Right there in our Lord's prayer is some financial advice:
> And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
In the original Greek of Matthew's prayer, the word is "ophelilema", as in financial debt. There are other words for more metaphorical debts like when breaking rules, which were notably not used.
Akhshually Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic. So even if Matthew wrote his Gospel in Greek it may not necessarily be the most accurate translation of what Jesus actually said. /end pedantry
In any case, the "gospel of prosperity" types in Christianity are second only to the "secretly a sex pest" types in regards to how obnoxious they are and how much of a black eye they give to Christianity's reputation.
> Akhshually Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic.
Actually, like most people in the world, and especially people in "border lands", if he existed, he probably will have been multilingual. Aramaic for sure, but he might also have spoken some Hebrew, Greek and maybe even Latin.
Sure. But if you claim to follow the man, it means following the book, and the book is - once again - very clear on certain topics, regardless of who put the words down.
There’s a very big difference between being a Christian and preaching to the world about it constantly. Out of the 2.4 billion only a fraction insist on letting you know it in everything they do.
Well it depends on whether you consider everyone that claims to be or is assumed to be by default, a Christian, and what exactly you mean by “constantly.”
A true Christian will by definition be preaching the gospel to the lost and dying world at every opportunity
Usually people use words so that other people will understand them. If your internal definition doesn't match nearly anyone else's, maybe you're using the word wrong.
Isn't that all language is? An appeal to what others think you mean? This ofc is why people like to push definitions in different directions. I think you're saying, "Christian should mean XYZ," while I'm pointing out most people don't hold your meaning. If you want everyone to adopt your definition, you need to give a compelling reason. However, I've heard so many other people who call themselves Christian claim that all the other so-called Christians are not really Christian, that I don't really trust any particular Christian's definition. It's easier to just say, "Christian means someone who claims to be Christian".
That's because the "prosperity gospel" faction (also called "pray and display" and "gab and grab") is so very open about money and the good life, it's in fact their core part of religious practice.
When a regular person says "heaven has blessed me with this and that", that's making a statement of fact, that person says he has this and that and he credits the deity, nothing more. But when a prosperity gospel guy says such, that person is engaging in theurgy. He believes that the deity blessed him in such and such a manner and by publicising the fact the deity must necessarily bless him with much much more money.
Positive thinking and "law of attraction" is less overtly Christian but made from the same cloth and just as detestable.
If you find that theology distasteful, childish or blasphemous you are not alone.
Probably because if you're actually into Jesus, as in, what is taught by him in the Bible and not the bastardized evangelical prosperity gospel white Jesus that Americans are into, you wouldn't really seek out money apart from having enough to live on.
Also worth noting that being active in an organization like a church provides one with a sizable community of people, many of whom are probably at least doing okay, and depending which church, can be quite wealthy and they will automatically find you more trustworthy because you are in "their group," so fraud is baseline easier to execute. And, in the odd event you are caught out, a well performed "reformation" will have you as a in-good-standing member of that community again, and probably benefiting from the charity of it's members in short order.
This is a big part of why MLM/pyramid schemes, the Mormons, and the state of Utah are so deeply intertwined.
And I mean, let's not leave out the obvious one: people big on magical thinking aren't generally the best at critical thinking.
This is not to say that religious people are the only ones who can be scammed, that's of course nonsense. But people who believe things like "god has a plan" and indulge in the just world fallacy freely and "everything happens for a reason" are on balance just plain easier to manipulate, and even if as that one quoted pastor says, that Hwang is a true believer, well that could just mean he believes his schemes are god's plan, that his actions are god's creation, that what he has done is what he was put on this earth to do, and all that. He could be a swindling liar or a true believer, it doesn't matter. How many people have done diabolical things in our history believing whatever deity they believe in had created them to do it? It's just motivated reasoning. You believe in a just and mighty god, and you have ideas for how to do anything, steal from people, amass wealth, harm people, whatever, and it just so happens that you find all the passages from your god that cosign what it is you already wanted to do? No kiddin, weird how that always works out.
i prefer calling up clergy and asking them when i have questions of this sort. I'm non-religious but in order to talk about it respectfully i sometimes have questions.
(disclaimer: I'm an atheist American who was raised sort of "Christian by default" but whose immediate family virtually never attended church and never identified with any particular denomination)
I'd guess at some social function of the equalizing narrative of universal/original sin and Jesus being the scapegoat for it. Being highly reductive about it, I can imagine the prosocial lens and the antisocial one.
Through the prosocial lens, it says that we must all be humble regardless of our propriety or material accomplishments, because even the greatest and purest of us are not above sin. We must respect the struggle of our fellow fallen man against the unrelenting pull of temptation to commit transgressions, and remind ourselves to demonstrate Christlike mercy when they fail.
Through the antisocial lens, it says that you might as well lie/cheat/plunder/exploit/murder and beg for forgiveness if you're caught, because you're considered tainted in either case. In an odd way, the stereotypical evangelical redemption/rebirth narrative arguably values greater sins more than lesser ones: "if the blood of the Lamb can cleanse this sin from me, then your salvation is certain".
