SPECIAL HOLIDAY BOOK REVIEW

HEALTH, WEALTH AND HAPPINESS: Has the Prosperity Gospel Overshadowed the Gospel of Christ? by David W. Jones and Russell S. Woodbridge

Kregel Publications, 200p.

I am a Seminary student, and i am also a Sunday School teacher. The book which we are studying in our Sunday School is by Joyce Meyer--one of the preachers which Seminary professors David W. Jones and Russell S. Woodbridge decry in their book Health, Wealth and Happiness. Therefore, i must, in the interest of subjectivity, say that i began this book with a twinge of bias.
On first reading, the book seems like a bitter response to a fast-growing movement, rather than a scholarly treatise on what might be an heretical doctrine. Today, as we celebrate a Pagan holiday -turned -Christian holy day, it somehow seems appropriate that we discuss a Christian principle (sowing and reaping) which is quickly becoming a (dare i say it) Pagan principle.
Jones and Woodbridge go on for pages about how Joel Osteen, TD Jakes, Joyce Meyer and many others are essentially heretics based on their prosperity preaching, but this reader is left with the question does God want me to be healthy and/or wealthy and/or happy based on the revelation of scripture?
What did Jesus really mean when he said "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10, KJV)?
What does that look like in the 21st Century North America?
The authors make it clear and even explictly state that "[t]he possession or lack of material goods is not commended or condemned anywhere in Scripture, per se"(130), yet they spend about 75% of their book castigating those whose interpretation of scripture differs with theirs. For every text, i have been taught both by my pastor and my Seminary professors, there is a pretext and a context, and for Jones and Woodbridge, both appear to be implied or understood rather than discussed. The authors' neglect of building their own foundation in favor of tearing down the Prosperity Gospel's adherents foundation is my main problem with this work.
Perhaps the SWOT model would have better served what appears to have been the authors' purpose. They could have poointed out that there is (and in fact, must be) some credence to a principle which is taught in many of the largest church bodies in the richest nation on the planet. Large numbers of coherents do not a truth make, but one cannot fool all the people all the time. Only on the last page of this work do the authors acknowledge what they spend the majority of the book attempting to prove; that the prosperity gospel is founded on a principle. Think of it this way: the law of gravity was used to prove that one can jump off the Empire State building to his demise and also to support the law of aerodynamics. A similar dichotomy is present with the law of sowing and reaping. The Weakness is in the character of the delivery. One should not sow in order to reap; he sows becuase he has been sown into. As Jesus said in his sermon on the mount and later in Revelation, we are at best good ground. God is the reaper. Here, the Opportunity to present the true and pure Gospel arises. That ture Gospel is that any debt we might owe was paid on a day like today by a man who owed no one anything but to love them. The ultimate Threat is that the Body of Christ, like Messrs. Jones and Woodbridge would be so busy reacting to a false Gospel that they would not be "pro" acting the true Gospel.