Does God Want You to be Rich? (Time, 10 Sept 2006)
This is an interesting article. In my view, God is more concerned with me living and working to alleviate someone else’s poverty than he is about me becoming rich.
I liked the t-shirt that read, “More than enough is too much.” This world can’t afford the lavish lifestyle of the rich West–environmentally or socially.
It’s not that Jesus wants us to be poor just for the sake of being poor; it’s that he wants us to live for the service of others rather than for the accumulation of wealth.
He wants us to have full lives (John 10:10), and he knows how to give us good gifts (Matthew 7:11), but I believe it’s a mistake to define a full life and good gifts in purely monetary terms. I believe he was talking more about the fruits of the spirit–love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23).
I know he wants me to have food (he did miracles to provide bread, fish and wine), but he doesn’t want me to amass wealth and neglect the dietary needs of others.
He even said it’s harder for a rich person to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle (Matt. 19:24). He was clearly against building fortunes (Luke 12:16-21 & Matt. 6:19). Jesus expresses the need for the rich to take care of the poor in the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-26).
And a couple more verses:
James 2:5
Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?
Luke 6:20
Looking at his disciples, he said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
It would appear that the prosperity gospel is on pretty shaky Biblical grounds!
Pack Light 
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Hey Jeff,As you’ll see below and in my book and articles, I agree with you on this one.RE: “Does God want you to be rich?”How about, does the Creator want some people to suffer and starve while others wallow in luxury? What about “serving mammon” (money and materialism) instead of truth, justice, and your fellow souls? How about the rich man and the eye of a needle? Talking about the blind leading the blind…Here’s some pivotal knowledge (wisdom) so people can stop focusing on symptoms and obfuscatory details and home in like a laser on the root causes of and solutions to humanity’s seemingly never-ending struggles.Money is the lifeblood of the powerful and the chains and key to human enslavementThere is a radical and highly effective solution to all of our economic problems that will dramatically simplify, streamline, and revitalize human civilization. It will eliminate all poverty, debt, and the vast majority of crime, material inequality, deception, and injustice. It will also eliminate the underlying causes of most conflicts, while preventing evil scoundrels and their cabals from deceiving, deluding, and bedeviling humanity, ever again. It will likewise eliminate the primary barriers to solving global warming, pollution, and the many evils that result from corporate greed and their control of natural and societal resources. That solution is to simply eliminate money from the human equation, thereby replacing the current system of greed, exploitation, and institutionalized coercion with freewill cooperation, just laws based on verifiable wisdom , and societal goals targeted at benefiting all, not just a self-chosen and abominably greedy few. We can now thank millennia of political, monetary, and religious leaders for proving, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that top-down, hierarchical governance is absolute folly and foolishness. Even representative democracy, that great promise of the past, was easily and readily subverted to enslave us all, thanks to money and those that secretly control and deceptively manipulate all currencies and economies. Is there any doubt anymore that entrusting politics and money to solve humanity’s problems is delusion of the highest order? Is there any doubt that permitting political and corporate leaders to control the lives of billions has resulted in great evil?Here’s a real hot potato! Eat it up, digest it, and then feed it’s bones to the hungry…Most people have no idea that the common-denominator math of all the world’s currencies forms an endless loop that generates debt faster than we can ever generate the value to pay for it. This obscured and purposeful math-logic trap at the center of all banking, currencies, and economies is the root cause of poverty. Those who rule this world through fear and deception strive constantly to hide this fact, while pretending to seek solutions to poverty and human struggle. Any who would scoff at this analysis have simply failed to do the math, even though it is based on a simple common-denominator ratio. Here is WisdomDoctrine of Two Spirits… Peace…
here’s a prosperity gospel for you: a friend of mine sat down one day and figured out exactly what he needed (a house, a car, food etc)and worked his budget on that. Everything else he gave away. In the four years since he started that he’s been given so many pay raises and promotions he actually asked his company to stop. So basically the more he earned the more he gave away so the more he earned.So applying the prosperity gospel in that way isn’t so bad is it?
That’s really awesome. I believe God blesses us so that we can bless others. I really respect that your friend stayed true and gave the extra money away. It is so easy to grow the list of “needs.” Good stuff.
Jeff, do you know this seven star hand guy?