The "Cotton Candy Gospel" of Joel Osteen

Recently, I saw a re-airing of an episode of 60 Minutes in which they did a segment on Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen is the lead pastor of the largest church in America, Lakewood Church, located in Houston. They meet each Sunday in a 15,000 seat sports arena (which took $100 million to renovate when it was given to the church).

You can watch the segment and read the whole interview here on CBS’s website.

What made me enjoy this segment most was the words of Rev. Michael Horton, a professor of theology at Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California. He has this to say about Joel Osteen’s message:

I think it’s a cotton candy gospel. His core message is: God is nice, you’re nice, be nice. If it were a form of music, I think it would be easy listening. He uses the Bible like a fortune cookie. ‘This is what’s gonna happen for you.’ ‘There’s gonna be a windfall in your life tomorrow.’ The Bible’s not meant to be read that way… It is certainly heresy, I believe, to say that God is our resource for getting our best life now. Well, it makes religion about us instead of about God.

Thank you, Rev. Horton!

Even the interviewer, Bryan Pitts, says this of Osteen:

Osteen preaches his own version of what is known as the “prosperity gospel” — that God is a loving, forgiving God who will reward believers with health, wealth and happiness. It’s the centerpiece of every sermon.

Read this excerpt from the interview:

But the real money for Osteen comes from his book sales, which are re-packaged versions of his sermons. His latest book, “Become A Better You,” for which he reportedly got a $13 million advance, debuted in October at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and has stayed on the list ever since. The book lays out seven principles he believes will improve our lives.

“To become a better you, you must be positive towards yourself, develop better relationships, embrace the place where you are. Not one mention of God in that. Not one mention of Jesus Christ in that,” Pitts remarks.

“That’s just my message. There is scripture in there that backs it all up. But I feel like, Byron, I’m called to help people…how do we walk out the Christian life? How do we live it? And these are principles that can help you. I mean, there’s a lot better people qualified to say, ‘Here’s a book that going to explain the scriptures to you.’ I don’t think that’s my gifting,” Osteen says.

What I really want to understand is if Osteen believes he is NOT gifted to explain the scriptures to people, then why the heck is he pastoring thousands of people and taking on the responsibility of teaching all of them each week from the living Word?!?! The pastor who preaches regularly is responsible to be the one person in that community of people who is most trained in understanding the Scriptures as deeply as possible, so as to be able to correctly explain them for the chance that those listening would take those Scriptures to heart and live them out. The pastor is to be the local theologian for those people. The pastor is to give his life and time to doing his best to understand the Scriptures and correctly lead people to those truths in order to see life transformation. If he KNOWS he is not gifted and trained in doing that, then stop! By saying he knows he’s not gifted in that, Osteen has completely negated his own authority to use Scripture for teaching. So he might as well just become some life coach or Dr. Phil. The only thing that would change about his message is he would stop twisting the few verses of Scripture that he’s ever read and used.

I’m not claiming that anyone else has the understanding of Scripture down. If that was so, how do we explain the two thousand years of conflicting ideas about interpretational issues? I certainly don’t believe that I have it down. Far from it, in fact. I am a student of the Scriptures and I will die a student as well. However, I also know that I am a servant of the Scriptures. Osteen treats the Scripture as if it is there to serve him in supporting his self-help campaign. He treats it as if it, along with God himself, are here to serve us. He would be better suited to be a writer for a fortune cookie company than take on teaching the Scriptures.

I know that all my understandings of God and the Scriptures are not completely right. There are other traditions of theology and beliefs within Christianity that have valid beliefs and understandable interpretations of Scripture to lead them there. I can accept that, loving them as brothers and sisters under the same Jesus. However, there come some who do completely pervert the Gospel message of servanthood and humility and make it about gaining wealth and prosperity. That sort of obvious twisting of the Gospel can not be validated as just another sect of Christian interpretation. That is a complete disregard for who Jesus was, what Jesus did in GIVING all of himself for humanity, and what Jesus taught us to do (follow him and his example of servanthood). Listen to Jesus’ teaching to his disciples in Mark 8:34-36, right after Jesus taught that he must suffer and die soon.

And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (ESV)

This doesn’t sound like the Jesus of Osteen’s gospel. This is the Jesus who said, “I must give everything I have for those who don’t deserve it because I love them. Now, if you want to follow me, you must live like me.” We have to understand that when Jesus asked them to “follow me,” that was a loaded statement! That wasn’t simply, “Walk behind me.” It wasn’t even just, “Walk with me and worship me.” It was, “I’m going to give all of me for you. Go and do likewise.” Paul understood this as well. Listen to these words from Philippians 2:3-8.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross! (NIV)

That is the Gospel message. God who came down from all glory and honor to give it all away in a horrible, human death for the sake of all humanity. God who asks those who follow Him to follow His example of sacrifice and servanthood. That is the beautiful yet arduous Gospel.

~ by Cody Thomas on 29 December 2007.