is your time.” Joyce says to the camera, “You’re going to have a great time, and I can’t wait to see you there. You mean more to us here at Joyce Meyer ministry than you may ever know. We appreciate you and thank our friends and partners for making this worldwide ministry possible.”
♦♦♦
My kids just woke up and are now sitting in my lap while Mommy talks to her friends about the devil, which is a pretty interesting way to start the morning, I’m sure.
We all agree that this stuff with the devil makes our own sinfulness exterior to us. If all the problems in our life or temptations we face are projected onto Satan, an external force of evil which is trying to take away “our joy,” then we don’t have to face the fact that we have seen the devil and it is us. But I’m still not satisfied about the fact that we don’t have a theology of Satan in our church. I’m not saying that we should adopt the “Satan is trying to mess with you” thing, but I don’t think it’s good to just set the entire issue aside. We have to deal with evil in its human and nonhuman sources. The devil is in our small catechism (Christ defeats sin, death, and the devil) but you’d be hard pressed to preach on it. In our post-Enlightenment world we can’t deal with the anthropomorphizing of evil in the form of a devil. At least I can’t see the devil as much more than a charming but naive character in a folk tale.
The problem right now is that I can’t figure out the issue of evil because my kids have to get off to school and the next TBN show starts in about fifteen seconds. I’m pretty fired up. I’m one cup of coffee and another prosperity gospel preacher away from being a victorious, powerful, stomp-on-the-devil’s-head Christian. Almost.
THE ROUNDUP
Old Testament passages cited: Zero.
New Testament passages cited: Three.
Cost of products offered: $225.
Running total after 2 hours: $404
Mentions of Jesus: Two, as a character in a story and named as a “Mighty Warrior.”
Changing Your World with Dr. Creflo Dollar
(Resisting the cherry danish with God’s help) 7:00 a.m.
“Dr.” Creflo Dollar’s Changing Your World opens with a montage of happy families and individuals (much like the opening sequences for all the other shows so far, but with more African Americans). The theme song is decidedly gospel: “I’m a world changer, anointed with the power of the Holy Ghost, I’m a world changer.”
He’s preaching to a mostly African American congregation numbering in the thousands. Dollar is a handsome African American man in his forties. The gray suit he’s wearing is silk, and I’m betting it’s custom. The stage is all decked in royal blue with purple carpeting. A large gospel choir, resplendent in blue robes, sits behind him.
♦♦♦
“Wow,” Ann says when she sees the show title. “This guy is a doctor?”
“Only in the way that Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, Paula White, and Jesse Duplantis are doctors. They were all given honorary doctorates from Oral Roberts University.”
Dr. Dollar: “We’ve been talking about why God allows trials in our lives. Is it because he’s trying to be mean? Absolutely not. Is it because he himself is the destroyer? Absolutely not. But will God allow trials and temptations and tests and hard times to come in our lives? The answer is yes.”
Doc Dollar offers four reasons for this:
1. He loves us and wants us to be healed, to be whole, and to have abundant life. God allows trials in our lives because he knows where our rebellion against his word and our hard-headedness is going to take us.
2. He’s trying to get your attention. Which is the purpose of this sermon.
3. He wants every hindrance removed that keeps us from fully yielding ourselves to God.
4. He wants us to love him: “God will never allow a trial without giving us a way to escape it.”
[My own: That’s just how life is.]
If you have a temptation, test, or trial, the first thing you need to know is that you can resist it. You have the ability to resist. Say out loud, “I have” [the audience echoes “I have”] “the ability” [“the ability”] “to resist” [“to resist”] “temptations and trials” [“temptations and trials”]. You’re not going to go through something someone else hasn’t already gone through; it’s not going to be beyond human experience.
I tell Ann Brock, “That’s what got me through labor with both my kids. I thought to myself, ‘Being in labor may feel like it’s the craziest, most intense, unusual thing in the world, but actually it’s pretty darn common. Billions of women have gone through this, so you can too.’ “
Dollar:
“God is faithful to his word and to his compassionate nature, which means that God ain’t never gonna get so mad that he ignores his compassionate nature, so no matter what trial you are going through God is faithful to his word and his compassionate nature.”
This is a lovely sentiment, but it’s not in 1 Corinthians 10:13. The whole Amplified Bible thing is making me just a little crazy. The text he is using from 1 Corinthians does not talk about God’s compassionate nature. The writers of the Amplified Bible added that. That particular translation of the Bible was undertaken in the 1950s by the Lockman Foundation, which on its website says the following about the project:
The Amplified Bible is a translation that, by using synonyms and definitions, both explains and expands the meaning of words in the text by placing amplification in parentheses and brackets and after key words or phrases. This unique system of translation allows the reader to more completely grasp the meaning of the words as they were understood in the original languages. Through multiple expressions, fuller and more revealing appreciation is given to the divine message as the original text legitimately permits. The Amplified Bible is free of personal interpretation and is independent of denominational prejudice.
The doctrine of scripture that holds that God verbally inspired the writers of the texts and was present and active in the entire process of the Bible being created is not at all uncommon among TBN folks. This is fine, but when they preach not from the biblical text, but from the added bits in the Amplified Bible and then treat them as having as much authority as actual biblical texts, things get confusing for me. I wonder if they think the guys who added all that stuff in the 1950s were also guided by the Holy Spirit, as if the Holy Spirit just kind of took a long sabbatical until the 1950s and then came out of retirement just for that gig. I’m all for looking at different ways to translate Greek, but Dr. Jim Boyce, my revered New Testament professor at Luther Seminary, who has been teaching Greek since shortly after the original texts were written, reminded us that “all translation is interpretation.” There’s no way to get around that.
I can’t think about this anymore because I’m missing some preaching and despite all this stuff I actually kinda like this guy. He’s totally charming.
I’m
