Hank Hanegraaff of CRI has
published a book, “The OSTEENification of American Christianity” in which he calls Joel Osteen the “provocateur of a
seductive brand of Christianity that reduces God to a means to our ends… a
fast-food Christianity that’s long on looks but dreadfully short on substance.”
“Why give so much attention to Joel Osteen; isn’t
he harmless?” you say. Think about this. Joel Osteen is THE public face of evangelical
Christianity. Not only the leader of America’s largest church, he is the most listened to preacher on the planet. His influence is almost unparalleled.
Joel's message is not pure Gospel, but a politically correct, inclusive, positive-thinking philosophical mix which non-Christians, even Buddhists and Hindus, find appealing. How unlike the exacting call of Jesus, who thinned out the crowds with His “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23). Jesus' call to self-denial has been Osteenified into believe in yourself.
I was musing about the sad state of affairs in the U.S. until I realized that whoever wins will fit, albeit unknowingly, God’s divine plan, even though Obama is a liberal Christian, at best, and Romney is a Mormon who believes he will some day be a god (Gen 3:5). But whoever our next president is, he could preside over an America that will no longer enjoy superpower status.
In 1998, when America was enjoying unprecedented prosperity, the stock market was at an all-time high, and unemployment was at a twenty-eight year low, David Wilkerson warned, “America stands at the brink of an economic and social collapse. The American dream is going to turn into the American nightmare. It will occur suddenly—without warning—and no one will be able to explain how or why it happened. God is about to crush this abominable American mindset.”
Was David Wilkerson right? Through the prophet Jeremiah, God says I pluck up and pull down nations to destroy them if they do not repent (18:7-8). Fourteen years ago, David Wilkerson said it would soon be “America’s Last Call” [the title of his book]. Does it matter who our next president is? Since the next 4 years could redefine the nation as we know it, I think it matters a lot!
A few weeks ago on CNN, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman was interviewed about his new book, “That Used to Be Us,” regarding the economy's ruinous effect on the American dream. One ‘sound bite’ quote in particular caught my attention: “We can either have a hard decade or a bad century.” Of course he is referring to the hard choices we must make now for the sake of our grandchildren’s future. The statement not only captures the difficult dilemma of our generation, but states a principle that is pregnant with deeper meaning to those who have ears to hear it!
Perhaps unknowingly, Friedman has revealed a spiritual principle: short-term losses are necessary for long-term gains. In God’s economy, “time” is the short and “eternity” is long. Jesus stated it clearly: if you try to keep your life now, you will lose it in the future (no treasures in heaven) (Matthew 16:25; 6:20). And not only that, but our gain is also a present reality. To the degree we suffer the loss of all things now, we will gain Christ both now and in eternity (Phil 3:8), in the end, receiving “a grand entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:11).
Without any fanfare, our cell phones had a birthday last week: the 25th anniversary of the first commercial cell phone call. Of course, since then, our cell phones have grown up. And they’ve gotten smarter.
In the last decade, our Smart Phones have brought us from connectivity to hyper-connectivity. And 24/7 instant connection has turned some of us into addicts. You can tell if someone is a connectivity addict by how often he checks his phone for messages! (The average user sends 42 'texts' a day!) So, what’s next?
Well, if I could predict that, I’d be a rich man. But I will offer you a rich spiritual analogy: we have 24-7 connectivity with God—hyper-connectivity. (And by the way, there are no “bad” connections to the Throne of Grace!) But like people who underuse their smart phones, some Christians don’t fully appreciate their 24/7 access to God. In the Old Covenant, people couldn’t imagine the privilege of connectivity we have. As New Covenant people, we have a hyper-connectivity smart phone users only dream of!
A. W. Tozer said “every believer can be filled with the Holy Spirit as much as he wants.” Even so, every believer is as connected to God a he wants to be!
Listen to the words of A. W. Tozer, spoken over 50 years ago:
The new cross says “come and get.” And a selfish human … will use the Cross for his own benefits, whereas the old rugged Cross says, “Come and give.” … God has intended that this Christian life shall be based on this one principle: The new life is lived not unto self, but unto God. Whereas the old Cross was meant by God to be the symbol of death and detachment from the old Adam life, this new substitute cross does not intend to slay the sinner but just redirect him. It gears him to a cleaner, jollier way of living and saves his self-center and ambition. To the self-assertive it says: “Come and assert yourself in the Lord.” To the religious egotist, it says: “Come and do your boasting in the Lord.” To the thrill seeker it says: “Come and enjoy the thrill of Christian fellowship.” The modern message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue, thereby catering to human taste and reasoning.
[The new cross] lets Adam live without interference. His life motivation is unchanged; he still lives for his own pleasure, only now he takes delight in singing choruses and watching religious movies instead of singing bawdy songs and drinking hard liquor. The accent is still on enjoyment, though the fun is now on a higher [moral] plane.
Beware of Cross-less Teaching
Now, because we are celebrating Easter weekend, I must comment here about a current trend in the Evangelical church: a popularized version of Christian teaching that offers abundant life without the cross. This teaching says: “Believe in yourself! Follow your dreams and fulfill your destiny.” We must be leery of any teaching that is not founded on this principle: the cross is God’s means for fulfillment. This “new” gospel allows one to find fulfillment in one’s desires, never questioning one’s motive. This “new” teaching (it’s not really new; it began in the Garden of Eden!) says you can be “like” God and do anything. Beware of such cross-less teaching! The Bible says in the latter days people will be “lovers of self.”
Unless believers have been trained by the Word of God, they will not be able to discern the will of God. And it is so easy for an immature or ignorant believer to presume that God’s promises are tailor-made to give him everything he desires. Equating these dreams with the “promises” of God, without knowing God, without knowing His Word, without walking with Him is not faith; it is presumption. God’s “rewards” are for those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6) and He will only “fulfill the desires” of those who fear Him (Psalm 145:19), that is, followers of Christ that have no will of their own, who only want to please Him.
In my years of counseling and pastoring, I have known too many people who followed their dreams right into a ditch of destruction—singles who convince themselves premarital sex is OK because found the person of their dreams; women who have divorced their husbands because they (their husbands) were not godly enough. One woman I knew believed that God was calling her to go to seminary and become a preacher. Her husband objected, so she divorced him. I don’t know how many times single people have come to me and said God told them to marry a certain person that they didn’t even know. Thankfully, it never happened. Too many people are thinking they hear God when they are really just hearing their strong desires.
Rather than encouraging people to follow their dreams, we need to help people follow Jesus. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God..."
