPOSE THROUGH ME.
"
It's hard not to get the impression that 'good things' is going to end up including material wealth. In which case, a section from my book kicks in as relevant, I think:
" it may seem to certain groups of Christians in affluent societies, that God provides all they need and many of their wants, but the reality is often that they (we) are working the system to our advantage: diverting God's provision meant for answering the prayers of the poor for daily bread to our own use. The fact that 'we' can name it and claim it may be saying more about a privileged position in the global web of trade and power than supernatural aid. We should see this petition in the context of gospel calls to redistribute to the poor. In our global context, praying 'your will be done' in conjunction with 'give us our daily bread' means praying and working for a world where the global systems of production and distribution are fair and sustainable. And it means being prepared to act with restraint with regard to our own desires. Prosperity gospellers should take note of their ecological footprints, and take in the fact that for everyone in the world to live at their level, it would take three to five planet earths. Then they might explain to the rest of us whether they really have faith that God is going to multiply the whole planet like the bread at the feeding of the five thousand."
The 7 Great Prayers for Powerful Praying - For Prayer:

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