Blessed is the Blogger

Not terribly far from me here in Redondo Beach, in the city of Garden Grove, is the Crystal Cathedral. It was built by a man named Robert Schuller. Perhaps you’ve seen him on television. I suspect you probably surfed the channels right past him. I know I always do. The Crystal Cathedral is a huge structure made of glass. It stands as a monument to prosperity theology. It was built by the donations of thousands upon thousands of the faithful who sent in whatever they could afford, and even what they could not afford, in the hopes that if they did, God would reward them for their faith with wealth and perpetual happiness.

The Rev. Schuller wants you to know that God wants you to be rich, rich and happy. Just believe in the power of prayer and reap the rewards of working in the vineyards of the Lord. And if you do not receive these riches, it is because your faith is not strong enough. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in the power of faith. The Rev. Schuller is not alone in this theology. He is joined by Kenneth Copeland, the late Jim Baker, the late Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, and the late legendary Norman Vincent Peale. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking. Of course, the Crystal Cathedral isn’t doing so well in this economy, so maybe there is a flaw in their thinking.

They are all right, of course. You can achieve anything if you have faith, no matter where you place your faith. You can place your faith in money, or in yourself, or in God, and you can accomplish great things. You can become rich and powerful. You can achieve fame– if you have enough faith. But the question is, will any of that make you happier? All of these men purport to be Christians. They claim to be followers of Jesus the Christ. Maybe we should take a look at what this Jesus has to say on the subject.

We need look no further than the famous Beatitudes (Bee-AT-uh-tudes). You all know them, even if you didn’t know that’s what they’re called. They appear in both the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew has Jesus saying them to open his famous “Sermon on the Mount”. Luke has Jesus opening his “Sermon on the Plain” with them. If you are a fundamentalist evangelical believer, then you probably believe that those were two separate events. But then, if you are a fundamentalist evangelical believer, you’re probably not reading this, unless you stumbled upon it by accident and if you did, I warn you now, you’re not gonna like what you’re about to read.

Most scholars believe that both Matthew and Luke are relating the same event. A careful read of both shows that both authors say Jesus went up to a high place. Luke mentions that he is standing on a flat place. The major problem is that the area in which Jesus taught is not particularly mountainous. I would suggest that both authors used the sermon as a literary device in order to put down on paper the teachings of Jesus, and that the things he said were taken from many, many occasions and all put into one definitive “sermon”. Both authors probably borrowed heavily from the famous missing Q document. It doesn’t really matter. As I always say, The Bible isn’t about facts, it’s about truth.

Since I said we would be working through the Gospel of Luke this year (except for the odd Sunday), we will use the text from Luke. Jesus has just chosen his disciples and called them to be “fishers of men” (last week), and now he’s gone to teach in the countryside. He has performed some healings, and then taken his students off to teach them. Although the text says he was standing, and most movies and paintings depict him standing, he was most likely sitting, I believe. Jewish teachers traditionally sat while delivering lessons.
Moreover, the text also says that he lifted his eyes towards his disciples, so unless Jesus was really short, I’m betting he was sitting down. Anyway, here is what he said:

Blessed are the poor, for the kingdom of God is yours.

Blessed are the hungry, for you will be satisfied.

Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Your reward will be great in heaven. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way.

I know, I know, you’ve heard these a million times. Luke has four of them. Matthew has eight. Now you have to see these words in the context of the time and culture. Within Jewish culture, it was the popular belief that God rewarded the righteous with wealth and prosperity, respect and admiration, much as our prosperity theologians mentioned above. Now here stands Jesus, and he tells them just the opposite. The people who are truly blessed are the ones with nothing. If you recall from a couple of weeks ago, his very first message, in the synagogue right before they tried to whack him, was that he had good news for the poor.
If we look at the original Greek in which Luke was written, the message is a little different to our traditional understanding.

The word traditionally translated as “blessed” is literally translated as “happy”, or “content”. The word we translate as kingdom can also mean royal power. So you may just as well say, “Happy are the poor, for they shall have the power of God.” There is a difference between being blessed (in our way of thinking) and in being content. What Jesus is trying to say here is that wealth will not give you contentment. In the real scheme of things, it is the poor who are happier.

Anyone who has lived in a third world country like México, or Nigeria, can tell you that those people have less than nothing, and yet they are happy. The more you own, the more what you own, owns you. The poor, the hungry, the grieving, those oppressed, are all blessed. Moreover, the message isn’t that they WILL be happy. The verb is present tense. The kingdom of God, the power of God belongs to the poor NOW. And the word poor isn’t just those people trying to make ends meet. The word poor here means those with NOTHING. Now, where does this leave those prosperity preachers? I thought they said God rewarded your faith with riches. Well, not according to Jesus.

Matthew tries to soften this message. He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” He says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.” You can take his message in many ways. Matthew says it’s okay to acquire wealth. Luke doesn’t. Luke puts it right out there. Luke’s poor are really, really poor, and not just in spirit. And if you had any doubts about what Luke is saying, he puts in the three “woes”, as well:

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your comfort.

But woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.

There is no doubt as to what Luke claims the teaching is. Now, if we look at these in light of Taoist thought which claims that all things are in a state of change, you can take this to mean that you can take heart if you are poor for prosperity is coming. And you shouldn’t be too cocky if you’re rich, because you will fall on hard times eventually. Such is the way of the universe, its yin and yang. So do not despair in your hardships and do not exult in your prosperity. Both are temporary. Poverty is not a punishment sent by God, and wealth is not a reward.

There is a story about a preacher and a taxi driver who both die on the same day and both approach the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter looks in his Book of Life and finds the Taxi Driver’s name and welcomes him into heaven with beautiful robes and a lovely mansion. Peter also finds the preacher’s name in the book, but welcomes him in with a cheap, tattered robe and a rusty halo. The preacher demands to know why the taxi driver received such better treatment. And Peter answers him, “Reverend, when you preached, people slept. But when he drove, people prayed.” Poor people spend a lot more time praying than rich people. The poor have to depend on God. The wealthy depend upon themselves.

So much for the message of Prosperity Theology. Yes, you can use the power of faith to get rich and famous. But that doesn’t make you any closer to God, or whatever you want to call that power. What these men are teaching may work, but it isn’t the teaching of Jesus. There was a reason Jesus opens his sermon with these sayings. It is for shock value. He has just turned Jewish culture on its ear. Once he said this, people were going to listen. It was in direct opposition to everything the people believed. And it’s still in direct opposition to what most of the people in our culture believe today, whether Christian, Jew, Buddhist, or whatever. And these were just the first of the things Jesus would say that would shake up the status quo. Jesus was a revolutionary, man. We will continue through this Sermon on the Plain for the next week or so. The core message of his words may just surprise you. In the meantime, it would be nice if some of these born again evangelical fundamentalists took what Jesus said as literally as they do the story of Noah and the Ark.