Don’t Believe Everything You Hear

I made the mistake of watching a prominent televangelist on TV one Sunday morning. I was up before my husband was, and I quietly went to start some coffee and turn on the TV. When I saw who was on, rather than flip the channel I thought I’d watch for a bit out of some kind of perverse awe, like how you can’t help but look at a gruesome car wreck even though it’s terrible to see.

This man is well-known as a prosperity preacher. If you’re not familiar with what the Prosperity Gospel is, it’s a false version of Christianity that basically treats God like Santa Claus and reverts right back to what Jesus admonished the Pharisees for doing: believing they could treat God like a vending machine. His sermon that morning was nothing out of the ordinary; to summarize, he basically said that if you had enough faith then you’d get what you want (not wisdom or humility, but “that promotion” or “closing on your house”). I knew I’d heard something like that before, but I think it involved wishing on a star, and I’m pretty sure that was told to me by a cricket, and I’m not very trusting of bugs who make such grandiose promises.

He went on to make half-truths out of some random Old Testament passages and mostly gave a motivational pep-talk with lots of flowery words and gilded generalities – again, nothing too unusual from what I’d heard of his ilk before. Then came a move that was pretty bold. In driving home his point about using faith to get what you want, he referenced two different stories of healing in the Gospels: the man healed at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-17) and the woman healed of a bleeding disorder (Mark 5:25-34). When explaining the stories (not actually ever opening up a Bible – I don’t think there was even one on stage), he started with the man at the pool and told about how when Jesus came to him the man grumbled and said, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me” (v. 7). The preacher then went on to the second story about how when the woman, desperate for healing, touched Jesus’ robe she was indeed healed, and Jesus responded, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (v. 34). He then wrapped up his message, prayed, and the show was over.

My jaw dropped. Having recently read John 5, I knew something was missing - despite his grumbling, the man at the pool was healed too, but this preacher intentionally omitted the rest of that story to make his point. That’s shady behavior whether you’re a preacher or a news reporter or even a peon blogger like myself, and yet he was doing this in the name of God.

I don’t know if I was just tired or overly emotional, but I was almost in tears knowing that what he just did was heard by millions, the majority of whom wouldn’t know enough Bible or wouldn’t bother to look it up to know how he’d butchered the story in John 5. He barely even attempted to hide it – anyone who dared to open up their Bibles and read the story for themselves would see what was blatantly omitted from his sermon. But what’s even more sad is that he is able to be that bold in his errant portrayal of Scripture because the majority of the people listening either really aren’t reading the Bible themselves, or if they are then they’re believing his cut-and-paste version over what it actually says. Misinterpretation and intentional omission of parts of Scripture gives birth to heresies, which are only allowed to proliferate in a culture of people who don’t take the Bible seriously.

As he prayed and the audience bowed their heads, the camera panned to an older couple huddled up close praying with intense faces; the woman quite obviously had cancer or something similarly debilitating. I sat there on the edge of the couch staring intently at the TV and praying fervently that the people in the audience would take in the tiny nugget of truth in his message while the rest of the lies would be erased from their minds; yes, God does heal, and yes, He may give you good things, but that’s not the point - the point is that you get Him and He is your joy whether you’re rich or poor, healthy or sick. And I prayed in particular for that woman, that God would heal her of her illness, but that even if He didn’t she would know she was already healed of her condemnation for sin through Jesus and that she would echo the story in Daniel 3: that God has all the power to heal and to save from peril, but even if He doesn’t, we know He is enough.

What the prosperity gospel misses is the core truth of the Biblical Gospel. The point isn’t that you get health, wealth, or prosperity; in fact, some pretty nasty things happen to plenty of God’s people all throughout the Bible, and in some ways an easy life is almost scary in that it means God isn’t challenging you or trying to grow you up (that should be a whole other post).  The point is that you get God, that He is what brings you joy, He is what completes you, He is your prosperity – to believe anything different you’d have to prooftext and omit what doesn’t fit your preconceptions, as this preacher did.

This is why it is absolutely, incredibly, gravely important that you read and study the Bible yourself, not just listen to what other people have to say about it, but read it yourself – know the stories, the passages, the history, the poetry. Be able to know when someone has changed something to their liking or twisted words out of their context. The Bible says there are wolves disguised as sheep trying to tear the Church apart from the inside out (Matt. 7:15-23, Rom. 16:17-19); what better way for one army to take down another than by pretending to be them and getting them to progressively leave what they were fighting for without ever changing clothes to realize that they’d left their original army. You can’t fight if you don’t know what your defending; without knowing the Bible, we can’t fight off the deluge of falsehoods about it. You can’t join a book discussion on a book you’ve never really read. That doesn’t mean you can’t ever read what other people have to say about the Bible, but don’t believe everything you hear. Even our pastor, who my husband and I both trust very much to deliver a true interpretation of God’s Word, would rather we double-check what he teaches than blindly believe.

My experience that Sunday morning gave me new charge to soak up every bit of the Word that my feeble human brain can take in. When people claiming to believe say something false, or when approached by those who disbelieve, without a strong knowledge of the Bible I am like a soldier without a shield, but with it I can speak the truth in love.