The No Kool Aid Zone

This post might sound like piling on. It might sound like I’ve got a vendetta. Some might ascribe my reason for writing to a motive of jealousy, or envy, or pride. As the Lord is my witness, I really don’t mean to sound mean, ugly, prideful, or judgmental; none of those are my purpose. The point of this post is not character assassination.

To bolster that point, let me say a few positive things about Joel Osteen. First, I am not in any way, shape, or form questioning Joel Osteen’s salvation. I have no reason to do that, and I certainly have no qualifications to do that. Second, I honestly believe that his intent is to try to help people; I am not here questioning his motives. Third, I feel certain that there will be people in Heaven who have been impacted by his ministry at Lakewood Church, whose connection to the church under his pastorate have led them to come to faith in Christ. No argument whatever. Finally, he genuinely seems like a nice guy, a warm, caring individual, a guy that probably has the gift of encouragement and uses it well. I think I’d like spending an afternoon in his presence—well, let me qualify that by saying that I’d enjoy an afternoon in his presence were he not attempting to do something that he is so obviously not cut out to do…

I write this post to reiterate one point, and that is this: Joel Osteen cannot accurately be described as a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Further, from everything that I have seen of his teaching and preaching, he is no more qualified to preach the gospel than I am qualified to pilot the space shuttle.

This is not meant as a gratuitous pot shot, as I said, but is said in response to the fact that this past Sunday evening, after watching the New Hampshire NASCAR race at my webbie dude’s place, I was flipping the channels and happened upon the last 8-10 minutes of Joel’s latest sermon, entitled, “Keeping Yourself Happy”. Watching these last few minutes made me want to watch the entire sermon, which I was able to do online, for this simple reason: I simply could not believe, my past criticism of Joel notwithstanding, that a sermon could be as poor in its entirety as it was in the last 10 minutes. But, alas, it was.

I wrote down some of the statements he made during this “sermon”, and I reproduce them, verbatim, below:

God does not want you to sacrifice your happiness to keep somebody else happy

I had to do what I felt good about; I had to follow my own heart…in the end you’ve got to follow your own heart

There was exactly one Scripture verse referenced; it was Song of Solomon 1:6, quoted out of context, misinterpreted, and moved on from, all in the space of 20 seconds or so, give or take; that’s it as far as the Bible was concerned (if you don’t count Osteen’s every-week mantra—actually, a pretty good one, one that his daddy, John Osteen, initiated—about “this is my Bible: I am what it says I am; I can do what it says I can do, etc.). After speaking the mantra, Joel proceeded for the next 30 minutes to almost totally ignore the Bible.

Nowhere was Jesus. Nowhere was the Spirit. Nowhere was God, save for generic references. What was said instead amounted to exactly the same thing you’d get at an Anthony Robbins self-help seminar, stories and aphorisms all designed to drive home the point of his one-point talk: “don’t let other people’s expectations of you keep you from maintaining your own happiness” (that’s my version of the one point he was trying to make).

Contrast this with the things I’ve been reading over time from the memoirs of Robert Murray McCheyne. McCheyne lived and died in the early 19th-century, dying actually at the age of 29, but impacting generations through his depth of devotion to Christ. I found myself wondering what would happen if we could borrow Bill and Ted’s time machine and transport McCheyne, D.L. Moody, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Billy Sunday, and the like right into the service at Lakewood Church to hear Joel Osteen talk about “Keeping Yourself Happy”. Would any of them come away believing that what they had heard could accurately be described as a sermon, or that the smiling young man delivering that “sermon” could be classified as a “preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ”? Let’s put it this way: if Joel Osteen is preaching the gospel, then I’m not—nor is John MacArthur, or Alistair Begg, or R.C. Sproul, or Chuck Smith, or any of the men of God that stand in their pulpits every week preaching to crowds that range from tens to thousands, but who understand that our happiness is not God’s particular concern, but that our holiness in Jesus is of vital interest to Him.

To the degree that 21st-century American Christian faith seeks to emulate Joel Osteen, we will lose the gospel. God help us if we go down that path.

Suggested Reading:

In the Footsteps of Marco Polo: A Companion to the Public Television Film

Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer (Travelers' Tales Guides)

The NFL Gameday Cookbook