{"id":2305,"date":"2007-11-16T11:51:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-16T11:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=2305"},"modified":"2007-11-16T11:51:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-16T11:51:00","slug":"your-best-life-now-joel-osteen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=2305","title":{"rendered":"Your best life now (Joel Osteen)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have to confess that I picked up this book with a distinct agenda. I saw Joel Osteen as preaching \u201cthe prosperity gospel\u201d \u2013 largely influenced by Ben Witherington<\/a> \u2013 and I wanted to have a good example to use in one of my imminent Learning Church sessions. However, I liked the book much more than I was expecting to.<\/p>\n

I should say right up front that there isn\u2019t a great deal of explicit Christianity in the book. There\u2019s hardly a mention of Jesus at all, certainly no discussion of the great doctrines of the faith. It\u2019s the sort of book I might give to a seeker right at the very beginning of the journey. For what Osteen is arguing for has a fair bit of merit to it as one component of the faith<\/span>. It would need to be placed alongside a lot of other material, mostly that to do with sin, and that to do with suffering, but then as that sort of material is probably over-represented in Christian literature \u2013 especially in some circles \u2013 Osteen is performing a useful corrective service. It is certainly true to say that Scripture teaches some form of \u201cprosperity gospel\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s the \u2018plain meaning\u2019 of Deuteronomy 28-30 for example, and much better supported in the Scripture as a whole than (to take a random example \ud83d\ude09 the doctrine of penal substitution. As I understand it he wouldn\u2019t describe himself as a theologian, nor would he say he was preaching the whole message of the gospel in this sort of book \u2013 it\u2019s just that this is the message he has been given to share. Fair enough.<\/p>\n

The problem comes \u2013 and this is what one Learning Church session will focus on \u2013 when we go through the sort of crisis that is now just beginning. I wonder if the 1930\u2019s style depression that\u2019s about to hit the United States will lead to people becoming angry with him. If they did it would be a little unfair, though I would ask the question \u2013 does a pastor have the responsibility to preach the whole gospel? I would say yes, but I don\u2019t know enough about the balance of teaching at Lakewood to comment.<\/p>\n

I personally have taken a lot of value from the book. It gave me encouragement when I needed some, in some very specific areas. The story of the traffic warden sharing his enthusiasm with the queuing drivers will stay with me. And there’s a quote from him coming up…<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have to confess that I picked up this book with a distinct agenda. I saw Joel Osteen as preaching \u201cthe prosperity gospel\u201d \u2013 largely influenced by Ben Witherington \u2013 and I wanted to have a good example to use … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-evangelicalism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-Bb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2305\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}