The Earthly Father Paradigm – A God fashioned In Our Own Image

I was sitting in my living room visiting with a friend who is a member of the City Church when we got to talking about prosperity and healing in the Bible.  I would bring up scripture showing a biblical view of money and the sovereignty of God in healing, but the response I got was that God is a good God and wants to take care of us like an earthly father takes care of his children.  I realized this is the theology of Pastor Wendell, Pastor Judah and the City Church.  I coined this theology the “Earthly Father Paradigm”.  They read the Bible and view God with their “Earthly Father Paradigm” glasses on.

During pastor Wendell’s sermons he often says things like “what earthly father would put sickness on his children to teach them a lesson” or “what earthly father wouldn’t buy good gifts for their children”.  He says this in support of their view that God wants to please us.

I have a few questions for the prosperity idea of the “Earthly Father Paradigm”…what earthly father would allow:

• Satan to take away all of Jobs things, put boils on him, kill his children and then torment him with some lippy friends?
• What earthly father would send snakes to bite and kill his children who disobey in the desert, or open the earth to swallow them up?
• What earthly father would tell the neighbor boy to come beat up his kid, destroy all his toys and take him captive for a while to learn a lesson (Israel in Babylon)?
• What earthly father would kill 2 of his children for lying to him about money?
• What earthly father would curse his children to die for only disobeying once (garden of eden)?
• What earthly father would send his own son to die and take unimaginable wrath for deserved criminals (Jesus Christ)?
• What earthly father would stand by and watch 11 of his son’s 12 friends get killed for being a friend of his son?

God did all these things.  God’s goal in our life is not to please us and make us healthy and rich, His purpose in our life is to shape and mold us in the image of His Son and to present to His Son a spotless bride.  The “Earthly Father Paradigm” shapes and molds God in the image of man and displays a god who is serving mankind…not vice-versa.

As even earthly parents send their kids to chicken-pox parties so their kids will get sick, I believe God allows sickness, poverty and other bad things in our lives to build up our immunization against sin and our flesh.  God is not sadistic, but all things work for good for those who love God and are called according to His purposes.  The more trouble and sin there is in this would, the more we should have our eyes on eternity and the return of Christ.  Unfortunately, the “Earthly Father Paradigm” puts our eyes on ourselves and this life.  How can I get blesses, how can I get healed, how can I…

I think the “Earthly Father Paradigm” is a self-serving representation of what some wish God would be for them.  God has our eternal best interest in mind, not necessarily our temporal best interest.

I am thankful to God for taking me out of the atmosphere of scurrying around looking to “position myself for blessing”  or looking for “the next breakthrough” and rummaging through the bible looking for promises I can lay hold of.  I can finally rest in the salvation given to me freely by God through Jesus Christ.  The only promise I really care about, I pray God help me to fix my gaze to heaven and not earth.

It causes me to wonder what ways I have tried to mold God in my own image, or to my own liking…I pray for humility to recognize and love God as He has revealed Himself, not how I want Him to be.

Tags: City Church, Earthly Father, God, Jesus Christ, Sickness, Wendell Smith

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The Prosperity Gospel – Defined by Jesus!

I have heard several people recently saying “God delights in the prosperity of His people”, so I decided to outline how Jesus defined prosperity.  It is way to easy to define prosperity as our culture likes to define it, and we ignore the clear teachings of Jesus.

Here is how Jesus prospers us:

Blessed are you poor,For yours is the kingdom of God. – Luke 6:20

Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me. – Luke 18:22

I think these two scriptures teach us that true riches are not as the modern day prosperity gospel defines “blessing”, but on the contrary Jesus says blessed are the poor. The Kingdom of God is the only true prosperity we need.

In Revelation, Jesus addressed a poor and a rich church, and took the opportunity to define what is poor and what is rich. He calls the rich church poor, and the poor church rich. Why did he do that? I think it is because He has a spiritual view of prosperity, not a physical one.

And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive; I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) – Revelation 2:8

Contrast that with what Jesus told the “prosperous” church.

Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; – Revelation 3:17-18

Notice how Jesus didn’t tell the poor church they need to seek the fullness and abundance of God. The reason is because they already had it without mammon. The modern day prosperity gospel is not of God…not preached by Jesus Christ.

Once again, Jesus turns our “wisdom” on its head. He said those who we consider rich (even though they are in church) are poor, and those who we consider poor are rich.

If you follow the prosperity gospel, you may need to take heed from the Apostles who warned of such error:

They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children. They have forsaken the right way and gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; 2 Peter 2:14-15

Woe to them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, have run greedily in the error of Balaam for profit, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. Jude 1:11

They warn of the error of Balaam, who was a prophet of the living God, but was enticed away by profit. If you look at the story of Balaam, he never denied God and only said what God told him to say (he never cursed Israel), but he obviously wasn’t doing what was right in the eyes of God.

I believe Peter and Jude are talking about church leaders who really desire position, money, power, and notoriety. In their desire to gain followers they are willing to compromise the message of Christ to “tickle ears”. One of the means of “tickling ears” used today is by telling people God wants to help them to prosper financially. It is a very enticing message that I fell into for a few years.

Tags: False Gospel, Jesus Christ, Prosperity Gospel

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