Chapter 2 Rebuttal
All verses quoted in NIV unless indicated otherwise.
This is an analysis of the second chapter of Your Best Life Now, and I’m going to try to do one a week. With 32 chapters this should take me the better part of a year, so I guess I'll have something to keep me busy for a while. I think I’ll post them every Monday, so check your local listings.
In chapter 2, Joel tells us specifically how to raise our level of expectations and think positively. What Joel says in the first few paragraphs of this chapter is true to some extent, that what we expect is what we will get. However, it is untrue that if you "dwell on positive thoughts, your life will move in that direction.” Joel suggests saying each morning as you wake up, “This is going to be a great day. God is guiding and directing my steps. His favor is surrounding me. Goodness and mercy are following me, I’m excited about today!” This is just silly; just because you repeat it to yourself in the mirror each morning doesn’t mean it will work or even that it’s true.
Joel tells us to program our minds for success, and then to “go out expecting good things. Expect circumstances to change in your favor. Expect people to go out of their way to help you. Expect to be at the right place at the right time.” If this makes sense to any of you, please let me know. Joel uses Colossians 3:2 to support his assertion, reading, “Set your mind and keep it set on higher things.” Like all the verses he quotes in the previous chapter, Joel does not give the name of the translation that he uses for this verse. The NIV reads, “Set your mind on things above and not on earthly things”. We can see a more than subtle change in meaning here. According to The Interpreter’s Bible, “[t]he Colossian heretics were seeking salvation by a pseudo spirituality, which in reality did not break their involvement in the material world of material forces, material interests, and material values… Paul lifts their minds from the ‘things that which all perish as they are used’ to rest on Christ.”
Next Joel tells us that God wants us to get our hopes up. He says that we “should get up in the morning confidently expecting the favor of God”, that we should “start expecting doors of opportunity to open”, and to “expect to excel in your career. Expect to rise above life’s challenges.” According to Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries, the word for hope being used here is the Greek elpis. This word refers to the confident anticipation of the future. According to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, elpis means “a favorable and confident expectation”, having to do with the unseen future. While there may appear to be no discrepancy here, the key difference is here: a confident anticipation towards the unseen future vs. a naïve expectation that things will go our way.
Joel uses the converse of this proposition as an example, quoting Matthew 9:29 in the Amplified Translation of the Bible, “According to your faith…be it done to you”. In other words, he says, “have what your faith expects”. This is one of the worst interpretations of any verse I have ever seen. If we look at the entire verse in context, we can see that Jesus is saying something completely different and less nonsensical. Let’s start at Matthew 9, verse 28: “When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him and he asked them, ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, ‘According to your faith, it will be done to you’; and their sight was restored.” As you can see, Joel has taken this verse and shown blatant disregard towards its context and what it meant to the original audience. Instead of coming to unavoidable realization that Jesus is speaking to the two blind men that he recently healed and telling them that because they have faith that they are healed, Joel somehow comes to the conclusion that Jesus is telling them to have faith so they can increase their net worth. That strikes me as a bit of a non sequiter, and not what those two men would have on their minds at that particular point in time.
It strikes me now, why didn’t Jesus put into practice what he was teaching? Why didn’t he “conceive it on the inside so he could receive it on the outside?” Why didn’t he “enlarge his vision” so he didn’t end up spending his 33 years on this earth a working class non-citizen who died by one of the most excruciatingly painful execution methods ever devised by the human psyche?
Joel’s message is captured perfectly in the following paragraph, and I quote, “You can break out of that prison! The door is unlocked. All you have to do is start expecting good things in your life and start believing God for a great future. You do have good things coming!” How ridiculous is this? As I have said before and probably will again, just because I stand in front of the mirror and say to myself, “you’re growing more happy and relaxed all the time,” doesn’t mean I will. Joel also says that “God usually meets us at our level of expectancy”. He writes that if we don’t develop a habit of expecting good things to come our way, then we’re not likely to receive anything good. Obviously he hasn’t read Ephesians 3:20- “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” Just as he did in the first chapter of this book, Joel is restricting God to a being who just hands out stuff, and is now further limiting him by the comparatively infinitesimal capacity of the human brain.
In order to live one’s best life now, one must open his “eyes of faith” and start “seeing yourself as happy healthy, and whole.” Joel suggests, when discouraged, praying the following prayer: “God, I know that you are in control, and even though this looks impossible, I know today could be the day that things turn around.”
I’m sure Paul would agree with that:
Philippians 3:8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.
Philippians 4:11-13 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.
There’s also the story of Job, who according to Job 1:1 “was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” In short, he had it made. However, in a few short hours, all ten of his children, all 11,500 of his livestock, and all of his “large number of servants” were gone. In response to this he says, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” Later, when he is afflicted with sores and sitting in the ashes of his own house, his wife tells him to give up and to “curse God and die”. His response warrants some consideration: “Foolish woman! Should we accept good from the Lord, and not trouble?” A relevant question, I think.
This runs contrary to everything we have read so far in Your Best Life Now. Joel’s premise is that it’s God’s agenda for you to be healthy, have money, and succeed at whatever you do. Christianity is booming in China despite, or maybe because, of heavy resistance and persecution by the government. I can almost guarantee you that Christians in the People’s Republic of China aren’t conceiving and receiving or enlarging their vision, but they are following the teachings of Jesus more accurately than Joel Osteen.
In the next paragraph, Joel asks a perfectly reasonable question, “What if I do all that and it doesn’t work?” Unfortunately, he follows it up with two more rhetorical questions: “What if you do that and it does work? Whom are we kidding here?” Not me, Joel. Not me. Next, he tells the story of Brian. Brian is a once-successful man whose health is deteriorating and in consequence he is a shadow of his former self. Upon the counsel of a friend, Brian writes down ten things each day that he is thankful for, and after a while things turn around. This story stinks of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Just because B comes after A does not mean A caused B. Also, I can tell you with certainty that you do not need to be in perfect health in order to lead a fulfilling life. For example,
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest in me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Joel uses another story, the story of Elijah’s ascent into heaven, 2 Kings 2:9-12. Elisha asks as a parting gift a “double portion” of Elijah’s spirit. Elijah says to his protégé that if he sees him being taken up that it will be so, otherwise not. Joel suggests we infer a deeper meaning from this passage, that Elijah, in setting the conditions for the receipt of a double portion of his spirit, was in addition telling Elisha, “If you can see it, then you can be it. If you can visualize it in your heart and mind, seeing it through the screen of God’s Word with your ‘spiritual eyes’, it can become a reality in your life.” Joel says that God is very interested in what we see through our “spiritual eyes”, basing that claim on the correct assertion that God asks seven times in the Bible, “What do you see?” However, and there is always a however, in all seven of those instances God is speaking with an Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, Amos, or Zechariah. To be technical, the two instances involving Zechariah concern the former and an angel speaking, so Joel’s off by two. The reason he appears to be asking the question is not because he doesn’t know, but because he wants to be told so he can explain it, like what inedible figs or giant flying scrolls symbolize. In all of the instances where God asks, “What do you see”, he is speaking to someone who is having a prophetic vision and is explaining to them what it means. Example:
Jeremiah 1:11-13 The word of the Lord came to me: "What do you see, Jeremiah?" "I see the branch of an almond tree," I replied. The Lord said to me, "You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled." The word of the Lord came to me again: "What do you see?" "I see a boiling pot, tilting away from the north," I answered.
Yep, this has “spiritual eyes” written all over it. God’s just dying to know what Jeremiah is seeing through his spiritual eyes.
Next up, Joel tells us how we have to change our environment if we want to change our thinking. According to him, we must surround ourselves with an atmosphere of success, to find a place where we can dream big. According to Joel, we “have to envision good things happening” to us, or they never will. He finishes the chapter by saying that if we do our part “continually contemplating the goodness of God, living with faith and expectancy, God will take you to places you’ve never even dreamed of, and you’ll live at a level you have never before dared to imagine.” I think 1 Corinthians 4:9-13 makes an effective counterpoint:
For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men. 10We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.
I thank you if you have made it this far, and as usual I appreciate all questions, comments, and criticism.
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