Colleen Carroll Campbell
From the Jan/Feb 2006 Issue of Lay Witness Magazine
Christians concerned about the increasing secularization of our culture need only glance at The New York Times best-seller list to remind themselves that America is still a religious nation at heart. How else to explain the ubiquity of religious titles that have electrified the publishing industry in recent years?
The most famous is The Purpose Driven Life, an evangelical manifesto written by California pastor Rick Warren that has sold more than 22 million copies since 2002. But Warren’s book has no shortage of competitors. From televangelist Joel Osteen’s Your Best Life Now to Christian nutritionist Jordan Rubin’s The Maker’s Diet, religious books have become hot commodities in a publishing industry known for its staunch secularism. Jesus may have warned His disciples that they cannot serve both God and money, but for their purposes, America’s publishers have learned that God and mammon mix quite well.
Many of the religious authors topping the nation’s best-seller lists are also learning that lesson. In their books and speeches, television shows and infomercials, these evangelists offer audiences a twenty-first century version of the “health-and wealth gospel” that first captivated Americans in the nineteenth century. And therein lies the secret to their success.
I recently stumbled on one of these infomercials while channel surfing the other night. A young man appeared onscreen, his teeth gleaming white, his skin tanned and toned. He had discovered the secret to good health, he said, and it was surprisingly simple: Just read the Bible.
The young man was Jordan Rubin, founder of a $40 million-a-year nutritional supplements company and author of The Maker’s Diet. He explained that the answers to our health problems can be found in God’s Word, which he calls “the most ancient of public health texts.” When confronted with illness or obesity, Rubin advises that we open the Good Book—preferably to Leviticus—and follow the directions.
Of course, Rubin also recommends his best-selling diet manual, which promises “a 40-day health experience that will change your life forever.” In it, he counsels readers to avoid pork and shellfish, soak up the sun, and guzzle cod-liver oil. “By returning to the ‘Manufacturer’s specifications,’” he writes, a biblical dieter can expect his body to “return to its ideal weight, shape, and strength levels—all without dangerous side effects!”
“I think that God gives us everything we need to be healthy physically, spiritually, mentally and emotionally and we’re just not taking advantage of it,” Rubin said in an interview with Beliefnet.com. “My goal is to see God’s people become a city on a hill again. A separate people that can be recognized from 20 feet away for their vibrant health and wellness, making the rest of the world jealous. . . . Life is a gift and health is the most important thing we have.”
Rubin’s message bears a striking resemblance to those preached by other best-selling Christian authors, including Joel Osteen, who has been labeled “the prosperity preacher” for his emphasis on the blessings of wealth and career success, and Joyce Meyer, who urges her audiences to name and claim their blessings from God. All subscribe to the underlying premise of the health-and-wealth gospel: the idea that God guarantees material blessings to believers who follow His rules.
This gospel has always had a special appeal to pragmatic Americans. We are hard workers and consummate consumers who expect a return for the goods we produce. If we serve God and meet His demands, we assume He should repay the favor by supplying what we want. And we assume that what we want—good health, financial security, etc.—is what God should want for us, too.
The trouble is, God does not always meet our expectations. Even in the good old days of Leviticus, prophets were persecuted while the wicked thrived. The canon of saints is a veritable “who’s who” of suffering souls, filled with men and women who endured poverty and physical and mental anguish. In our own lives, we know that our greatest trials often come just as we are working hardest to serve God. We may find ourselves saying with the saintly and long-suffering Teresa of Avila, “Lord, if this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!”
Job said as much when he underwent his many trials. In the Old Testament book that bears his name, Job is described by the Lord as one unique on all the earth, “blameless and upright, fearing God and avoiding evil” (Job 1:8). Yet Job suffers the loss of his property, the death of his children, and attacks on his health—not to mention the bad advice of his misguided friends. In the end, a dialogue with God leads Job to acknowledge what has eluded the amateur theologians around him: the truth that we cannot control God or fully understand His ways this side of eternity.
“I know that you can do all things,” Job concludes at the end of his ordeal, “and that no purpose of yours can be hindered. I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know . . . Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42: 2–6).
God’s ways are not our own, and perhaps we should be grateful for that. A god who thought like us would never have taken on our frail human condition and suffered the agony of crucifixion to save our souls. The pragmatic god of the prosperity gospel would have taken one look at our selfishness and inconstancy and told us to save ourselves. The health-and-wealth gospel making a comeback today tempts us to worship a false god whose decisions we control. We should refuse to bow down to that idol and focus instead on entrusting ourselves completely to the will of the true God. His extravagant, self-emptying love is blessing enough for us.
Colleen Carroll Campbell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a research institution based in Washington, DC. Author of The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy, Campbell has served as a speechwriter to President George W. Bush and as a commentator on religion, politics, and culture on FOX News, EWTN, and PBS. She speaks to audiences across America. To learn more about her work, visit her website at http://www.colleen-campbell.com/.
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