Rich and poor in the kin-dom of God

I was invited to speak to you today because of my work on prosperity preaching. I became interested in studying prosperity preaching because my brother’s negative experience with a prosperity-preaching church in Goldsboro, NC. Just to be clear, prosperity preachers are those who preach that God promises all believers that they can be rich according to North American capitalistic standards and that God promises all believers they can enjoy perfect or at least very good physical health.

Our text is Mark 12:38–44:

³⁸ As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, ³⁹ and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! ⁴⁰ They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

⁴¹ He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. ⁴² A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. ⁴³ Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. ⁴⁴ For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:38–44 NRSV)

Prosperity preachers love this text for several reasons. The main reason is that they believe that Jesus is presenting the widow in this text as a model of how followers of Christ should approach stewardship. We should all be willing to give our last dollar to support the work of the church. I strongly disagree that this is what Jesus is saying here. Instead, I believe Jesus is pointing to deeper structural and systemic issues at work inside of the religious community that coalesced to cause this widow’s poverty.

By studying this text we can learn much about the rich and poor in the first century that may also be helpful for the work in missions in the twenty-first century. But, before digging into the text, I want us to understand more about prosperity preaching, where it came from, and its core tenets.

Prosperity preaching’s core theology was developed by E. W. Kenyon. Kenyon was an evangelist and Bible teacher (1867–1948) with roots in Methodism. To develop his theology he drew upon the Holiness Movement, Pentecostalism, and New Thought metaphysics. New Thought metaphysical philosophy encourages followers to control their environments and experiences through their thinking. Kenyon taught his followers about positive confession, which is the belief that words shape our realities. Believers were taught to verbalize only positive affirmations. For example, to the standard question, “How are you?” members were encouraged to reply “Blessed” or “Blessed, and highly favored of the Lord.” Believers should never reply “Sick” or “Struggling.”

While Kenyon developed the theology, it was Kenneth Hagin who turned the theology into a movement. Known as the “father of the Word of Faith movement,” Kenneth E. Hagin Sr. founded the Oklahoma-based Rhema Bible Training Center in 1974. Rhema trains prosperity-preaching disciples using Kenyon’s theology. Hagin actually plagiarized Kenyon’s theology by claiming it as his own. When he was confronted by those who highlighted the startling similarities between his writings and Kenyon’s, Hagin claimed that any similarities were the work of the Holy Spirit.

Oral Roberts was licensed as a minister in the Holiness Pentecostal tradition. Though he was not formally affiliated with the Word of Faith movement, his seed–faith doctrine is a core tenant. Seed–faith doctrine is the principle of sowing and reaping. Roberts taught that when believers sow seed of any kind (talent, time, love, compassion, or money) they will receive those things in return. By giving the seed of money to God, believers are blessed by having money multiplied back to them. Roberts cited texts such as Luke 6:38 (“Give and it will be given to you . . .”) as evidence that the doctrine of seed–faith is biblical.

Let’s get to our text. Prosperity preachers claim that Jesus is offering this widow as a model of faithful stewardship because she believed that God would take her last two coins and multiply them back to her. They claim that she believed she would not have to worry about food, shelter, or clothing. God would ensure that she had enough even as she gave her last. According to this interpretation of the text, the widow’s mite would be transformed to the widow’s much. I do not believe that is what Jesus was saying here.

If we look more deeply into the text, we can discover what is really going on. Jesus was critiquing the actions of key members of the religious establishment—most especially the scribes. Scribes were experts in the law of Moses. They preserved and defended the law and lectured on the law in the temple. They served as judges of the law on the Sanhedrin (the Jewish city council). They sometimes managed assets of widows. While they were supposed to have the best interests of the widows at heart, some of them were stealing from the very widows they were charged to help. This is one of the many times in the text Jesus highlighted the corruption of leaders of faith. By highlighting the behavior of the scribes, Jesus is highlighting the insidiousness of injustice being perpetrated on the most vulnerable.

I also believe that Jesus was critiquing the systems and structures in place in the Greco-Roman world that made entire classes of people poor. Looking at Figure 1, 80% of the people provided money and labor for the lifestyles of the richest 15%. The temple crowd in the text likely included people on almost every level of Greco-Roman society—except for the Emperor.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The social structure of first-century Greco-Roman society

The Roman emperors had absolute power. The emperor controlled the senate and the tribunes, served as commander and chief of all the military, managed all finances, appointed prefects and procurators for the whole empire, and wielded the power of life and death over all. To make all of that bureaucracy run efficiently, they demanded that everyone living within the empire pay taxes. Emperors garnered enormous wealth during their lifetimes.

The Herods and Roman officials such as governors (e.g. Pontius Pilate) were appointed by the emperors. If they wanted to keep their jobs and power they had to do two things: declare their unconditional and unwavering loyalty to the emperor and show the emperor the money. To fulfill their duty to the emperors, the Herods used tax collectors to collect taxes throughout the empire. Tax collectors like Zacchaeus were known to take advantage of merchants and the common people by taking more taxes than they should to enrich themselves.

Some of the wealthy in the temple may have owned slaves. Slaves were trained to serve as physicians, architects, craftspeople, shopkeepers, cooks, barbers, artists, thespians, magicians, teachers, professional poets, and philosophers. A portion of all the money they made went to their owners.

Levites served as priests in the temple a few times a year. They were landowners. They used people of the land to plant crops and tend flocks. When the crops and animals were sold, they paid taxes to Caesar, paid the people of the land, and lived off of the rest. Everybody paid taxes. The poor got hit by taxation particularly hard. The Jewish poor also paid temple tax which was tithes to support the salaries of the priests. The expendables in society were people marginalized because of their uncleanliness, including the blind, lame, deaf, diseased, and sick. They were the only people in society who did not contribute to the economy of their day. ¹

We can see from Figure 1 that though the 80% worked hard, much of the money they made was taken away from them to support the lifestyles of the few. In the work of mission it is important to understand the systems and structures at work that keep people from experiencing the reign of God. Only when oppressive systems are identified and acknowledged can they be combatted. The system at work in the Greco-Roman world can be related to prosperity-preaching congregations, as can be seen in Figure 2. In Figure 2, the lifestyles of pastors and church staff are supported by the donations of church members (as is the case in most churches). However, in some prosperity preaching congregations, the economic gap between the pastor(s) and members is wide. Pastors become wealthy on the backs of members of their congregations who are sometimes economically poor.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Basic church economic structure . This chart shows that the lifestyle of the pastor and the ministries of local congregations are supported by the donations of the congregation. In prosperity preaching churches, some pastors take advantage of the people in the congregation by using money to support their own lavish lifestyles that should be used to support ministries and the well-being of the congregants and communities. This phenonmenon is not unlike the socio-economic dynamic of first century Palestine.

As is relatively well known, prosperity preaching has made its way into some of the world’s poorest communities and countries. In very poor communities and countries, the people of the congregation are like the widow. They are taught to give to the ministry out of their poverty. They often go without the necessities of life, out of a mistaken notion that God is testing their faith or that God requires extreme financial sacrifice in order to bless them financially. I am a critic of prosperity preaching because when the theology is shared with people in dire poverty, it can not only be dangerous but life-threatening. Jesus said, “I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). If and when the giving of the poor is used to support affluent lifestyles of the preacher and staff, it is wrong. In some prosperity-preaching congregations, the people of the church are funding private jets. The people of the church are funding mansions. The people of the church are funding expensive cars. The people’s money should not be used to support opulent lifestyles. The people’s money should be used to do the work of God in the world.

There are four other teachings of prosperity gospel that I highlight in the book (in Chapters 4, 8, 10, and 11 of Exploring Prosperity Preaching) that present as obstacles when you are trying to partner with churches in mission work:

In order to have any hope of convincing their people that God wants all believers to be rich according to North American capitalistic standards, prosperity preachers must deal with the concept of poverty in general and its relationship to Jesus in particular. They have no hope of spreading a gospel of prosperity if the central figure of the gospel, Jesus Christ, is believed to be poor. As a result, they teach that Jesus was not poor. They contend that Jesus had more than enough money to meet his needs and the needs of his disciples. In fact, he had so much money, he needed a treasurer (Judas Iscariot). This argument ignores the reality that Jesus owned no land and had no permanent housing as attested in scriptures such as Matthew 8:20: “Foxes have dens, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” Not only do they argue that Jesus was not poor, they also declare that the poor are cursed using texts such as Deuteronomy 28 in which people who are disobedient to God experience material deprivation. By arguing that the poor are cursed, prosperity preachers lay the blame for poverty squarely on the shoulders of the poor while ignoring root causes of poverty such as unjust public policies and detrimental corporate practices. Their claim that Jesus was not poor has no scriptural basis.

Prosperity preachers also teach that God always heals those who are sick. According to prosperity theology, people of faith who do not experience healing have only their lack of faith to blame. However, some prosperity preachers have been taken to task for their hypocrisy on the issue. Fred Price, pastor of Crenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles, always taught his followers that they do not need doctors and health-care professionals to experience healing. If they have enough faith, God will heal all of their sickness and disease. However, in May of 1990 when Betty Price, Fred Price’s wife, was diagnosed with lymphoma, she did more than pray and believe. She sought and received extensive medical treatment. Lymphoma is a tumor in the lymphatic cells of the immune system. Betty Price underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatments. In her book, Through the Fire and through the Water, Betty Price recounts how she stood on the word of God while undergoing medical treatment. The Prices received a lot of criticism from people in Word of Faith circles about undergoing medical treatment. In her book, Betty Price advises her readers to get help for their medical conditions as soon as they suspect they have a problem.

Some prosperity preachers teach their people that after they accept Christ as their personal savior they are no longer burdened by “natural heritage”—meaning they don’t have to worry about issues of race and everything that comes with it. Born again believers have a new spiritual heritage. Racism is no longer an issue because believers can create their own realities. This teaching is grounded in the early teachings of Kenyon that if you change your thinking, you can change your circumstances. This teaching ignores the realities of racism (personal, communal, and systemic) and all of its manifestations.

Prosperity preachers also teach that if all of the world converted to Christianity all of the social ills of the world would disappear. These preachers have obviously never worked in a church. Even after conversion, we sin and fall short of God’s will for our lives and communities. And just like with the issue of racism, prosperity teaching’s claims that spiritual conversion leads to moral perfection ignores human fallibility and willful participation and complicity of converted people with sinful practices and denigrating ideologies.

So as you encounter prosperity preaching during your mission work, how do you combat this dangerous theology? In Chapter 2 of Exploring Prosperity Preaching, I emphasize the importance of biblical interpretation. Prosperity preachers get their messages by proof-texting or interpreting texts out of context. They interpret verses of Scripture without bothering to understand what was happening all around them. When verses are interpreted out of context, they can be made to say anything. Scriptures were written by and for people in particular times and places. The more we know about what was happening with the authors of and people in the text and why the books were written, the better and more responsible we can be with our interpretations.

Some people have been spiritually damaged by prosperity teachings. Perhaps they were taught they did not have enough faith to be healed or have enough faith to become rich like prosperity preachers teach them. In cases like these, they need to reconstruct their faith. Reconstructing faith means rejecting prosperity theology’s core teaching in favor of more biblically sound ones.

Reconstructing faith means acknowledging that Jesus was poor according to the socioeconomic standards of his day. Though he was poor, he was not cursed. Nor are the poor of our day cursed. However, poverty, which denies access to basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and educational opportunities, is a curse that can be lifted when all people hold one another and systems accountable. While some poor may bear some responsibility for their economic situations, many of the poor in our world are victims of unjust and unaccountable systems.

Reconstructing faith means believing that God is able to heal all sickness and disease. However, God may not always heal. You can be a person of tremendous faith and not experience healing. In addition, reconstructing faith means acknowledging that God heals in many different ways. While God can and does heal miraculously, God also uses doctors and therapists to facilitate healing. We must also recognize that just as sickness and disease are not always the result of sin, long-term illness, disability, or even death are not always evidence of lack of faith.

Reconstructing faith means believing that, in a perfect world, natural heritage would not matter. All people are created and loved equally by God. However, in order to combat the realities of racism and other forms of injustice, we must first acknowledge their existence and our complicity and participation in them on multiple levels. We must also remind ourselves that the God we serve is a God of justice. As we live our lives, we should do more than seek fulfillment for ourselves. We should love our neighbors by working for their holistic well-being as well as our own.

Like the widow in the biblical text, poor people inside and outside of churches can be taken advantage of by people in power for their own financial gain. As you engage in mission work all around the world, watch out for systems and structures put in place that use the most vulnerable to benefit the most powerful. Once you see them, you must work with the people to confront and dismantle those systems wherever they are found.