Really great piece

[enigmaticblues]

I've had issues in the past with the whole concept of the prosperity or "health and wealth" gospel, and this piece gives a good reason why. It's a wonderful meditation on death, the damage that the prosperity gospel does, and how it all fits together

Comments

[ayinhara]

I read the article from which you extracted the text. I almost sent it to you, but in.the end did not.

[enigmaticblues]

It was a really good piece.

[elisi]

Thank you for the link. I can't quite wrap my head around it, but then I'm Catholic so I come from the opposite side of the spectrum.

It's just... I want them all to read Dante. Which is rather unhelpful.

[enigmaticblues]

The Left Behind series was very popular when I started grad school, and I had several professors who were absolutely disgusted by the theology. One of my profs, who was half-Guatemalan, and had seen the death squads, remarked, "Only American Christians would invent a theology that would allow the faithful to escape suffering." And he's right. It's a holier-than-thou attitude that I find incredibly harmful, because it means that folks with serious physical and mental health problems sweep it under the rug rather than admit they need help and that their lives aren't perfect.

[lady_sybyl]

Also being a Catholic, I'd never heard of 'prosperity gospel' before but after looking it up, it seems to me like a pretty drastic perversion of Christianity. That is an excellent piece and I especially like the opening line "The prosperity gospel has taken a religion based on the contemplation of a dying man and stripped it of its call to surrender all." Seems to encapsulate the problems I have with that philosophy perfectly.

[enigmaticblues]

It is definitely a perversion of Christianity.