Most of the bloggers out there exist only to rant about stuff they don’t like. How will adding Osteen to their lists change anything?
I don’t know if you know who Joel Osteen is. Possibly not. He’s the pastor of Lakewood Church, which produces a weekly TV show that features him. I first came across him a few years ago, when I was eating breakfast one Sunday and watching TV church. (I’d usually watch Charles Stanley, who isn’t bad theologically, although I’d like to hear him actually do a real exposition of a passage for once, and I wish he’d stop trying to sell Alaska cruises.) Anyway, Stanley was over with, and some other not-so-good preacher’s show was starting, so I flipped the channels and came across Osteen’s show.
I figured it was a church show because it is, after all, broadcast Sunday morning. It struck me as… kinda useless. More useless than many of the other TV church shows. He wasn’t going into detail about any passage of scripture. He wasn’t trying to make a profound theological point. He wasn’t foaming at the mouth about some bizarre End Times conspiracy or about how “the homosexuals have taken over Hollywood.” He was just blithering about how God wants us to have happy, prosperous lives. Then there was a commercial about how they were moving the church from the large, cavernous building they already occupied (which I at first thought was a rented auditorium) into an even bigger building (which I later discovered was the Compaq Center). So he’s got a big giant church. No wonder he has his own TV show.
I didn’t think much about him after that, until I found that Christian Book Distributors was selling a book of his, Your Best Life Now, in which he announces that God wants us to have happy, prosperous lives. Just look at Osteen: He has a happy, prosperous life. And if he has one, surely God wants everyone to have one, right?
’Cause if you don’t have a happy, prosperous life, there’s something wrong with you. Why, look at all those unhappy, financially unprosperous Christians in China that are too busy hiding from the government to buy themselves Lexuses and thousand-dollar suits. There must be something wrong with them. And those missionaries! What’s with them giving up comfort and financial stability for God? Surely he would rather they stay home, living in air-conditioned comfort and eating bon bons; by that example people will just flock to Jesus.
…Okay, I really gotta cut back on the sarcasm.
I occasionally read the Internet Monk’s site, which is a thought-provoking read even though I can’t always agree with him. Of course, he’s a lot more civil than the nutjobs who post responses to his site. (I have been, on occasion, one of those nutjobs, but I’m trying not to be. These folks are more interested in being right than in becoming right, so there’s little point in debating them. If you ever wondered why I’ve discouraged comments in the past, just look at the comments the iMonk’s site produces.)
Anyway. In his January 2005 post “Outing Joel Osteen: A Challenge to the Evangelical Blogosphere,” (which I’ve only just read, as he’s linked to it with a more recent post) he’d like every Christian blogger to “expose” Joel Osteen for what he isn’t. First, he concludes that Osteen isn’t preaching the gospel; Osteen is too interested in preaching happy, prosperous lives to get bogged down with stuff about salvation, sin, the cross, and holiness. Second, the huge church that Osteen pastors worries the iMonk into the belief the whole church will go Osteen’s way in emphasizing happy lives over Christianity. (I doubt it, but I’m an optimist.) Third, he figures evangelicals should do something about it. Like blog.
Obviously he doesn’t understand the purpose of my blog.
These are rants. I discovered long ago, when I first began to rant for my high school newspaper, then began ranting for college and local newspapers, that
Really they do two things, and anything else is incidental. They get this crap out of my system; and they entertain you. What they don’t do is what many bloggers believe—and what I, back in my early 20s, naïvely believed—which is change the world by informing the world about something it did not already know. And if by “the world” you mean “losers who are sitting in their boxer shorts typing on the internet on a Friday night” you’d be closer to reality. But you wouldn’t change them. The people who read blogs are just as passive and inert as the people who write them. They won’t do a bloody thing to change a bloody thing. They’d rather rail against it with all the sound and fury they can type, and that’s all.
Too many people are all talk and no action, and too many people confuse blogging with action. My writing about Joel Osteen is not action; it’s inaction. If I actually wanted to do something to put a stop to him, I’d go to his denominational headquarters and get him defrocked, then go on all the TV chat shows and tell the interviewers why I did that. Fact is, I honestly don’t care enough about Osteen to fight him. I’m too busy trying to preach and spread the gospel, and contribute to my church. I have a life, dangit. A busy one.
I can counter Osteen on a person-by-person basis; I can tell anyone who asks, “Yeah, he sounds good, but that’s not consistent with scripture. Jesus promised us persecution, and said we’ll be happy when that happens, not when we get Lexuses and crap that’ll rust and decay.” Hopefully they’ll have read enough of Jesus’s teachings to agree, and if not I can point ’em to key passages.
But post it on my blog? Okay—I just did that. Is it gonna change anything? Betcha it won’t. How about if I spread it all over the internet? Still nothing. And even if the news services picked this up and spread it further, it wouldn’t put much of a dent in Osteen’s book sales, and I’ll be dismissed by every other non-minister who covets Osteen’s success and doesn’t want me stifling their action—and every passive Christian who thinks disagreement is a bigger sin than heresy.
Good night, everyone.