Tuesday, September 09, 2008

John Piper

Have you heard about this video? Holy cow! It'll make you cry and be proud to be catholic.

I know that I will someday face my maker and have to look into the saddened eyes of a father who both loves and is disappointed in me. But, I hope that, most of all, he knows that I am faithful to the message of the cross and that I have spent my life in loving service of that cross. I am not perfect in any way.

But, I am truly, deeply, and profoundly disturbed by the concept of the prosperity gospel that so many evangelicals are selling to the people of God. If God likes you, you are foreordained to succeed. In fact, success means that God likes you. If not, you will fail. I pray that God will let me watch as some smug evangelical who has been so convinced of his own salvation and has been peddling this moral equivalent to pornography will learn the true meaning of "If you desire to come after me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and come follow me."

"God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him in the midst of loss not prosperity."

2 comments:

Ruth Ann said...

didn't you love that video?? I mean, you hate the things that are going on like that - but seriously, I'm glad someone finally put into words how incredibly ridiculous it is.

Haven't seen you for a while, but I hope all well and that we'll get to catch up soon! Praying for you!

nabimba said...

So true. My dad tells me a story about when his brother, now paraplegic, got in a terrible car accident. Dad visited my uncle in the hospital, and evidently he couldn't move, speak, communicate, or support himself in any way except to blink. So in order to send a message, he had to have somebody go through the letters of the alphabet one by one and blink once for no and twice for yes to spell out words. My dad told me he was with him when he spelled out "I-want-to-live." And live he does, very well. That's the stuff that gives glory to God.

2 L B: Christianity is not a pithy pop song

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