Wednesday, September 23, 2009

here here, Mahatma!

I was reading about the Prosperity Gospel (or prosperity theology) this morning and came across this quote from Gandhi:

"I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. The materialism of affluent Christian countries appears to contradict the claims of Jesus Christ that says it's not possible to worship both Mammon and God at the same time."

I was just about to make fun of Joel and Victoria Osteen (who wholeheartedly endorse prosperity theology), but I'll try to put the classic "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" into practice. I had a sweet picture and some scathing words ready to go, but all I will say about them is I could not disagree more with their theology.

Thinking a lot about both this and living a good story....

3 comments:

DP said...

Doesn't matter if it follows Christ.
So long as it sells books.

Think of all the people who profit off of people's obsession with "the end times." Are they Theologically sound, of course not, but it sells.

Selling Jesus. Sigh.

But, I like to know my enemy, so maybe I'll read their writing!

Anonymous said...

I love this quote by Ghandi. My pet peeve is people who think that all Christians are right wing conservative capitalists!
Eric Dueck

James Kingsley said...

bravo on holding back there bing daddy..on that note, this is a beauty from seth godin on positive vs. negative thinking:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/the-problem-with-positive-thinking.html