Today all the Christian world remembers the arrest, imprisonment, torture and death by public, legal execution of the only truly innocent man and incarnate God. We call this day "good".
When we see parents who don't spend their time, energy, money on providing fun, toys and games for themselves, but instead spend their lives for the growth and goodness of their children, we call them "good" parents.
Clearly, in both these cases, good refers to the fruit of an experience not the pleasure, fun or happiness of the experience.
Yet today the Christian world is suffering because of the widespread and growing heresy of prosperity doctrine. Many Christian denominations are propagating the teaching that those who follow Jesus are rewarded with peaceful, comfortable, safe lives. Many of these teachers and believers are in faiths that claim both literal and total reliance on the bible for their beliefs. But Jesus clearly tells those who follow Him that their lives will be filled with poverty, like His; financial and physical insecurity, like His; being misunderstood, misrepresented, put on trial, tortured and killed, like Him. Nowhere in the scriptures does Jesus say that following Him will be good for your business, real estate or property, status, popularity or looks.
If in fact you are blessed with prosperity the instruction and example of our loving and perfect teacher is to divest yourself as quickly as possible of your excess so as not to endanger your spiritual journey which is weighed down and obstructed by too much stuff. (Remember the eye of the needle). It is clear that the practicing Christian is to be a pipe of prosperity carrying God's blessing to our brothers and sisters.
Think for a moment of the Dead Sea or any marshy swampy place where the reek of dead vegetation makes it obnoxious to stay. These are places where the water flows in but there is no outlet. The area holds all the water for itself. A marsh with outflow is alive and fruitful and diverse. A lake with good outflow, like Galilee, is clean and beautiful and teaming with life. So are we intended to be.
The fruit of prosperity heresy is people who sit on their hoarde and get their only happiness by contemplating what they have that others do not. Sometimes they begin to see their own children as people who want to take their wealth. When someone they are attached to passes over to the real life, they feel that they have been unfairly treated, as if being a person of faith should mean that they never have to suffer sorrow or loss. They are lonely and miserable and miss out on the true freedom and joy that following Christs's way allows us to experience even here on this earth.
The good thing about identified heresy is that we can begin to examine how the error has intruded into our own thinking and start to root it out. The U.S. is ground where this heresy can easily take root. Keep a look out and weed it out before it gets a good start in your thinking.
