Lakewood (Part 5)

Meeting Joel Osteen

Ben and Sanetta and I headed out of the sanctuary, all of us a bit conflicted about the things we had just witnessed.  We all agreed that the music had been utterly amazing, but when it came to the message itself, problems abounded.  The lyrics of the music had been fairly simple, but the emotion behind them had been so deep and rich, and everything had been flawlessly executed, from the singers’ voices to the instrumentation to the lighting.  Ben commented again about the solo during the offertory being one of the most moving pieces of music he had ever witnessed, and I agreed with him.  It was one of the most powerful worship experiences any of us had experienced.  Lakewood really facilitates phenomenal worship and needs to be complimented for that.  The problem came in the theology, and even though we agreed to try and keep quiet on this subject until safely to the scream-muffling confines of the car, it was hard not to vent just a little.  Most of our comments have made their way into my sermon notes and commentary above.

We headed upstairs to an area marked off by ropes and stanchions-- the line to meet Joel.  A tall man in a black blazer with an earpiece guided us into the line and roped off a new section.  Yep, Joel Osteen has a personal security entourage; as tempting as it is to criticize that, the guy does draw a lot of attention, so I think he’s perfectly justified in having staff to help organize his interactions with the public and to be on hand in case any sort of incident occurs-- not everyone is so okay with Joel’s message after all.  We were told that Joel would move through the line, and as he did, one of the Lakewood volunteers would snap pictures of us together with my camera.  To save time, the shots would have to be candid, not posed.  After all, Joel had a lot of people to greet, and Lakewood had this procedure down to a science.  As we were waiting in line, Ben struck up a conversation with one of Joel’s security detail, Brian, who was intimidating in stature but engaging in personality.  Brian told us that he had attended Lakewood for a while before being tapped to work security.  He’s a big guy, so they just asked him to do it.  Ben started asking Brian a bit about what it’s like to attend such a large church, and Brian explained that a megachurch is sort of like a highschool.  Sure, there are all these people, but you find your core group and stick with them.  Just like the folks I met at Willow Creek, it looked like Lakewood members know how to build community within community, and that discipline is essential for the megachurch to be sustainable.

By this point, Joel had come up the elevator and was working his way through the line, signing books, having short conversations, and just welcoming people to the church and thanking them for coming.  It took him a while to get to us, but when he did, he was as friendly and enthusiastic as he had been on stage.  In fact, it seemed like Joel was in his element when talking to the people in the crowd.  He was happy.  He was friendly.  He was genuinely interested in us and what we had to say even though we only had maybe two minutes in which to say it.  As much as I wanted to speak up about the sermon, this wasn’t the time or place to engage Joel theologically, so I just didn’t say anything about it.  We only had a few minutes, and even though we disagreed on some points on my part, Joel had been a more than gracious host, so trying to correct him now would be pretty bad form.  Instead, I told him about how I was traveling the country and thanked him for Lakewood’s hospitality, noting that (as promised) they really did go above and beyond to make us feel at home.  Sanetta complimented Joel on his willingness to have a very daring altar call, something that so many of our churches have abandoned, and we all mentioned being impressed with how Lakewood managed to foster such a small church feel in such a large space.  As I stated at the beginning of this piece, the things that Lakewood really does well deserve our compliments and possibly even our imitation, so we focused on these things when talking to Joel.  In return, he praised us on attending Duke and encouraged us to continue to pursue that theological education, after which he moved on to the next folks in line.

Smarter and more eloquent people than myself have engaged Joel Osteen’s theology and been unable to persuade him that his message is potentially harmful, so there was no point in trying to debunk his prosperity theology in the few minutes we had to meet him.  Better to have a friendly conversation and just let that be it.  As much as I’d love to see Joel abandon his current school of thought, there’s really no chance of that happening any time soon, so the more important thing is to communicate to our friends and family and church members that Joel’s message is not the complete gospel.  As nice of a guy as Joel is, it’s almost tempting just to let bygones be bygones and ignore him in the hopes that the Lakewood phenomenon will just go away after his eventual retirement.  Still, with millions of viewers every week, this ministry is harming a lot of people and warping a lot of people’s perceptions of Christ.

Why am I being so rough on Joel and Lakewood?  Well, the morning after Lakewood, I went to hear Sanetta preach at her field ed church, and I was talking to the woman in the pew behind me about our time at Lakewood.  Thankfully, I was focusing on the positive aspects of the visit (hospitality, great worship, Joel being so nice, etc.) because the woman soon told me, “My husband and I love Joel.  Watch him every Sunday morning before coming here!”  Something in my gut rumbled as I realized that there are plenty of people who do this.  Plenty of people who are in “good Bible-believing churches” (to use Joel’s words) and yet still make Joel the cornerstone of their beliefs.  This is so incredibly dangerous, and here’s why . . .

Sir James George Frazer, Scottish anthropologist

The Dangers of Magical Thinking

I can’t believe that I’m about to invoke James Frazer, but Frazer made an important distinction that seems very applicable to Joel and Lakewood.  In The Golden Bough, which I read portions of for my religious studies theory seminar back in college, Frazer explains the difference between religion and magic.  Even though it’s not a completely valid distinction, and the history of religion certainly doesn’t follow the simple linear progression that Frazer outlines, it’s a useful concept in this case.  Now, I’m trying to do this from memory, and the last time I read this stuff was over three years ago, so I apologize in advance if I over-simplify:

Magic- Built around rituals like animal sacrifice, magic is using a routine practice as a means of appeasing gods or forces of nature.  It is based in an understanding of cause and effect. “I offer a sacrifice to this god, so it rains.”  “I say a prayer before this altar, and my daughter’s marriage turns a higher profit for me.”  “I kill this goat, and my barren wife conceives a son.”  It’s that kind of thinking.  We manipulate the events in our futures through ritual behavior in the present.  According to Frazer, this school of thought was gradually replaced by . . .

Religion- Even though religion followed magic chronologically, Frazer saw it as a step backwards intellectually.  Whereas magic made an active attempt to understand and manipulate the workings of the world (even if from a flawed framework), religion is a more passive entity, entrusting our fates to potentially-imaginary beings and saying, “Thy will be done.”  Religion removes the control and initiative from human hands and puts trust solely in God.  Religion accepts that some things just happen, and even though it offers requests to God in the form of prayer, there is no attempt at reciprocity with divine beings through sacrifice and such.  Seeing it as rather pointless and demeaning to humanity, Frazer predicted that religion would soon be replaced by science which, like magic, seeks to understand and control the world through cause and effect relationships (just from a far more accurate understanding of the world).

Okay, obviously, the idea that humanity as a whole moves from magic to religion to science is a little suspect, and there’s a lot of gray area between these concepts.  Even though we love to play up the animosity between science and religion, they can actually coexist quite peacefully in an open and discerning mind.  Where I’m concerned is with this notion of magic, and I have to admit that some of the thinking I heard espoused at Lakewood is quite magical.  Joel was advocating a clear cause and effect relationship with God, suggesting that, through praise and devotion and prayer, we would reap material prosperity (the blessings that God has set aside for us).  A perfect example would be Joel’s story with the rabbit in his yard; that prayer wasn’t so much religion as magic.  Joel prayed a prayer and got an instant material result.  Cause.  Effect.  Simple.  (Mark Driscoll calls this “Jesus-is-my-piñata theology.”)

Jesus doesn’t quite work like that.  One of the foundations of the Christian religion is the willingness to walk with Christ and surrender ourselves to His will for us, hoping for the best but accepting what comes our way.  That’s religion.  Joel was advocating pursuing Christ, but underneath that encouragement was a suggestion that we would glean material blessing for our pursuit and attain greater blessings through greater devotion.  Frankly, that’s magic, and there’s a reason that so many religions evolved beyond that way of thinking: it doesn’t work.  Herein lies the danger of Joel Osteen’s message.

Unless you happen to luck into some money or are just really good at rationalizing, prosperity theology is ultimately very empty and leaves people unsatisfied and disappointed.  As I outlined at the very beginning of this post, the entirety of the Christian tradition speaks against this school of thought.  To paraphrase Job: the Lord giveth, but the Lord also taketh away, so sometimes we have to suck it up and deal with it because it’s not all about you.  No matter what comes our way, we praise God for the amazing world in which we live, even when hardships overwhelm us.  We lean on God for support and trust in God in times of trouble, but especting God to fill our wallets is a dangerous misunderstanding of how God chooses to work in the world, and it leads to the assumption that a lack of material blessing means that a mistake has occurred somewhere on the prayer assembly line.  When people walk through life with the assumption that God is going to bless them financially, they are setting themselves up for disappointment, and then other churches are left to clean up Joel’s mess.  When our calls for material blessing aren’t answered, we’re left with only two possible assumptions: (a) we failed or (b) God failed.  Neither of these is true.  We don’t understand all the nuances of how God hears and responds to prayers, and adopting an understanding as cut and dried as Joel’s sets people up for major crises of faith: either they’re not being faithful enough, or God simply isn’t hearing them.

With Joel Osteen’s popularity, this school of thought stands to permeate and undermine churches all over the world, so we have to take it seriously when it comes up in our own congregations (and as my encounter at Sanetta’s church shows, it will).  Lakewood is doing a lot of wonderful things, but this theology really is a danger.  I’ll be honest: it scares me.  It scares me that such a charismatic leader is espousing such bad ideas, and it scares me that otherwise-rational Christians listen to him.  I like Joel personally, but he’s dangerous.  He is preaching an empty and harmful theology to 7 million viewers a week.  He is encouraging people to make demands rather than walking humbly and faithfully with God.  I don’t think he is doing any of this maliciously or even intentionally, but the effect is the same.  I think he misinterprets Scripture, and I think he misunderstands what is meant by faith, but again, another pastor I heard in my 24 hours of worship in Houston would do a far better job of explaining faith, so I’ll get to that.

Our visit to Lakewood left me unsettled.  Very unsettled.

Friendly people.  Great music.  Amazing hospitality.  Big hearts.

Dangerous theology.

Joel had been incredibly hospitable to us.  The whole church had.  Lakewood is a beautiful, friendly place where they show great love to the people who walk through their doors, and they are actively seeking to spread the message of Christ throughout the world.  Still, we have different attitudes about what it means to follow Christ.  I couldn’t dwell on it too long though since I needed to get up before dawn in order to head downtown for a second helping of Lord of the Streets, but the message at Lakewood and the uneasy feeling it gave me would wind up permeating my day in unexpected ways.