The dangers of pleasure; or, idolatrous gratitude

Some time ago I used this blog as an extended comment space to respond to someone I had engaged in debate on a YouTube video. As I am obviously taken with the capacity for long-windedness, 500 characters just doesn't cut it when I'm trying to make a point, and it certainly isn't sufficient when the subject is absolutely of crucial importance to the state of the human heart--mine, yours, and all of ours. The video in question for today is thus, a video of Mark Driscoll of Seattle's Mars Hill Church displaying a clip of Houston's famous pastor Joel Osteen of Lakewood Baptist Church. The clip Mark shows is a good summary of Osteen's general thesis of ministry:





I don't think I need to tear apart the specifics of what Osteen says any more than Mark does; he addresses the salient points. As always, however, any videos critical of Osteen often attract his supporters, who look upon those who would be critical of him as people who just want to "tear him down," as people who are simply jealous of his success (which is funny given that two of his most vocal critics, Driscoll and my own pastor Matt Chandler, run churches that each run thousands of people across multiple campuses every Sunday), or as simply not understanding that everybody has something different to offer the body. Often used as an example for this is the biblical principle that the body of Christ is just that--a body, with different parts that all require each other, and to be certain the call to exhort is an important one. The problem comes when you are exhorting people to be strong in something that is unscriptural. In particular I'll be responding to these comments from sapphiredewdrop:

he is only concentrating on a partial truth. every pastor(even us) have a certain gift or a "special" message. each one is a piece of the puzzle. also this pastor could present the truth without downing another pastor. Downing another does not show humbleness. and joel is pointing out the promises in the bible that has already been given to us.

and

The Bible...which is the Living Word of God does offer us health(instructions on healing). Healings are shown throughout the Old and New Test. Salvation is the center of our faith but there is still a world out there and a Satan who will try to steal,kill, and destroy. Sometimes when a person feels they must give up the words Olsteen shares from the Bible can be a great help. And the preacher is not telling Olsteen he is telling his congregation.

and finally

Also, Jesus was not born poor.
Many of his relationships were good, esp in the end when he rose.
I think this pastor is looking at things before the resurrection of Christ.
Because in the "end" Jesus was a victor. In fact in Col. 2 it says that he was triumphant over them by the cross.

First of all, I want to establish that this is not about Joel Osteen as a person, nor is it to say "He's not a believer because he says x." I don't know his heart, I don't know the essence of his relationship with God, but I do know what comes out of his mouth, and it is that which I will be addressing. Additionally, I pray that anything I say here that is contrary to what the Word lays down as truth would be called out as such or simply fall on deaf ears...or blind eyes, in this case. This is a serious matter of dealing with what is a major issue within the American church, and one on which I have felt personally convicted over past praying and ways of thinking--that is, looking to God as though He is my means of getting to x, rather than looking to God as the goal I am striving for, closeness and joy in Him above all other things.

My primary contention comes with what I argue is the central point of Osteen's entire speech in that clip, and indeed his ministry in general, laid out in this phrase that lies as the hinge of the entire segment:

You are not a sick person trying to get well, you are a well person fighting off sickness.

Not only is this statement incredibly dangerous to the life of a believer, it's 100% unscriptural. It is, in fact, the polar opposite of what God says our natures are. If we were still living in Genesis 2, then yes, he'd be right at least in that particular statement--but we aren't. We're in Genesis 3 (or, as Driscoll would say, in Acts 29), and we're living in a broken world, with broken sinful hearts. The Bible has a lot to say about the condition of the human heart, but it's best summed up in Jeremiah 17:9:

The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately sick;
who can understand it?

Right there Scripture undeniably opposes the idea that we are naturally well--on the contrary, we are naturally in a state of rebellion, opposed to God, opposed to what is righteous and He who is righteous. We are full of sin and live in sin, and it's only because of His grace that we are able to find any freedom. Man's wisdom is not sufficient and should not be trusted--this fact is serious enough that Proverbs says it twice:

There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.--Proverbs 14:12

and

There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way to death.--Proverbs 16:25

Yet Osteen is not focused on the way to God; rather, it's what we can get from God that he is concerned with. Even the things that are good on their face--health, an end to depression and low self-esteem, an end to pain--are dangerous if they become our idols. It is, as Jonathan Edwards calls it, the "joy of the hypocrite." The hypocrite's joy is not based in closeness with God, but rather, in the idea that "God rejoices in me! God makes much of me!" which leads to "I must be a great person if God loves me so much!" This belief was just as alive and just as dangerous in Edwards' time as it is today.

Jesus has called those who would follow him to the realization that in order to be healed, they must first know that they are sick, not well.

After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth. And he said to him, "Follow me." And leaving everything, he rose and followed him.

And Levi made him a great feast in his house, and there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples, saying, "Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?" And Jesus answered them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance."--Luke 5:27-31

"After this," by the way, refers to three specific miraculous acts Jesus performs in the beginning of his ministry: He calls the first disciples after causing them to catch a huge amount of fish simply by casting their nets on the other side of the boat, He cleanses a leper, and He heals a paralytic. So clearly God does perform miraculous acts in the lives of those whom He calls. But these were in the course of bringing people to realize how much they needed Him, and of demonstrating His authority on Earth. Jesus could have healed all people on the planet with a single thought, yet He did not. And here in this passage we see that the only people who were able to experience the real joy that comes with closeness to Christ were those who were innately aware of their broken states; those who looked at themselves as being righteous because of their acts were able only to see a threat to their position.

Yes, God heals, God brings prosperity, God can make a man rich. He also can and will allow sickness and pain to enter a man's life, and He can take away everything you have. This is why it is crucial to understand the truth behind the phrase "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him." Not in His things, not in His promises, but in Him. This is a difficult concept to deal with, but the Bible is not known for being full of easy-to-digest concepts, nor is it known for being a book that endorses the general direction of mankind. In John 5 Jesus goes to a pool that once a year was stirred up, and whoever was first able to enter the pool was healed of whatever their problem was.

In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, "Do you want to be healed?" The sick man answered him, "Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me." Jesus said to him, "Get up, take up your bed, and walk." And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.--John 5:3-9

Jesus healed one man, out of many. Why did He do this? Surely He could have healed all of them, it was certainly within His power. But He healed the man because it was what was in obedience to God's will:

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will."--John 5:19-21

Jesus lived in express obedience to the will of His Father--and just as it was the will of God that the lame man should walk, it was also the will of God that the others who were there should not be healed. This is a side to God's hand in this world that is hard to understand, and impossible to appreciate if you look to God as Giver of Stuff, as a divine Santa Claus who takes away the nasty things and gives you good times. To extend Piper's famous phrase to its next logical conclusion based on the Word: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him in the midst of loss.

While Osteen makes the wrath-absorbing reality of the cross of Christ almost incidental to "the world out there," the Bible makes it clear that this is in fact the true center of reality, and in ignoring this he misses the entire point. When Osteen says "Our original state is total freedom" he does his congregation a huge disservice in not only teaching contrary to the Bible, but in telling them that the normal way of life, without any call to seek God, to submit to Him, or to understand His Word, is goodness. Anyone with access to a television can tell you this is a lie, and surely those who tie themselves to the philosophy that God is naturally there to provide good times in this life will find nothing but disappointment.

So what does this mean--why pursue God? I mean, really now, if God's going to do what He's going to do, what do we get out of it? This is not some sort of Kantian "good is good because it's good" argument. On the contrary, there absolutely is reward, but it is not for earthly reward that we do this:

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."--Matthew 6:19-21

But what are we laying up in heaven? Some sort of eternal vault filled with bars of gold? Jesus brings up the matter of the heart, and we already know that the human heart is naturally a broken, sinful thing that seeks itself above all other things, but we also know that the heart is healed through God's work in us, over a lifetime of sanctification as God brings us to deeper and deeper realization of who He is and what His love truly means for us. What God is doing in us over our lives as the power of the Gospel transforms us, is showing us the true order of created things as He intended it to be--and it has nothing to do with being rich, or poor, or sick, or well. Those people who were closest to Jesus when He was on Earth died very horribly for His name and so that they might be examples for how much more valuable Christ is than anything else on Earth.

Mark 10:45 says:

"For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Not "The Son of Man came not to be poor but to give us freedom from poverty." Not "The Son of Man came not to be sick but to give us freedom from sickness." Not "The Son of Man came not to die but to give us freedom from physical death." Quite the opposite, in fact--in pursuing Christ the biggest realization and the most truly freeing one--true freedom, not this "freedom from lack of stuff" business--is laid out in Psalm 118:6

The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?

Not "Man will be unable to hurt me because God's on my side" but rather "Let man hurt me. Let him kill me. I have God, and he can't take that away." Or as Paul put it succinctly in Phillipians 1:21:

For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

And as Jesus says in Matthew 16:25:

"For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."

Over and over and over again, the Bible calls us to realize that its entire point, its purpose for existing, is to point us to God. What God brings into our lives is incidental and temporary, whether pain or pleasure, loneliness or closeness with another, wealth or poverty. Joel Osteen turns God into the means to get what we want to get. The Bible calls that idolatry, and calls us to repent of it; the Scriptures call us to the true joy that is closeness with Christ and freedom from our obsession with the temporal things of this world. I only pray that I take this as seriously in my heart in difficult times as I do in good times.

I invite sapphiredewdrop and anyone else to respond and point out where I've gone wrong, but at the same time I challenge you to base your critique in the Word, not in a personal problem with the way Mark Driscoll preaches or any other personal dislike. There's nothing wrong with saying "I don't think that he is a pastor that would bring me into a closer relationship with God," but if you can't refer to the Bible to defend Osteen without proof-texting or if you just can't refer to the Word to defend him, you might want to put a critical eye to yourself and where you are in relation to what the Bible actually says. I will not attack you or call you names, but I will a heresy a heresy. Beware what you believe, because it's your eternal soul at stake, and we should take Paul's charge in Phillipians 2:12 to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling" very seriously.