Rachael Newham considers whether we are passing on an emotional prosperity gospel and what a healthier approach might be.
We were the last generation to go through our teens without smart-phones and with the refrain of Delirious? History Makers ringing in our ears. Myspace and the long-forgotten Bebo were the social media platforms of the day. And every summer, groups would flock to Christian festivals in hired minivans and return high on the Spirit and Lynx deodorant. We would proclaim that the world was ours to change, and that meeting Jesus had forever transformed our lives for the better.
We knew about the prosperity gospel preached from the stages of American mega-churches and that our faith wasn’t going to provide us with material wealth, but we still expected some kind of return from our investment in the life of faith. Perhaps it was as simple as believing that doing the ‘right thing’ would mean we would have the right kind of life.
And yet, as we reach mid-adulthood we have seen a global financial crash, the war on terror, falling living standards, rising anxiety disorders and of course, the pandemic. Most of us are not history makers, many have lost their faith and still more are approaching (or living in) our fourth or fifth decade with more questions about God than we started with.
There are many of us still believing, still trying to raise our children with the faith we hold dear but in quieter, more questioning ways than we imagined. I have begun to wonder if we are suffering a hangover from our teenage years, a version of the prosperity gospel that is maybe more emotional than financial?
Dr Kate Bowler, a theology professor who has Stage IV cancer, gives voice to people like us:
“I would love to report that what I found in the prosperity gospel was something so foreign and terrible to me that I was warned away, but what I discovered was both familiar and painfully sweet: the promise that I could curate my life, minimize my losses, and stand on my successes…I had my own Prosperity Gospel, a flowering weed grown in with all the rest.”
What are we feeding the next generation?
We want to tell our children that the answer to the various crises facing them, and their friends is found in our faith, that Christianity will provide the joy and peace that so often seems elusive or even buffer them from the problems others encounter.
And yet are we feeding them from the bottle of an emotional prosperity gospel? Are we teaching and modelling the good news or is ours more of a ‘happy’ news. Are we telling young people that life with Jesus is happier? And what happens when the doubts crowd in and pain enters the picture?
An alternative diet
We want to offer something to a generation who have already lost so much; we all want our children to be happy. But what if we switched our focus from our children’s happiness to their belovedness? What if, instead of encouraging them to look at faith as a protective blanket against suffering, we allowed them to see the truths that they can hold onto amidst the suffering - that Jesus is God with us and that there will one day be a world with “no more mourning, or crying, or pain?” (Revelation 21:4)
I want to see revival, a new movement of the Spirit through our children and young people, but I wonder if perhaps it won’t look like how we imagined it back when we were young.
What would it look like if, instead of offering young people something else to consume, we see their tears and point them to a saviour who not only shares the tears but takes them into himself and transforms them?
What if the gospel, the good news for this generation and those to come, means not that peace and joy are easy to come by, but that they will be met in our anxiety and despair by the Lord who has experienced their darkness and comes close to us in their need?
The good news means that no one need face another tearful night alone, never wrestle distress without the Spirit who as well as swooping in to perform the miracles of cure and provision that we know are possible, also stoops to be our counsellor, our comforter in days where pat answers don’t cut it anymore.
A new breed of history makers
I want to see revival, a new movement of the Spirit through our children and young people, but I wonder if perhaps it won’t look like how we imagined it back when we were young – how different the next few years will look if the history being made is of children and young people receiving the comfort of God and learning to share it amongst themselves and their peers. How different it will be if we help our youth and children and others in our community to draw close to “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Corinthains 1:3b-4)
I wonder if the move of the Spirit in our children and young people in these seemingly dark days is one of comforting with the comfort we have received from God through long nights and providing courage to face difficult days. I wonder if then we can see a generation facing difficulties in the world but finding find their agony embraced by a wounded saviour and seeking to share that embrace with others.
