Appealing to your fallen human nature heresy: example: "God wants you RICH!"

First example: Prosperity doctrine

This is the most obvious facet of a raft of false doctrines which are common in some churches. The personal appeal is that it pretends that lust for this world’s wealth and goods is a Christian virtue. Our old human nature jumps for joy at that! The church-building appeal is that we sinners will flock to a church where this is preached. An old man in my first church asked a keen young convert how they could get more young people to come. “easy!” replied the young believer, “A pig on a spit and a keg of beer will get them in – of course it won’t make them Christians!” If you want to build a big church or a great “ministry” preaching what is attractive to sinful human nature is a winner. So, no wonder it is widespread and no wonder preachers with multi-million dollar empires proclaim these false teachings.

If you come at these teachings shielded by what Jesus said about being his follower and by what other parts of the Bible say about the Christian life, you will likely see through them without me or anyone having to join the dots.

What did Jesus say? A good one-liner to remember is Matthew 6.24

“You cannot serve both God and money.”

You remember the parable he told about preaching the Gospel being like a farmer throwing seed over his field (Luke 8.4-15). When he explained it to his disciples he described one class of convert this way:

¹⁴ The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. 

Jesus also said in Matthew 6

   ¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

And in Luke 12.15:

Then he (Jesus) said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

Jesus is trying to cure us from thinking our life consists in the abundance of our possessions, stop us from pursuing earthly treasures, warn us that chasing after this life’s riches or pleasures will choke us spiritually and bluntly that we must chose between serving God or Money: it cannot be both. So if we are seeking Jesus, we need to run away from anyone who is appealing to our old nature’s love of money or dependence on material things.

This false teaching was a problem from early times. Are two warnings in the New Testament.

1 Timothy 6.5 “ … people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.”

1 Timothy 6.9 “⁹ Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰ For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

Hebrews 13.5 “ ⁵ Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, …”

The Bible has plenty more to say along the same lines, but I hope that is enough to warn you that anyone who is playing on your old human nature’s love of money is leading you astray.

Having re-awakened your old human nature and its lust for money, they may be content to merely have that as the bait to bring you into their little empire. In this case their message will be some variation on “God wants you rich” buy my DVD lecture series, buy my books, or even just come to my church, and you will discover how to become wealthy. But generally they want lots of your money. The usual ploy is to persuade you that giving it to them you are just “investing” it and you will get as dividend from God what you and they love most: money.

They will make it sound pious. They do make frequent use of “invest” because that appeals well to our old nature, but they will also call your payment to them “seed” or even “seed faith” to allude to biblical motifs.

They will dress it up in Bible verses, but ultimately they want you to believe that God will give you back umpteen times more money than you give them. They are just putting a business proposition to you and appealing to your greed. Of course confidence tricksters the world over succeed by appealing to people’s greed: it is how they work. But those tricksters only steal people’s money, these “Christian” tricksters choke the spiritual life out of their victims as well!