Mette Ivie Harrison is a well-known mystery and young-adult novelist and frequent guest here. She is the author of The Book of Laman, published by BCC Press.
Most Mormons have no idea what the “prosperity gospel” is, and if you point them to typical TV evangelicals, they insist that Mormonism is nothing like that. Yet, there are far too frequent occasions when I find myself biting my tongue about something a fellow Mormon says, either casually, at a wedding or other social event, or on the stand during a talk, that translates into precisely that: prosperity gospel.
For the sake of clarity, let me give a useful definition of “prosperity gospel:” a modern version of the gospel in which those who follow God in strict obedience are given blessings of wealth, health, and power.
Yes, when you see people being healed publicly on a stage, that is prosperity gospel. When you see a TV evangelist telling you to send him money so he can buy a jet because God will bless you in return—offering many examples of those who have received monetary blessings after such giving—that is prosperity gospel.
But it’s also prosperity gospel when at church, we talk about paying tithing first, before paying for rent or food for our children, because God will bless us with monetary blessings for our obedience. I mean, it does sometimes happen. But I don’t think it’s a rational strategy in life to count on it. And I do think it sounds like blasphemy to insist that God will bless us in one particular way because that’s what we want. God isn’t a vending machine. You don’t put obedience in and get money out.
It’s prosperity gospel when we tell young people to serve missions because they will get very specific blessings, among them a beautiful spouse or more knowledge to do well in college, or physical strength if they’re an athlete and are taking two years off. It’s not that I’m denying that God gives blessings to missionaries. I absolutely believe that God does. I just don’t see that we can command God in what kind of blessings God gives us, and to even jokingly suggest that a spouse is a blessing in this way turns people into an exchange that makes me very uncomfortable.
Let’s take a step back and ask this: if you are a returned missionary and marry a wonderful person, that’s a blessing from your mission? But what if your spouse gets a chronic illness? Or cancer? Or dies in a car accident? Or cheats on you and you end up divorced? People will say they see the hand of God in this, as well. And yes, we can find meaning and truth and the mercy of God in the good and bad that happens in our lives.
But if we expect that God blesses us in particular ways, and then we end up not getting those specific blessings, do we lose faith? I think that the best way to inoculate ourselves against this kind of tragic hurt is to never pretend in the first place that all blessings look like new cars and beautiful/handsome spouses. Or to practice from the beginning thanking God for all that has happened, for life itself, however difficult, and not to demand in prayer a laundry list of things that would make our lives easier (which, honestly, is what I did for many years into my adulthood).
As for health as a gift of God to those who are obedient, this is part of parcel of American society, in which health care is something that we pay for, rather than are given as a right. And for those who can’t afford to pay for their own care, it’s their fault. It’s their fault when they die of not being able to afford insulin for their diabetes or when they die because they can’t afford to pay for chemo therapy or for a transplant or for mental health care. Please, let’s do better within the church. Let’s not see those who are chronically ill as also spiritually ill. (There’s also no need to do the reverse, and automatically assume that they are “blessed.”)
One of my sisters has a chronic illness and she found out years ago that her youngest son also had a chronic illness. Some well-meaning sister in her ward made a comment about her being so good at dealing with illness that this was the hand of God, choosing someone who would really understand to care for a sick child. My sister was pretty dismissive of the comment, but it has bothered her off and on for years, the idea that God “chose” her to suffer more because she was already suffering and was good at it. What kind of a God does that?
My understanding of God has changed a lot as I have suffered the loss of a child and a faith crisis. It has changed as I have seen more and more of the evil in the world and have found it insufficient to simply say, “But the plan of happiness.” I have come to believe that we all have a responsibility to make the gospel what we want it to be. I don’t believe that God sends money or anything else to me because I follow church teachings. I also don’t believe that blessings are taken away from those who have never heard the gospel or who have rejected it for various reasons. If we are to find happiness, it is in building the kingdom of God, not waiting for God to send it to us as a blessing.
*image via Flickr.