Victoria Osteen ignites an evangelical firestorm
By Bishop Dave Chikosi
The Osteens are no strangers to criticism. They seem easy to pile on. By his own admission Pastor Joel Osteen has very little to no theological training, and for many that’s a problem. He is not always the most nuanced Bible teacher that most want him to be. Critics say his messages lack theological depth.
The Osteens pastor Lakewood Church – America’s largest Protestant church with membership at 45 000. Joel Osteen’s TV ministry is seen by over 20 million viewers monthly in over 100 nations around the world. He has written five New York Times Bestselling books. He is affectionately called “The Smiling Preacher.”
Victoria, Joel’s wife, has recently found herself at the center of an evangelical storm that came about as a result of some unscripted opening remarks she made at Lakewood. A video clip of the August exhortation surfaced on the internet and immediately went viral. Here is what she said:
“I just want to encourage every one of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God—I mean, that’s one way to look at it—we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we’re happy. That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. So, I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?”
A number of evangelical leaders and Christian bloggers picked up on this and have since put her on blast for it. They are livid at what they see as a cheapening of the worship experience by Mrs. Osteen.
Rev Steve Camp, pastor of the Cross Church in Palm City, Florida was quick to the trigger: “It’s the age old sin of idolatry – that it’s not about God, it’s about us,” he said. “She honestly believes that God exists to make us happy rather than holy.”
America consumerism and the cult of the therapeutic
Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This is one of the largest seminaries in the world. He wrote perhaps the most withering criticism I have read to date.
“America deserves the Osteens,” Mohler says. “The consumer culture, the cult of the therapeutic, the marketing impulse, and the sheer superficiality of American cultural Christianity probably made the Osteens inevitable.”
Ouch!
Houston’s KHOU-TV News ran a report Thursday Sept 4, 2014 about Mr. Michael David Fletcher, 30, who entered Lakewood Church bookstore that morning and began knocking books off shelves. He was throwing books and overturning display stands as he recited Matthew 21:12 out loud. It says:
“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves”
Fletcher was escorted out of the bookstore by security personnel who had to hold him down when he attempted to return. A felony charge of criminal mischief is pending.
Theological narcissm
Critics accuse Mrs Osteen of pushing a self-serving theology of worship. To assert, as she does, that when one worships God one is really not doing it for God, but “you are doing it for yourself” is, according to Bible professor and author Daniel Wallace, “the most blatant narcissistic blather ever to come from a pulpit.”
Doesn’t she know God wants us holy not happy? The two are mutually exclusive. Christians should pursue holiness not happiness. The happy are usually the unholy. So “choose ye this day” what you will pursue – holiness or happiness. You can have one or the other but you can’t have it both ways.
But does the Bible support such a happy-holy dichotomy?
The holy-happy dichotomy refuted
First of all let’s concede that Mrs Osteen’s statement is highly problematic. It’s too utilitarian, whether she meant for it to be so or not. We don’t, and we shouldn’t, worship God for what we get out of the worship experience.
We worship God because we love Him and because He is worthy of our worship. We worship out of an attitude of gratitude for all He’s done for us, especially the work He did at the Cross.
But at the same time it’s foolish and unscriptural to think that worshipping God has no benefits that accrue to the worshipper this side of the eschaton. Worship does indeed produce happiness – true happiness. The holy-happy dichotomy is a figment of someone’s theology imagination and has nothing to do with the reality revealed in scripture.
Holiness is happiness
It was no less a figure than John Wesley, founder of Methodism, who believed that “the more holy we are upon earth the more happy we must be. Wesley saw “an inseparable connection between holiness and happiness.”
We think Wesley was right. Holiness is happiness.
Thomas Brooks, that great 17th century Puritan theologian, was of the view that “holiness differs nothing from happiness but in name.” In his 450 page book, “The Crown and Glory of Christianity: Or, Holiness, The Only Way To Happiness” Brooks boldly states: “Holiness is happiness in the bud, and happiness is holiness at the full. Happiness is nothing but the quintessence of holiness.”
Matthew Henry (1662-1714) is a highly celebrated Bible scholar whose “Commentary” on the Bible is probably the most widely used work by preachers everywhere. He also was of the view that “those only are happy, truly happy, that are holy, truly holy.”
Commenting on the First Psalm, Mr Henry went so far as to write: “Goodness and holiness are not only the way to happiness but happiness itself.”
A holy-happy God
God is holy. Thrice holy. But He is also happy. Thoroughly happy.
God is not the Grumpy Old Man waiting with a baseball bat for the next opportunity to zap His kids as soon as they get out of line. No God is love and He is very excited to have us as his children. He is in fact so excited with us that He does cartwheels over us!
Yahweh your God is among you, a warrior who saves. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will bring you quietness with His love. He will delight in you with shouts of joy” (Zephaniah 3:17)
This is an amazing scripture. The word “delight” is the Hebrew “gil” which literally means “to spin around with intense motion.” This is the kind of display of excitement and happiness God has for the ones He has created. He spins around over us with excitement.
God doesn’t need an ego massage
While I don’t always agree with everything the Osteens say (or decline to say), I have to state that when Victoria says God doesn’t need our worship, she is correct. The idea that God needs our worship is laughable. God doesn’t need anything from any of us. He is self-sufficient.
“The God who made the world and everything in it . . . is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else (Acts 17:24-25).
God doesn’t need an ego massage. Worship benefits us, not Him.
I probably would not have said it the way Victoria said it. There is a very powerful paradox that she failed to clearly articulate, and which her critics also miss. It is this: the less self-centered we become, and the more Christ-centered we are, the happier we all will be.
Shalom.
Bishop Dave Chikosi can be reached by email [email protected]. His messages can also be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUwUV5nmQvuqsSFkZcqKMX4g&feature=plcp
