generosity — Blog — Glenn E. Pearson

The Health and Wealth Gospel – sometimes called the Prosperity Gospel – is a fairly recent bad doctrine that teaches God wants every believer to enjoy good health and financial blessing. There are two basic problems with this position:

It ignores the many biblical passages that describe how God allows, uses, and even ordains suffering (e.g., John 16:33, Acts 5:41,1 Peter 2:20, 1 Peter 4:16)
It contradicts the experience of both many Bible characters – not the least of which is Paul and his infamous thorn in the flesh – and many heroes of the faith throughout the centuries, starting with the 12 apostles, 11 of whom died martyrs’ deaths. None of them were healthy or wealthy.

It’s pretty easy to debunk the Prosperity Gospel, but there are variations that are less fallacious and, therefore, possibly more alluring. One example stems from the question of whether you should tithe based on gross or net income. I heard one minister somewhat glibly ask whether you would rather have God bless you based on your gross income or net income. This question implies a formulaic relationship between your giving and God’s blessing. Or, putting it another way, the more you give, the more you will receive.

I’m embarrassed to admit that back in the 1970s, I succumbed to a persuasive televangelist who urged his listeners to send him a “seed offering” to demonstrate we believed that God would multiply our generosity back to us.

Both the “gross vs. net” and the “seed offering” appeals are based on the assumption that you can coax God into acting more generously toward you if you act more generously toward him. Or putting it another way, you are trying to manipulate God by leveraging some kind of formula that says, “if you give ‘X,’ God will return to you ‘X plus something,’ or even ‘X times something.’” So, part of the motivation becomes giving to get.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Beyond this approach’s mixed motives is the fact that it tends to define God’s blessing primarily in financial terms. It assumes a “ledger” of “my generosity out and God’s reward in.” But God blesses in many ways we can’t measure. For example, just within the financial realm, if your car hadn’t stopped two inches from the vehicle in front of you when the driver slammed on his brakes, you might have racked up thousands of dollars of damages, increased insurance premiums, medical bills, and possibly legal expenses. Who knows how many “avoided costs” God has blessed you with that you will never know about this side of heaven?

And remember that God’s richest blessings are not always measured in dollars. Although he clearly rewards faithfulness and obedience, he often chooses to bless us with fulfilling relationships, joy, contentment, etc. How do you quantify those? Out of fairness, the Prosperity Gospel crowd sometimes acknowledges this, but they typically emphasize monetary return the most.

The longer I have walked with the Lord, the more I realize that we should do everything we do – live righteously, tell the truth, treat others with integrity, intervene to defend others, give generously, etc. – not because of any reward or return to us but because it’s the right thing to do. The moment you start giving more because you hope God will reward your generosity, you begin drifting toward becoming the puppet-master, trying to get God to do your will, not the other way around. And don’t forget, you don’t have anything in the first place that God hasn’t allowed you to have.

So just how should you give? Like everything else in the Christian life, you should walk closely with the Lord, seek his will for every significant decision, and joyously give however he leads you.