Suggested Reading: Suffering Followed by Glory

Tim Chester has kindly made chapter 12 from his latest book The Ordinary Hero available on his blog. The chapter is entitled ‘Suffering Followed by Glory – The Pattern for Disciples’, and as this suggests, outlines the pattern of present suffering in the hope of future glory which emerges throughout the NT.

He opens the chapter by quoting Joel Osteen’s [1] message of ‘total victory’ in this life, and goes on to rightly identify at least part of the problem with this perspective as a miss-shaped eschatology. I have called it an over-realized eschatology, which while posessing a sound logic does not fit with ‘already but not yet’ framework of NT teaching. [2]

His chapter provides a good read, I recommend it, and look forward to getting my sticky hands on the book at some point in the future.

[1] I think the quotation is from this sermon on youtube.

[2] See my post The Language(s) and Logic of “Prosperity”

Talking Money with Gabe

I have been engaging in dialogue with Gabriel Graumann on his blog Money Talk with Gabe. In this post we have been discussing the nature of “needs” and “prosperity” in the comments section. I also suggest checking out his posts My Flag is Higher!, A Spending Culture, and the first in a series of posts entitled Do I really “Need” This?

There is alot of wisdom in these posts and matters to seriously ponder. While I dont agree with all that he puts forward, I think our perspectives are actually closer than I first thought. Thanks again Gabe for the dialogue.

Suggested Reading: a summary of prosperity teaching

For a very helpful summary of prosperity teaching (from a non-sympathetic perspective) drawing on the work of many others, see The Heart of the Prosperity Gospel: Self or the Saviour? by Dan Lioy, pp. 1-9. You can freely view this in PDF format by clicking the link.