I love this lighthearted look at a contemporary American spirituality that I find quite troubling.
All humor aside, I find prosperity teaching to be lurking around our religious climate. Ultimately it's a dead-end street. Christ did not come to help us get rich, achieve great things, be successful, or win friends and influence people. He came to save, which (Biblically) means to make whole that which is broken, to heal. Jesus is not a tool I keep in my pocket to pull out and use when I want something. He is the Way, and he is an entirely new way, the way of opening my heart to the bigger picture of God's grace rather than focusing on the little picture of myself and what I want and desire. Faith is about taking up a cross that leads to new life. It's about abiding in the true vine, and trusting that our lives will bear fruit God has designed for us. This is the greatest abundance of life, not that God showers us with all the blessings we desire and it trickles down to others, but that we become part of the great picture of what God is blessing. Even our problems, struggles, and pain are not so much things to get rid of but part of the context of a bigger picture. I prefer to think not that Christ gives us all things, but that all things draw us to Christ.
