| | The Smiling Preacher Nearly everyone in the western hemisphere has seen the charming face of The Smiling Preacher. His recognizable grin and melodic voice are icons themselves. It has become almost impossible to ignore the pastor/motivational speaker/guru as his church services air regularly on cable/satellite television, his best-selling self-help book is EVERYWHERE, he was dubbed one of the 20 most intriguing people of 2006 by Barbara Walters, and almost everyone in the evangelical blogsphere has posted on this phenomenon, as I am calling him. So we can't help from asking, who is this guy? Who is Joel Osteen? 1. He is a happy individual. In a recently televised service, Joel recounted feelings he had while his father (the former orthodox pastor of Lakewood, where Joel is now pastor) was battling cancer. Though I do not doubt the legitimacy of Joel's feelings in this time, I do have problems with how Joel described this time. It was as if the dark wasn't really that dark. The gloom wasn't that gloomy. The despair was more like, "well this sucks, but ultimately everyone still wins with my dad's death, because God has a sovereign cosmic plan that brings good in every circumstance." But read through any text written out of Israel's slavery in Egypt or their Babylonian captivity and you get the impression that Israel is the loser in this situation. And in the Egypt they had done nothing to deserve the suffering. The question was then, does God care? Does he even notice the plight of this bottom-dwelling people? The answer is yes, and he will deliver them in his time. And the question we OUGHT to ask in times where good people suffer at the hands of others or seemingly at the hand of God is the same. We should still ask, we should still cry out, "Do you care?" rather than deny the legitimacy of our suffering and the horrible nature of what we're going through. And so I question how authentic a pastor or anyone is when they only dwell on happy feelings or the overall good of a situation rather than obvious evil and grief that stares us in the face. 2. He is a guru; he is a preacher for the masses. In a sense, Joel Osteen takes the stereotype of the American protestant preacher/know-it-all and uses it to his advantage. It seems like the American preacher carries something quite amazing into the pulpit: omniscience. God knows all, and apparently so do his messengers. And because knowledge is power, preachers possess an amazing authority over their congregations. Joel exploits this. He has the answer not only to your spiritual problems, but your relational, economic, and social problems as well. And the answer is the same for every person and every problem: just believe and will yourself to the life God wants for you (which is synonymous with the pain-free, material-rich life you want). If this is not a message of self-actualization, I’m not sure what it is. For Joel, God has put your destiny in your hands. You control if you succeed or fail, which hinges on whether you allow the negative influences to weigh you down, or whether you choose to rise above them yourself. Wait, rise above them myself? I thought Jesus was responsible for raising us up? Not for Joel. Apparently the miracles where Jesus told the lame to get up and walk should be attributed to the lame. Jesus was telling them the power was inside them and they could overcome any physical or spiritual crisis through sheer will power. It’s not hard to see, then, why Joel appeals to the masses. By treating the problems of people as simple stepping stones and telling them everything they want is dangling on the tree right above them, Joel sells a product that is too hard to pass up. And as the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. When I say “masses”, I mean primarily the uneducated, but there is also a strong contingency of educated folk that have bought into his message. Why are these two groups jumping on the Joel-train? I believe it’s because neither group has been shown a thorough portrait of the God revealed in the Bible (which is an indictment on evangelical leaders). In this way, both groups are uneducated, ignorant, and at a disadvantage. By way of comparison, we know that the uneducated are the biggest victims of the immediate effects of the lottery, because they purchase many tickets hoping to end their present suffering while not realizing their chances of winning are infinitesimal. I believe those buying into Joel’s message are just as uninformed about the Bible as the uneducated are about their chances of winning the lottery. What makes matters worse is that because preachers are considered “experts”, those who have perhaps heard of a God different than Joel’s, will go against their conscience by telling themselves, “he’s an expert; how can I go wrong by listening to the expert?” And the guru/expert continues to work his magic over the spellbound crowd. 3. He’s not only the president and CEO, he’s also a client. The parts of the show (I mean service) that I enjoyed the most were when Joel described times when he and his wife did not have much, but they were optimistic about what God wanted to do in their lives. To use Joel’s words, they “waited expectantly.” For Joel, this meant they made plans as if things were going to change. (Aside: I especially enjoyed the application that husbands should make plans for their 25th and 50th wedding anniversaries now, rather than waiting to see if they marriage worked out. And by plans he meant picking a destination, hotel, etc.) And as God would have it (tongue-in-cheek), things did work out for Joel and Mrs. Joel. So, he is a living testimony of this miracle drug. The problem is that everyone does not grow up the son of a Pastor of a church with thousands of members. Everyone does not possess the skills of leadership, marketing, and public speaking. Everyone does not walk accidentally into a pastorate of a large, growing church. So, it’s misleading to claim that everyone can have the same measures of success by doing the same “things” Joel did. It’s also misleading to say everyone can have the same types of success that Joel has had in the way of wealth, fame, or prestige. The rags-to-riches stories, or the average Joe-to-well-known pastor stories are simply isolated stories in American history. They are not the story of the majority of Americans. Though we all want to believe that we can pull ourselves up by the bootstraps, we know there are insurmountable obstacles that truly stand in our way at times. Though I’ve shown how Joel is a one-dimensional figure that focuses only on the good half of the story, the good feelings, the good lesson in each situation, and that he is a guru/preacher for the masses because he possesses a spell-bounding authority over educated and uneducated people, and that he claims to be living proof of his message even though his story is one of extremely favorable circumstances, I also want to point out that I think his general message is faulty and costly. His message is faulty in a few ways. First, it is unorthodox. As Boenhoeffer realized, the cost of discipleship means that when Christ calls us, he bids us to come and die. That means we die to our selfish ambitions, our agenda for our lives, and our efforts to purchase salvation by our works. Osteen leaves out this very critical aspect called “discipleship” in his teaching. Though he utters the word, it has a very different meaning for him. He is also unorthodox in his Christology. Christ is not the center of Joel’s theology. In fact, I’m not sure where he fits in. Perhaps he is essential to securing our way to heaven, but heaven is just another benefit in addition to the ones we have on earth as his followers. Besides being unorthodox, Joel’s message is also bad psychologically and philosophically. What kind of clinical counselor asks you to only dwell on good memories or feelings? The counselor knows that deep hurt and deep pain require deep therapy. By moving on to the future without dealing with the past, the person is set up for one giant meltdown and years of trauma when things don’t work out. Also, what kind of self-respecting person allows another person to tell them why their lives are messed up without first critically examining their own experiences? Philosophically, Joel is a reductionist, meaning he reduces the problem, though it shouldn’t be reduced. It’s as simple as saying, “you have two options” when you really have ten, and then explaining how one of the two options isn’t going to work out. That’s bad. Finally, Joel’s message is costly. I’m not talking about the monetary cost of buying his book and tapes or giving to his ministry. Rather, I mean that those who believe the message are buying into something. They put their feelings, ambitions, and plans into Joel’s message. When they realize that this message will not help them cope with their problems, that it doesn’t work for everybody, that God really doesn’t want to take away all the pain and give them more money instead, they will become emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually bankrupt. And we as Christian leaders must be ready to lift them up, to put something back into them. Until then, we get say that his message is faulty and costly, but we must wait until they see this for themselves. |
