God and the Goodies

Shortly after the initial furor died down over Pat Robertson's confident pronouncements about the causes of Haiti's misfortune, Ann pointed me to an insightful article.  In it, the author pinpointed some of the underlying assumptions implicit in Robertson's thinking which seem to still have traction among American Christianity.  These assumptions go the heart of our cultural heresies about faith and "blessing."

What Robertson presumes is that misfortune constitutes divine rejection.  Somehow or another, the fact that Haiti has suffered poverty and calamity is evidence to him of their lack of favor with God.  While there is evidence God dealt with Israel this way under the Old Covenant, it is hard to project that belief into New Testament theology.  If this line of thinking is accurate, surely Jesus was cursed for hanging on a tree.  Paul must have been a terrible liar to suffer such misfortune at God hands.  In fact, pretty much every apostle was apparently a disobedient soul.  Only John managed to escape violent death.

If this line of thinking were only found in televangelists who are easily lampooned, it would be one thing.  But the largest church in America is pastored by a man with similar beliefs.  In fact, American 'Christians' seem particularly drawn to this way of thinking about the life of faith.  Particularly haunting is the realization of Francis Chan, who concluded that if he and Jesus had a church in the same town, his congregation would be larger.  That's not a good thing.

Perhaps there is the soft underbelly of my own way of looking at this.  Like many preachers, I tend to associate success in church with growth and numbers.  And while we don't need to be doing things poorly just to keep people from coming; perhaps having happy, affluent members coming by the droves to houses of worship isn't necessarily always a good thing?