Settling for Mud Pies

What's Missing?

Many of today's preachers make appeals that focus on fulfilling human desires -- especially health, wealth, and happiness.  But other things, too, like peace of mind, joy, satisfaction, self-esteem, power, and victory.  It's not that these things are always wrong in themselves.  Indeed, they are often gifts of God.  However, it is difficult to resist the impression that there are preachers who have set their sights too low.

C.S. Lewis gave us the following insight:

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.  We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.

Many preachers, reflecting a common emphasis in modern evangelicalism generally, are settling for "mud pies" because they "cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday by the sea."  These preachers appeal to our selfish instincts, which may be momentarily satisfied by promises of success, unfailing happiness, and good times, when all the while our deepest needs, our truest needs -- for eternal love and acceptance in a world where performance is usually a prerequisite for acceptance, for certainty in the midst of doubt, and for purpose in a period of despair -- go untouched.

Our desires are too weak if we are simply making our own comfort and success our focus, while ignoring the larger issues.  Our desires should be broader, transcending our self-centredness.  We are far too easily pleased!  

Something is missing.  Let's discover the identity of that missing element.  The particular type of message many media preachers communicate has come to be known as the "Health and Wealth Gospel."  Prosperity teaching abounds on their television programs as well as in their written material.  One statement summarizes the technique used:  "God's got it, I can have it, and by faith I'm going to get it."  

We see additional examples in titles such as Kenneth E. Hagin's pamphlet, "How to Write Your Own Ticket with God" and Robert Tilton's magazine, Signs, Wonders, and Miracles of Faith, in which testimonials of financial and physical success abound.  Or in Kenneth Copeland's brochures "God's Will is Health" and "God's Will is Prosperity"  Oral Roberts promises people on his mailing list "Prosperity Miracles That Are Within Fingertip Reach of Your Faith," and his most recent book to date is titled How I Learned Jesus Was Not Poor.  Peter Popoff invites his followers to wash with an "anointed" sponge and then to send a monetary gift to his ministry.  This "will unlock heaven's storehouse of blessings for you."

We have seen responses to such teachings in Bruce Barron's The Health and Wealth Gospel and Gordon Fee's The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospel   Yet whether or not the Health and Wealth teachings are true, they do reduce life to a tragically narrow and trivial focus, meeting only surface needs.  They ignore a larger vision of reality.  Christians must know truth about all areas of life and must develop a character that is able to make commitments to people, the community, and the nation outside themselves.  These teachings promise a satisfaction of our desires.  But we need to ask, "Are these desires too weak?  Are they too trivial? Are we far too easily pleased?"

-- Art Lindsley


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