I enjoy having a comfortable house, with heat in the winter and air-conditioning in the summer. I enjoy being able to afford good, healthful food instead of the cheap junk put out by fast-food restaurants. (On the other hand, I am thoroughly opposed to conspicuous consumption. For example, I enjoy going on cruises but I hate being made to dress up.)

Trent and others rightly emphasize the importance of emergency funds, even though religious zealots would condemn them as hoarding. The bigger your emergency fund is, the worse emergency you are prepared to survive comfortably. I like being able to handle emergencies myself without having to impose on others by asking for help. For middle-class people like us, I see no practical limit to the amount for which it would be worthwhile to build an emergency fund.

If you are fortunate enough to live out your life never to have had an emergency bad enough to drain your fund, you will be condemned for dying rich, but your fund still has not been wasted, just as supporting your local fire department is not wasted even if you never have a fire.

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. 1 Timothy 6:10

I think when money (or anything else in our life – job, love, our looks, etc) becomes the focus of our life, not our relationship with God, that’s when problems happen.

Christianity and faith in Christ is about accepting our flawed nature – and our need for a savior. It’s about accepting his saving grace, and then attempting to live as he did. And that means by being giving, loving and sharing his message. Not by using his word to become rich.

With that said – do I think being wealthy is in itself sinful? No. But if and when money becomes your goal in life and becomes the focus of your life, that’s when it can become a problem.

Jesus Christ himself warned us against false prophets who would twist the gospel to tickle peoples ears.

I’m a Christian, but I also recognize that humanity has an infinate capacity to twist even the word of God for personal gain. The prosperity gospel is from twisted humans, not a teaching of Jesus Christ.

This is an interesting spin-off of the Weber Theory, which was used to explain why Calvanists did so much better economically than there non-Predestination-believing contemporaries. He theorized that because they believed you were saved or damned from the start, regardless of your faith or good works, it was likely that God would also show his favor to you during this life (or not). So, in order to comfort themselves, Calvanists sought wordly wealth and then pointed to it saying, “Look at all that God has given me. He wouldn’t do that if I were damned.”

As for the “eye of the needle”, this refers to a gate that was very low, and could only be passed under on foot, and not camel. This prevented invaders from riding into the city. Obviously one can always get off one’s high camel and walk through the gate, so the language here tells us that the rich can be saved, but they must be able to part with their worldly goods (not that they have to actually do it, they just can’t be obsessed with their goods).

Also, @#45, please do not call the Catholic Church the Universal Church of Pedophilia. Statistically, public school teachers are much, much more likely to molest your children than priests (and for a liberal, teachers are your version of a priest–the chief authority.). Every year, there are fewer than 200 reports of molestation in the church. Even if you quadrupled that to account for people who were silent, it does not come near the 30,000+ cases of teacher-student sexual activity. My point being: this is not a problem that is widespread in the church, nor is it condoned by the church, nor is it exclusive to the church. I’m sorry your experiences have made you bitter, but please try to keep that sort of hate-speech to yourself. It makes the 25%+ of Trent’s audience who identify as Catholic feel uncomfortable. (A good litmus test for whether or not you are being appropriate is “Would I say the same thing about a victimized minority group on television?”)

Suppose for a moment that the prosperity gospel is true. Now suppose that some fraction of the population, say 0.5%, are in God’s grace to have above average health and financial blessings. Pick about any percentage and an actuarial scientist will know of a way to capitalize on the advantage — this is their trade. If this is true then two things should be evident:

1) Death rates for cancer, auto wrecks and so on should be slightly lower for Christians or nations with more Christian citizens.
2) Insurance companies would give preference and seek out Christians as clients because they represent lower risk for health complications.

To my mind neither are proven by the facts. This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t bestow blessing — far from it. I’m personally convicted in the goodness of God and the validity of Christianity but I believe the prize is beyond this life and most certainly the faith isn’t a formula for success in the here and now.

But maybe it does SEEM that way because people who have strong faiths live their lives in balance so it appears they more financial freedom. Maybe.

Instead of using the normal everyday solutions He sends us, we keep looking for a miraculous, out of the ordinary solution.

Though I do want to bring up one point – when folks are quoting the “It’s easier to fit a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven” thing – there was some context to that. As I understand it, Christ was NOT saying that you can’t be rich and be His follower. What he was saying is that it puts some very difficult choices in your path, and that as humans, it is not too often that we make the right decisions in those circumstances!

I do believe that, using a discretion that only He understands, God does place some of his followers in a path that leads to earthly prosperity. I am one of them – I’m paid WAY more than what I’m worth, have had good luck with financial decisions and in general have fared much better than almost anyone my age.

Now, what God doesn’t want, I assume, is for me to say, “Well, I’ve got it good – and it’s mine, all mine!” Instead, I have allowed my own success to be a blessing to others. We have a large home, but in addition to housing our family, it has housed two other families who fell on hard times. I am able to help friends in need. I am able to support causes that are important to me.

My pastor says it well: “We are called to sacrifice, not suicide.” You give till it hurts, but not till it kills you. You don’t sell everything and give money to the poor, only to end up at the food bank yourself. You are called to be a good steward of what God has entrusted you with.

OK, I’m done preaching now. Want to take up an offering??

Great stuff!

This identical bunch will claim that African-American Christian old ladies are cursed by God and not man, that lepers had it coming to them, and that genetic disease is incompatible with the salvation promised by the churches. The ministers who preach this gospel simply are recruiting strivers and shearing those sheep of ten percent of their current and future income.

Additionally, this “prosperity gospel” claptrap is exactly the same sort of BS magical thinking that caused medieval peoples to believe that demons and Jews distributed illnesses and plague. I’m staggered that anyone can be serious about it.

Rich men, camels, &all….

I thought is was only ‘invented’ to serve as a kind of binding agent between the 2 large parts of the GOP (social conservative christians and Wall Street big business conservatives.)

Didn’t Jezus said that you should give it all away, except for the sandals on your feet and the cloak around your shoulder? (not literally: I don’t have a bible here, and if I had, it would be in Dutch)

(for the sake of disclosure: I’m a agnostic, but raised Catholic)

PG is just a twisted way for so-called Christians to make Mammon their god while pretending not to.