The Orthodoxy of Joel Osteen
In Which I Come at Seraphim Rose Without Initially Intending To.
When it comes to God, everyone is suddenly in the business of redefining words. This is, of course, why so many perceive religion as primarily a form of abuse. A cruelty. In most houses of faith there is a kind of omnipresent gaslighting going on, where the words you use quite naturally in everyday life suddenly mean something much different when you’re standing before the tabernacle. Outside, in the sunshine of our daily lives where we go to work, school, and baseball practice, thankfully this curse doesn’t follow us. In the world, speaking to other people, we all know very well that a father who loves his children tries to keep them safe, and that he dotes on them, perhaps even to excess. We know that loving mothers have a tendency to go overboard, needlessly obsessing over the details of their daughter’s birthday party, or trying to make sure the presents beneath the tree sit just right to bring the perfect shock of enjoyment to their child’s face. We go to the park and see grandmothers laughing, bouncing babies on their knees. We go to the lake and see grandfathers peacefully fishing with their grandsons. “That’s love,” we say. “That’s what love looks like.”
And how sensible.
How sane.
…
Beneath the dome of the church though, things are suddenly quite different. Listening to the Bible being read, or sitting through the sermon, one often cannot help getting the queer feeling that, here, in this place, “love” doesn’t quite mean “love” in the usual sense and, further, that terms like “peace” and “joy” seem like they might imply exactly the opposite. Even beyond the extremes of eternal damnation, well before getting to topics like Heaven and Hell, one gets the sense that, in church, “Love” might mean something like, “Might beat the shit out of you,” and “Happiness” is apparently only a word to be employed for someone engaged in some sort of life-denying asceticism. Monks can be happy. Nuns can be happy. The priest working himself to the bone night and day for the salvation of souls, who fasts twice a week and weeps every night in prayer…
He can be “happy.”
You know. In a strange way where he cries a lot.
You though?
Why would you deserve to be happy?
In fact, any joy you feel you should probably heavily consider repenting about. I mean, you have a mattress right? Pfft. What luxury! Have you not read that he who has two coats ought give one away? Yes? Yet here you are, sleeping on a bed while people in Africa have naught but a dirt floor… And you had lunch! “Saint Vonderskin of Heldifromst slept on a bed of nails her whole life you know,” people will tell you with a completely straight face. “Never even thought of sex. Besides the eucharist, she only ate ashes she did, that’s if and when she ate anything at all. Every morning she climbed 10,000 steps on her knees to pray, whipping herself with a rosary chain the whole way. Plus, don’t you know it, that Holy Woman… she also never watched T.V. Oh! And, for all her sacrifices, God rewarded her! Yes! She had perpetually open wounds on her hands and every night she was just TORTURED by demons and visions of all her loved ones in Hell.”
…
… …
And you had LUNCH!
…
And, I dunno. I just find myself thinking, “What are we doing here? What kind of Gospel is this? Isn’t the word supposed to mean ‘Good News’?”
I’ve been thinking a lot about Joel Osteen recently.
Not sure why. He was on Logan Paul’s podcast recently, but I didn’t see that, so I’m not sure exactly what the source of my ruminations is. I think though, that it has something to do with a gnawing contradiction. An unspoken disconnect between the way most Christians talk about God and how they actually behave. An unaccounted for gap between what people like Joel say, and the derision that they typically receive.
…
Well…
Perhaps I get ahead of myself.
If you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Osteen I think it’s fair to say that he is America’s foremost “Prosperity Gospel” preacher. He has a large church in Texas and he made a name for himself by telling people that God would bless them if they asked him to. That, if they had faith and believed, God would give them health, wealth, and happiness.
This is widely considered Bad.
I think I’ve been trying to figure out why.
You know, just why is it that most Christians consider the words “Gospel” and “Prosperity” to be antithetical? How did Jesus’s words of “Blessed are the poor” become, instead of comfort for the destitute, condemnation for anyone aspiring to more than poverty?
“Yoshi,” I hear you say. “We do not dislike Joel Osteen because he says that God will bless people, but because he takes advantage of them. Gets them to send in money in exchange for empty promises of blessings through prayer.”
He really doesn’t.
I know. I was surprised too.
I’d never listened to Joel before I started this line of inquiry and, I assumed, like so many of you probably did, that he made his money exactly as just described. By being smarmy. Running scams. Promising to save souls if people sent in money or telling them that he’d heal their illnesses for a hundred dollars.
To give him a fair shake then, I sat down and listened to some of his sermons. I didn’t hear any of that. Granted, he’s got thousands of hours of sermons recorded so, I couldn’t have possibly listened to it all. It’s possible that I could’ve missed the “Money in Exchange for Souls” offers that he likes to make. Sure. Far as I can tell though, almost all of his “content” is free and he, personally, only makes money off the books he sells and speaking fees. No “money in exchange for blessings” that I could see. The man doesn’t own a jet. He doesn’t have a bunch of cars. It’s surprising how rarely he asks for money to be honest and, mostly, his show is just a consistent message of: “Trust God and he will turn even what you think is bad luck into something incredible. He can and will heal any disease. He can and will get anybody out of debt. He can and will help anyone achieve their dreams.”
Okay.
Now, I don’t want to gas up Joel Osteen.
That’s not the point here.
To be fair to all his critics, while he does seem to make his money in a more or less honest way (I should hope Substack would consider selling books ‘honest’), he has a lot of it, and maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe, you might say, a real Christian would give that wealth away to charity, feeding the homeless and so on, and I would tend to agree with you (although, again, being fair, maybe Joel does give away a lot, anonymously, as Jesus said to… we couldn’t possibly know). My point is not about the man so much but rather about his general message and why people hate it. Why Christians say “Health and Wealth” only through clenched teeth and a sneer.
Ah… but I hear the comments now.
“Yoshi!” They say to me. “Surely you understand that the promises of Christ are for the next life. For Heaven. The hereafter. Don’t you know that the flesh is bad, and so is most of the world, and, in fact, even music that’s too rhythmic might tempt one to Hell. Right now, today, in the body, we’re supposed to suffer. Happiness is for later. For Heaven. Pain. Grief. Struggle. That’s the way. The path of a righteous life is paved only with sorrow.”
…
But is it?
I think it’s a fair question to ask how a religion founded on the idea that God became flesh came to believe so strongly in the flesh’s intrinsic evil, or how a theology which claims its aim is Infinite Pleasure came to see all finite pleasure as bad. How did it come to find fault with every single thing people like doing, be it food, sex, music, dance, or video games? What’s going on there? What’s the psychology?
“Yoshi! You exaggerate.”
I don’t.
Eating is almost invariably bound up with sin? Really? And marital sex, part of a literal sacrament of the Church and the way in which new beings made in the image of God are made… can’t ever be “holy”?
Or, elsewhere, as the newly minted saint decrees…
…
And you know I just don’t see it.
This necessity to deny Life.
I truly don’t.
[Aside] I’m not picking on Rose here. I think he is a saint but I also think his formal canonization is going to cause a lot of young men a lot of problems. A lot of you were already “Not Normal” enough as it is and trying to emulate a man who thought sex, even with your wife!, was a problem to be repentant of, and spent his days ranting about The Antichrist’s relation to UFOs, isn’t going to help most of you become less autistic. [/Aside]
Seraphim is by no means alone in these attitudes. I’m not in the least bit cherry picking. One will find various shades and colors of the above in all Christian circles, be they Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. Truly I tell you my friends, No One in the World hates the phrase “Things are going to be okay” more than the pious. More than the would-be saint. No one in the world despises more the thought of someone going to Heaven without passing through Hell first. The idea that God is actually Good (in the normal sense of the word “good”) and loves you (in the normal sense of the word “loves”), and is actually going to take care of you… even *GASP* PROSPER YOU…
Well, the idea might as well have been one of the anathemas at Trent.
Maybe it was. Been a while since I read it.
God kind of hates you… you see?
That’s the message.
That’s the real message of such people, intended or not.
People rag on Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, and rightly so, but all this stuff still going on today is not so far removed from that. I mean, seriously… God’s going to drop you into an eternal hell for enjoying your dinner too much, or for masturbating, or because you had the audacity to sleep on a mattress when someone in India couldn’t afford rice?
Really?
That’s “Love”, is it?
One hundred and fifty years ago Nietzsche called Christianity a “life-negating cult”, and Christians have been seething ever since because on some level they know that he was right.
And, really, I think that’s why Joel Osteen is hated.
Because he’s not doing that. He’s affirming life, and not buying into the idea that wanting to be pretty, successful, wealthy, or healthy is bad.
I struggle to come up with another reason honestly. I mean, yes, like I said, one could certainly fault him for “having too much money” and living in a mansion but…
and,
so I have difficulty believing many of you are actually that fired up about that particular issue. No. I know for a fact that most of you have more than a few wealthy people you hold in high esteem, and many of them are even clergy. Let us not be hypocritical then. “Peter’s Pence” alone collected $68 million in donations last year, which, you know, most would consider that more than a “pence”.
And so, if it isn’t his wealth that draws the hatred then I struggle to come up with another reason for it other than people just really, really hate the message that God isn’t out to get you and make you bleed. I mean, what other reason could there be? The guy’s been married (by all accounts happily) to the same woman since 1987. He’s never been involved in any sort of sex scandal, even tangentially (which again… is more than a lot of the people you guys follow can say). He preaches a very conservative and, frankly, orthodox view of human sexuality (more so than most of those clergy who wear fancy hats) and he’s never once caved on the fact that he thinks homosexuality is a sin, even in front of the likes of Oprah. On top of all that, he’s probably gotten more people to confess Christ and be baptized than almost anyone in history.
…
So…
Why do Christians hate him?
I really think it just comes down to the fact that Joel doesn’t hate life and doesn’t think God is mean.
I honestly think that’s the reason.
People hate Joel Osteen because he doesn’t see the world as bad.
…
And I resonate with that.
I resonate with that a lot actually because in my (currently much more humble) career as a writer and speaker of religious things, I also receive a ton of flak anytime I spread any sort of optimism. Any time I tell anybody “Things are going to be okay.” People love Doomerism. They’re addicted to equating sorrow and negative thinking with personal piety. Spread any message of Love, Joy, or Hope that doesn’t twist those things into something unrecognizable... which doesn’t use “Love” the way an abusive Dad might before he beats you, and Christianity goes berserk. “No!” They shout. “No!” Screams the bitter chorus. “Christ said that he who would follow after him must die to himself! That he must carry his cross!”
…
sigh.
… … …
I published a note about this recently (follow me, btw). About how we’re always trying to define ourselves through struggle. How we believe… deep, deep, in our souls, that the only way to get better is by abuse. That pain, somehow, becomes health.
And it’s not just the religious who believe this, mind you.
No.
It’s everyone.
“I will be unhealthy unless I punish myself in the gym!”
“I will be fat unless I commit myself to starving!”
“I will get sick unless I am ever vigilant against disease! At war with nature through drugs, doctor visits, supplements, and hand sanitizer.”
“Ramping up my heart to 200 bpm on the regular is the only way to ensure it stays strong!”
“Hustle. Grind. Up at 4 A.M. or you’ll never get out of poverty.”
“Nobody will love me unless I make myself stick thin!”
“Nobody will love me unless I am able to provide.”
And so on.
Huh.
Isn’t it ironic?
People despise anything relating to "The Prosperity Gospel” because it preaches “Health and Wealth”, yet those are exactly the two things they spend almost all their time chasing.
…
And so, upon inspection, it turns out that nobody actually believes that Health, Wealth, and Prosperity are bad.
On the contrary. They chase after those things with all their heart. They treat them as the highest good.
What’s “bad”, actually… is the idea that you might get them for free.
That God might give them to you just because you asked. Because you prayed.
People hate that idea.
Who knows why.
My best guess is that they think that if something comes for free then you didn’t earn it and, by some bizarre twist of the ego’s logic, if you didn’t earn it, then it doesn’t count.
An absolute and total resistance to the idea of Grace.
After all, is this not what people say? Is not “You didn’t earn that!” a common line of attack? “You don’t deserve that,” our culture’s most damning critique?
How curious that the response is seldom, “I know I didn’t! Isn’t that amazing!? Praise God.”
No.
Everyone instead feels the need to “Justify” their happiness.
How toxic. How terrible.
… … …
…
But.
As I say, I know the criticism.
I hear it coming, even before I press “Publish.”
“Yoshi, you preach a false gospel. We reiterate again that Christ himself said that those who would follow him must deny themselves and take up their crosses. We must die to ourselves!”
Bah and humbug ye joyless masses! You ignorant peasants hoping in salvation through the fondling of so much kitsch. What do you want? What would you have me say? Yes! Absolutely! Christ has said this! Amen. But I tell you that you lot have killed nothing, and denied less! Do you imagine that asceticism is the death of anything? That the monk is engaged in denying himself and killing the passions? Are you so easily deceived by outward appearances? Would you accept me more if I went around barefoot in a robe? Think! Rather than denying the passions, is not a life of renunciation actually one totally devoted to them, only in the negative? A life built around ever and always not getting what you want? Who is more obsessed with hunger ye stoics? Who thinks more of food? The man who just finished his lunch or the one on his fifth day of fasting? Who is hornier? The man married to a woman that he loves or the monk on day four-hundred and seven of semen retention? What profit do you gain by all these voluntary sufferings? Has not Christ said that each day has enough trouble of its own? Why heap you then more troubles upon it? Is this not the most bourgeois lifestyle imaginable? A life so devoid of issues that you have to make some up? It’s all a trick you see! All of this but a cunning slip of The Ego. “I fasted for ten days!” “I went four months without orgasm!” “I got up at five every morning and said the rosary!” “I slept on the floor for Lent!”
…
And yet in all these things… all you’ve done is try to prove how much you’ve “died to yourself” by showing how much control you have over you.
A strange death, no?
One in which the self and its claims to accomplishment are left so very much alive…
…
No.
That sort of religion produces nothing but hypocrisy. Well, hypocrisy and guilt, which is why even your most recent saint, Dear Mr. Seraphim, could not escape the shadow of a sex scandal, even if he himself did not participate.
Because he renounced nothing. Because from his hovel in the wood he made a life more surely about himself than any mother in the world who’s even a little devoted to her kids. Because that sort of life is not the way. Because God actually is merciful, does love us, and absolutely wants us to be happy. Because the Joel Osteens of the world, the Evangelists, the Holy Rollers from the Okeechobee and all the other actual proletariat whom you despise because they gather in strip malls instead of ornate palaces, they have a wisdom all their own, and they are right to declare that God is Good without twisting the word “Good” all round to suit your guilt-filled fantasies.
…
…
Death Cab for Cutie wrote a song about the kind of Nihilism a religion which hates life produces, and I do wonder if indeed this sort of religious attitude is responsible for much of the rise in Atheism in the West.
In Catholic school, as vicious as Roman rule, I got my knuckles bruised, by a lady in black. And I held my tongue as she told me, "Son, Fear is the heart of love," so I never went back. [Chorus] If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied, Illuminate the "no"s on their vacancy signs, If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks, Then I'll follow you into the dark.
…
And isn’t that bleak?
But what else could be the result? The fruit of oh so many “pious” who believe that Fear is “Love.”
Yes. Better to walk into an eternal blackness than into the Heaven of a God like that.
But.
There is another way, and I do not think I twist the message of Jesus at all to say so.
Fundamentally, I believe The Fall is about wanting to exist “On our own.” To be branches which thrive and grow even though they are cut off from the vine. We have to “make it” you see. We have to “do it” ourselves. We suffer, largely, because we want to. Because God is “all in all”, and if something opposes us then we can know that we are certainly not apart of that Unity. We’re something different you see. Something unique. We want to have an existence all our own and so we define ourselves by suffering. Every story we tell is driven by The Problem. The Obstacle. The Plot. Without evil we don’t know how to exist. Tolkien himself could not resist but make The Devil the titular character of his epic. “Real Life” is everything that hurts you, you see. Everything that opposes you. Job. Illness. Debt. Taxes. War. Death.
That’s all “real.”
Believing in something else, believing in some other way… That’s fantasy. That’s…
…
… … I struggle to make you see. I struggle to find the words.
…
Listen…
A beautiful woman, yes. Gorgeous.
Is that a Virtue? To be beautiful?
“No.”
Why not?
“Because she didn’t do anything to become that way.”
Ah.
And your eyes? Are these a virtue?
“No.”
Why?
“Again, because virtues are things you do. Behaviors. Accomplishments. They are not simply things you have.”
… Really? Sight isn’t a virtue? To see? To bear witness to the incredible world of light, shadow, color, and shade?
… … …
And so you see, we think that being Beautiful, just because you were born that way… isn’t something to celebrate. In fact, maybe it’s even a source of shame. Something to hide. A privilege to check.
If you WORK AT IT THOUGH…
If you go to BodyPump. If you count your calories. If you get the hair and the surgery and the makeup… Then…
Then it’s okay to slay.
Because, “Beauty is pain.”
…
But is it?
Consider the lilies of the field. Are not flowers beautiful without pain? Are not trees and waterfalls? Are not tigers beautiful? And do they suffer to become so? Look at the muscles. The definition. The supple beauty of a form aligned perfectly with a function. “No pain, no gain.” Really? But my friend, this cat has never done a “rep” in its life. It has never once performed a single “set”.
And so, why does the rest of nature get to have its gifts for free? Why are we the only ones who feel we have to earn it?
…
And so I say to you, perhaps this is the self which must be crucified? The self that believes you have to earn it. The one that has no stomach for the free gifts of Grace?
Maybe that’s the self you must deny.
…
… … ..
You know, Christ’s passion lasted for less than 24 hours, yet it is all we focus on. The 29,000 hours before that of good health, friendship, and eating and drinking we pretend never happened, just as we pretend that John wrote “Jesus wept”, not because it was rare and noteworthy for him to do so, but because that was his default state. We make Christ out to be a man of sorrows. We never paint him happy. We never, ever, draw a smile on his face.
My friend…
Is it not you who has the fetish for suffering?
Why are you so intent on putting that on God?
Did it never occur to you to question why God required blood sacrifice? Why the lambs, the sheep, the oxen? Why, finally, the innocent carpenter himself?
Who asked for that?
Who asked for that really?
For whose ego was such a thing necessary to satisfy and are you quite… quite sure… that it was God’s?
This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice, and be glad in it.
I have had the great fortune to have a great earthly father. But it took me a long time to get over my self-hatred to realize that God is truly my Father and that He loves me. Like truly, deeply, more than anyone else can. And he's blessed me abundantly all of my life. I basically have never had health problems, I excelled in school and work... etc. etc. And I know that its all because of Him. And that's fine by me :)
I was truly ungrateful once and it was the one time I experienced some actual physical suffering - I've thanked God ever since for everything.
Anyways, thanks for another positive message, Yoshi.
Yoshi, sometimes you really frustrate me. And then other times, you make me cry at my desk on the 6th floor of my corporate office.