Feeling

There is often much enthusiasm surrounding a T.V. ministry.  Some of the T.V. ministries make great appeals to the emotions and stir up rousing sentiments but deny the importance of the mind.  Now feelings are not wrong.  Feelings of love, joy, peace, and many other responses are all gifts from God.  He created our capacity to feel, and above all He created us with a capacity to enjoy Him.  One important Christian catechism asks, "What is man's chief end?"  and answers "To glorify God and enjoy Him forever."  So we see that enjoyment of God is one of the central purposes of our creation.  God also created us to enjoy relationships with other creatures and to enjoy the natural world.  The problem with the message of many televangelists is not their appeal to desires or feelings; the problem is that they settle for "mud pies in the slum" rather than "a holiday at the sea."  They, along with their followers, are far too easily pleased.

Even if we do gain perfect health and perfect wealth and achieve the power to accomplish many miracles, we can still lack the key to ultimate satisfaction:  knowing God.  Augustine once said, "Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee," not, "until we find our rest in miracles," or, "in prosperity," or "in great feelings," but in God Himself.  All humans have a spiritual hunger that only God Himself can satisfy.

Even an atheist, Franz Kafka, recognized the importance of satisfying his own spiritual hunger.  In one short story, The Hunger Artist, he summed up his thoughts.  He wanted his other works burned but insisted that this one story be saved.

Please read the following more than once.

In a typically bizarre fashion, Kafka has the hunger artist making his living by professional fasting.  He is the practitioner of a once venerated profession.  Seated on straw in his small barred cage, he is marveled at by throngs of people.  After forty days, his fasts were terminated in triumph.  His manager would make a speech, the band would play, and one of the ladies would lead him staggering in his weakened state out of the cage.  

However, the day arrived when fasting was no longer understood or appreciated by the people.  He lost his manager and had to join a circus.  His cage was placed next to the animals.  He became depressed by the smell, the restlessness of the animals at night, the raw flesh carried past him and the roaring at feeding time.  The people barely glanced at him in their hurry to see the animals.  Even the circus attendants failed to limit his fast by counting the days.  Finally, he was discovered lying in the straw, and in his dying breaths he told his secret:  "I have to fast," he whispered.  "I can't help it.  I couldn't find the food I liked.  If I had found it, believe me, I should have made no fuss and stuffed myself like you or anyone else."  

Kafka was a writer of parables.  The parable of the hunger artist is not about physical hunger but about spiritual hunger.  Kafka was the hunger artist, and he realized he was starving to death spiritually, but he couldn't find any food he liked.  

There is a hunger within us all that only God can satisfy.  That's what C.S. Lewis meant when he said, "We are halfhearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us."  The meeting of those material desires is not wrong in its proper context.  Yet we can be far too easily pleased.  The followers of these preachers are gorging themselves on junk food.  It is attractive.  It is sweet.  It tastes good.  But it does not satisfy, and it ends up destroying its host.  Many preachers today appeal to our desires for well-being but fail to emphasis (or perhaps fail even to see) the real need.  Christians need the knowledge of a just, holy and merciful God.  We need to know God's character and His attributes.  It is not that we desire too much.  We are not asking for too much when we demand health, wealth, and happiness, but too little!  Some preachers are passionate about things that can only bring partial satisfaction.  They appeal to halfheartedness when infinite joy is offered.  They call us to settle for "mud pies in a slum" because they cannot imagine what is meant by "a holiday at the sea."


For more information on Victory Churches and the Faith Movement, go to the Reference Library.  Click on any book title to get a brief overview of the book.  All books on the list are available through www.amazon.com. 

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


For more information on Victory Churches and the Faith Movement, go to the Reference Library.  Click on any book title to get a brief overview of the book.  All books on the list are available through www.amazon.com.