God Wants You To Be Miserable!

Today's sermon was on Philippians 2:17-18 - joy in the midst of suffering. It's one of those topics that hits the trifecta of extremes - extremely important, extremely difficult to teach clearly and correctly, and extremely difficult to accept. While I enjoyed it, it unfortunately fell short in the second category, making what I consider to be many common mistakes in handling the subject.

I attend a traditional (theologically) evangelical church, and one of the things that we feel compelled to oppose is the prosperity gospel - also known as health and wealth, word of faith, name it and claim it, etc. Even if you're unfamiliar with the movement, you're probably familiar with many of its more prominent figures: Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, T.D. Jakes, and of course, smilin' Joel Osteen (I don't mean that derogatorily, it's just I find it completely impossible to think of the man without picturing the giant smile he perpetually wears).

The gist of the prosperity gospel is that God wants only the best for His children. That means that all Christians should be well-off (if not downright rich), free from any kind of sickness, and pretty much devoid of any other kind of problem. Financial or medical problems are a symptom of insufficient faith - by increasing our faith we eliminate problems and gain access to all the good things God wants for us.

Traditional evangelical theology rejects this as un-Biblical. It does, after all, ignore the facts of the lives of most Biblical figures - Moses, David, Elijah, Paul, and of course Christ Himself - all of whose lives were filled with poverty and hardship, at least at times, while in the service of God. It also ignores the many verses of the Bible that speak of suffering in the Christian life, such as the passage this sermon was from.

I have no problem with any of this. I firmly believe the prosperity gospel is un-Biblical, if not outright blasphemous in its extremes. The problem is what typically happens to any group that ideologically opposes another - in their drive to counter the other side, they end up going to the opposite extreme instead of presenting a balanced view of the issue.

Thus, instead of teaching the health and wealth gospel, we firmly preach the gloom and doom gospel. Of course, no one actually calls it that, and no one who teaches it thinks of it in those terms, but it consists of a series of ideas and statements created to oppose prosperity theology that end up going to the other extreme through implication.

For instance, how many of you have heard the following statement: "God is more concerned with your holiness than your happiness"? I can't tell you how many times I've heard this statement during sermons, and it just makes me want to tear my hair out every time. It sounds spiritual and pious, doesn't it? It has the same lure that asceticism has always had - that the heights of spirituality can only be obtained by shunning pleasure. The not-so-hidden translation is then: if you want to be spiritual, God is going to make you miserable. The further implication is that He doesn't care how you feel.

Is this the gospel we have to offer? That I serve God, but I don't particularly like it? Every Saint Francis who has ever practiced self-flagellation realizes, "Man, this really sucks" - and that's supposed to be the point? Do we still wonder why traditional Protestantism has not shed the image of the dour-faced Puritan in the world's eyes 400 years after the fact? The problem with a statement like this one is that it sets up a false dichotomy between happiness and holiness - that they are two distinct entities, if not outright antithetical. Don't believe me? Perhaps this article will help.

Speaking of false dichotomies, how many of you have been taught that happiness and joy are two different things? Happiness is supposedly based on our circumstances - the positive feeling we have whenever we have those worldly things the prosperity gospel promises (health, wealth, etc.). There's nothing wrong with such happiness, but we know that in the imperfect world we live in it is temporary and fleeting at best. Joy, on the other hand, is the positive feeling we still have left in God when happiness has gone. I was raised being taught this, and it certainly sounded right. After all, nobody feels that great when life is falling apart around them, but we should still be able to say that we have something positive in God even in those difficult times, right?

The problem with this teaching is that there are two devastatingly destructive implications behind it. The first is simply that the greatest good in life is not found in God alone. Joy is great and all, but there is a pinnacle beyond it called happiness where we have both joy and the well-being that comes from good circumstances. David might have had joy in the Lord all those years he spent in the desert fleeing from Saul, but when Saul finally died and he became king, he got upgraded to the penthouse of happiness.

The second destructive implication is simply a logical deduction from the first: God doesn't care enough to give us the best. If you're lucky, like an Abraham, David, or Solomon, then at select times of your life you'll have the happiness that comes from serving God and having the best the world has to offer. But if you're not, don't worry - God freely hands out joy as a consolation prize.

All of these errors come from a fundamental belief (or more accurately, a lack thereof): that there is no such thing as a happiness that can be 100% independent of our circumstances in life and that exceeds any happiness we might find in those circumstances alone. But the Bible does in fact teach such a happiness:

¹⁷Though the fig tree should not blossom
And there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail
And the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold
And there be no cattle in the stalls,
¹⁸Yet I will exult in the LORD,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.

Habakkuk 3:17-18

²²The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods.

²³When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely;

²⁴and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks.

²⁵But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God...

Acts 16:22-25

Prosperity theology gets right the fact that God is very much concerned with our happiness. What it gets wrong is the idea that happiness can only be achieved through worldly joys. Traditional evangelical theology gets right the fact that Christians are not exceptions and we will go through times of hardship and suffering where worldly joys are simply out of reach - just like everyone else in the world. What it gets wrong in the idea that the pinnacle of happiness is unavailable to us during these times. Oddly then, both sides suffer the mistake of putting too much stock in worldly happiness - the prosperity gospel in claiming it is essential, and traditional theology in accepting that it is transitory and simply shrugging its shoulders with a grin-and-bear-it attitude.

As I said at the beginning, this is a difficult subject. While I've taken issue with both sides in this article, I don't claim to have laid down the One True Answer for the problem of happiness and suffering. If you find yourself disagreeing, questioning, or just plain confused, may I suggest you go read this book right now. John Piper is one of the finest authors of our time, and while I don't always agree with him on everything (*cough*Calvinism*cough*), his works have helped me with many issues that perplexed me in the past.

So what are your thoughts on this issue? Oh, I forgot - no one is reading this yet.

God bless,
AJ