The late Eugene Peterson, who left us many great books that included his colorful translation of the Bible (The Message)
So this morning I was reading the book of Philippians, always one of my favorite epistles, in The Message — the Bible translation that the late, great Eugene Peterson gave us.
Peterson went all in with colorful language that makes for easy, breezy Bible reading and study — language so colorful that I often catch myself grinning as I read.
Take, for example, these verses from Philippians 3, which put me in mind of today’s preachers and TV evangelists who fly to and from their fine mansions in their fine private jets with their bellies full of fine food and drink.
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7-19 Stick with me, friends. Keep track of those you see running this same course, headed for this same goal. There are many out there taking other paths, choosing other goals, and trying to get you to go along with them.
I’ve warned you of them many times; sadly, I’m having to do it again.
All they want is easy street. They hate Christ’s Cross.
But easy street is a dead-end street. Those who live there make their bellies their gods; belches are their praise; all they can think of is their appetites.
20-21 But there’s far more to life for us. We’re citizens of high heaven! We’re waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthy bodies into glorious bodies like his own. He’ll make us beautiful and whole with the same powerful skill by which he is putting everything as it should be, under and around him.
Peterson was no fan at all of any megachurches, and a blistering, plainspoken critic of the rich preachers who live on easy street while pushing the “prosperity gospel.”
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“Well, I think it’s a lie,” he said in an interview of the prosperity gospel. “I think it’s just a downright rotten lie. It’s nowhere in Christian tradition, so how does this get going in our culture?
“It’s greed is what it is. It’s greed given a spiritual name: God will bless you. I want to ask these prosperity gospel people, do your people ever die? Do the people in your church ever die? What do you do when they die? Where’s the prosperity in that? I don’t have much patience with them, to tell you the truth, because I think they’re defrauding people.”
Abernathy’s program ran from 1997-2017 and I think I speak for a lot of Christians who miss it — and Pastor Peterson — a lot.
Ironic, but I grew up in a faith heritage more generally known for what we were against than what we stood for. (That part is a bit off topic, but bear with me…) People “of the book” we did attend very carefully to what is written, and as PART of that, we too were sometimes critical of the TV preachers as well. At least by the time I came along, and I remember so well that article The Evangelical Gigolo in The Wittenberg Door. I have a copy of it somewhere still.
Oh, man.
I was multitasking and lost over half my comment when I published.
Probably should quit while I am ahead.
Anyway, I wanted to say that over time our bunch has become complacent with our greed, I think. We are ever so subtly, and probably not really cognizant of it yet, moving along a spectrum toward the Health and Wealth Gospel club.
Sad.
Thanx for holding out.
X
PS…
Seems like you might be a good person to ask…
Years ago (I suspect very likely via Focus on the Family with J. Dobson, but that is a loose guess), I heard a report from either a survey or maybe from some missionaries overseas that the number one thing foreigners find wrong with the American Church or American Christians is… drum roll please… GREED.
That is what the outside world (the foreigner/Christians) thought of us.
I don’t remember where I heard that now or even how accurate the part I do remember really is. But it seems to me you MIGHT know that source and that subject matter.
Worth asking, anyway…
Unknown. But greedy prosperity gospel peddlers and their missioners do make a lot of money in the outside world. Billy Graham’s son with his much ballyhooed Samaritan’s Purse and his worldwide missionaries continues to make millions off African “blood diamonds.” Pat Robertson owns whole gold mines.
We’re ALL sinners and greed gets to us all in ways large and small, I suppose.