Call it divine provision. My mother's been recently reading a book by a fellow named Joel Osteen. Mr. Osteen purports to be a preacher of some doctrine of favor, one that holds that the Almighty wants to bestow favor upon Christians and so forth, such that simply proclaiming one's right to (or claim upon) such favor will grease the skids for whatever it is you're after.
This is probably a monstrous oversimplification of the Osteen Doctrine, but I'm not writing to kick the man. Rather, I am writing to point out something that more or less wandered onto the radar scope last night, and I thought it interesting that, within a week of my dismissal of this man, the blog of a Methodist was addressing him.
Anyways, the discussion of Mr. Osteen is put together by a fellow named John at Locusts and Honey, and you can read the whole thing here. I recommend that you do.
John's article sent me off to a lot of other sites (cursed trait of the blog world!) where I read various articles by other authors. I can say this: A lot of high-grade neurons were burnt discussing Mr. Osteen. This is a good thing, because I don't have the theological background to do much more than have my suspicions about him.
In my case, it seems that Mr. Osteen is simply the latest individual/movement to tall within my perpetual complaint of effectiveness versus 'bad idea'. Me, I'm a country Christian with a simple faith, but I've got a hankering for a fancy church and an ornate service. I don't do the whole charismatic worship thing, and contemporary services leave me cold. I've grumbled and griped for years over the increasing tendency of my weekly service to resemble something seen on television, but there's a catch: I am not inherently hostile to other means of worship and evangelism, so long as they are successful. In this instance, success is defined as success in the Christian mission, i.e. the winning of souls to the cause of Christ.
In this instance, I don't know if Mr. Osteen is turning a profit in that regard, which is the only thing I really care about. From all appearances, he is turning a personal financial profit, but the people upstairs do not seem to be concerned about that sort of thing. Their performance metrics do not take into account the personal fortune when determining success, and perhaps Mr. Osteen should remember that.
In any event, it does appear that he'll have to go into the great gray area of my religious viewpoint dubbed "Effect Uncertain", since I don't divine any specific negative effect, only generalized concerns.
Posted by Country Pundit at March 1, 2005 10:27 AM