The No Kool Aid Zone

Loving Joel Osteen

Posted by Byron February 8, 2005 at 10:45 am
Filed Under Life as a Jesus-follower | 9 Comments |

I love Joel Osteen. I mean that with all sincerity. I am also involved in “outing” Joel Osteen. Can both of those things be true?

Of course they can…but in our syrupy, sentimental, sugary-sweet version of Christianity, we have so redefined “love” as to mean, effectively, its opposite at times.

I love Joel Osteen by

1. Praying for him. I have been convicted that I should pray for this man–and I have, and I do. I pray that he, having the platform that he does, will begin to use it to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, instead of the self-help platitudes that only serve to apply Band-Aids to terminal problems (sin)–what a wonderful opportunity has been afforded him! I pray that a brother who “has his ear”, likely someone from a more Pentecostal branch of Christianity than I, will lovingly come alongside Joel and teach him the error of his ways, pointing him to the absolute necessity of preaching the whole gospel, not just a truncated version. I pray that through some venue, he will receive sound theological training, something which he clearly lacks, not that seminary alone prepares a man to minister God’s truth (it certainly does not), but it is reckless for a man to wield the position and power that he does and be unable to articulate fundamental truth. I honestly assume, giving him the benefit of the doubt, that he is unable, for that is a benign reading; if he is able, but unwilling, then this reveals him as a more sinister character.

2. Refusing to judge his heart. As I have made clear in my posts–and as I’d challenge all “Osteen-outers” to do in theirs–I do not in any way presume to know his heart–one way or the other. He may very, very well be a born-again, blood-bought brother in Jesus Christ; in fact, I will operate under that assumption. With all my heart, I hope this to be the case. At any rate, I am totally unqualified to judge his relationship with God or lack thereof–totally.

3. Judging his message, not his motives. Again, I don’t presume to know what makes him “tick”. What I can do–and what, in the name of discernment, I must do–is to judge the message that he is delivering. He has written Your Best Life Now, a book which, as its title suggests, purports to help individuals live life to the fullest. The writing of a book by this title is a noble pursuit! The question is, does this book give people the tools to actually do what it purports to do? The Christian answer to this question is wrapped up in the gospel of Jesus Christ, its acceptance and its outworking in the life of the believer. Any “answer” put forward by a Christian which does not put the saving gospel of Jesus front and center is a sub-Christian “answer”. Unfortunately, this is the case with this book. It is not unloving to say that. What would be “unloving” would be to say nothing, to allow false teaching about these core issues to go unchallenged, to consign the readers of this book, and the listeners to Mr. Osteen’s messages, to persist in the belief that what they were receiving was the gospel of Christ, when in fact it is not. That would be a supremely unloving act, toward both the listeners/readers, and toward Mr. Osteen himself.

Some have asked, “why are you so concerned with what this man preaches? Why does it matter to you?” To this, there is a simple answer: God’s glory matters. Eternity matters. People matter. We “out” Joel Osteen–in fact, it is his false message that we “out” more than him–for the same reason that the firemen rushed into the Twin Towers on 9/11: there is imminent danger, in this case, to the eternal souls of men and women who might believe Osteen’s message and think that they have come to Christ, when in fact they have not. It would have been unloving for the NYFD and NYPD to sit in a pub around the corner and watch the events unfold on TV as they nursed a beer, they who understood the problem, were equipped, and had the ability to do something about it. Similarly, it would be unloving of us to stand idly by while people are led astray.