Monday, February 28, 2011

Destined to be prosperous?

Proponents of prosperity teaching will pick and choose certain Bible verses to substantiate their claim that material wealth should be the destiny for all believers (Malachi 3:10; Deuteronomy 8:18; John 10:10; 3 John 2-4; James 4:2). And many men of faith in the Old Testament were materially prosperous--like Job, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, David and Boaz. My previous blog already addressed why someone like Abraham was righteously rich--many people were cared for due to his prosperity.

But we can't ignore that in the New Testament, not only do we see Jesus and his disciples lacking  material wealth, we also hear Jesus say, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has no place to lay his head" (Luke 9:58). And more recently, many of our role models in the faith, people like Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Eric Liddell and Jim Elliot, stand out to us for the way they left behind comfort and security to serve others in poor and forgotten places. How do we reconcile this apparent contradiction?

Teachings that hyper-focuses on either enjoying prosperity or suffering for Christ are simply missing it. Instead, let's look for the common thread between the Old Testament patriarchs and Jesus' followers. What we see is that they didn't live their lives just looking after number 1 (self); they all looked out for others (i.e. loving their neighbours) whether they were rich or poor.  And in this love they prospered.

So, don't pursue prosperity to satisfy greed and don't suffer for the sake of suffering, nor should we  avoid either  prosperity or suffering if the end result will benefit our fellow man. Loving our neighbour fulfills our destiny and produces biblical notion of prosperity.

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