To preface this composition, let me say that in interpreting scripture the three most important things to keep in mind are context, what the message meant to its original recipients, and the genre of the document. Joel Osteen, author of Your Best Life Now and other books, blatantly disregards all three. Consequentially, I am going to do it for him. Below is a synopsis of the first chapter of Your Best Life Now with my own exegetical findings inserted. It’s a bit wordy, but I would appreciate it greatly if you read as much of it as your attention spans permit as well as any and all feedback. Enjoy.
The fallacy here is that we are being told if we want something to be true, it will, and vice versa. He uses an example of a man who looks at a beautiful house and says to himself, “’I can’t even imagine living in a place like that’.” He then hears another voice in his head assuring him that as long as he could not imagine himself living in such an abode, it would never happen. While the idea that if one thinks something is impossible and doesn't bother to find out otherwise, that something becomes a sort of impossible is true to some extent, Joel takes this psychological condition one step further and states that our mere thoughts and attitudes directly affect reality. What’s really atrocious here is that Joel tells us to believe better of ourselves and to believe “better of God”. This assertion is absurd beyond belief, see Deuteronomy 8:18 “ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.”
The second assertion that Joel makes, that we “must conceive it on the inside before we receive it on the outside”, is equally absurd. First off, where else would something be conceived but on the inside? Secondly, Joel is saying that if we think we can have something, it will appear on our doorstep the next morning. According to Joel, “[y]our own wrong thinking can keep you from God’s best.” Let us again turn to scripture for the correct point of view: Ecclesiastes 5:19-20 “ Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work—this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart.” God, being all-powerful, doesn’t need us to think he can provide for us in order for him to provide for us.
Joel goes on to tell the story of a young woman who, after a series of failures, changed her attitude and won the Miss Kansas and Miss America pageants. The book attributes this success to a change in attitude; said young woman continually envisioned herself winning the pageant and made it so. There is nothing false with this line of reasoning per se, as long as it is paired with hard work and practice working towards one’s goal. However, the idea that “if you develop an image of victory, success, health, abundance, joy, peace, and happiness, nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you”. If it were that easy, do you really think someone would have to write a book about it? Don’t you think people would have mastered it by now, if all it took was thinking about it? According to Joel, “God wants to increase you financially, by giving you promotions, fresh ideas, and creativity”. This is one of the craziest things I have ever heard! Obviously Joel doesn’t care about silly things like using scripture in context or taking into consideration what it meant to its original audience. No, let’s just throw all that out the window and use Scripture to support whatever claims we want to make.
Joel’s school of thought that God wants to “increase you financially” relegates God from creator and master of the universe to a mere Santa Claus figure. What’s more, what do you think is more important in the eyes of an eternal being, the ability to understand the world around us or shiny metal round objects? Let’s find out.
Joel goes on to tell the story of a young woman who, after a series of failures, changed her attitude and won the Miss Kansas and Miss America pageants. The book attributes this success to a change in attitude; said young woman continually envisioned herself winning the pageant and made it so. There is nothing false with this line of reasoning per se, as long as it is paired with hard work and practice working towards one’s goal. However, the idea that “if you develop an image of victory, success, health, abundance, joy, peace, and happiness, nothing on earth will be able to hold those things from you”. If it were that easy, do you really think someone would have to write a book about it? Don’t you think people would have mastered it by now, if all it took was thinking about it? According to Joel, “God wants to increase you financially, by giving you promotions, fresh ideas, and creativity”. This is one of the craziest things I have ever heard! Obviously Joel doesn’t care about silly things like using scripture in context or taking into consideration what it meant to its original audience. No, let’s just throw all that out the window and use Scripture to support whatever claims we want to make.
Joel’s school of thought that God wants to “increase you financially” relegates God from creator and master of the universe to a mere Santa Claus figure. What’s more, what do you think is more important in the eyes of an eternal being, the ability to understand the world around us or shiny metal round objects? Let’s find out.
Proverbs 8:10-11 “ Choose my instruction instead of silver, knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her.”
Proverbs 16:16 “ How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver!”
Proverbs 23:4-5 “ Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.”
Proverbs 30:8, 9 “ Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”
Luke 6:23-25 “‘Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.’”
Luke 18:22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
Revelation 18:16-17 “and cry out: 'Woe! Woe, O great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls! In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!'”
In the interest of brevity, I included less than half of the verses on the subject that I found, but you get the point.
Proverbs 16:16 “ How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver!”
Proverbs 23:4-5 “ Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint. Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle.”
Proverbs 30:8, 9 “ Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the LORD?' Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”
Luke 6:23-25 “‘Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their fathers treated the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort. Woe to you who are well fed now, for you will go hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will mourn and weep.’”
Luke 18:22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
Revelation 18:16-17 “and cry out: 'Woe! Woe, O great city, dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet, and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls! In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin!'”
In the interest of brevity, I included less than half of the verses on the subject that I found, but you get the point.
As support for his claim that God wants “this to be the best time in your life”, (why? Why does God want this time, the time that you are reading Joel’s book, to be the best time in all your 87 years, provided you reach the average American life expectancy?) Joel cites Ephesians 2:7, which, in the NIV, reads, “in order that in the coming ages he might show you the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” Joel does not quote the entire verse, only a section of it, which reads “His far and beyond favor”, as in “God wants to share with us ‘his far and beyond favor.’” In the Appendix of Your Best Live Now is an index of the scripture Joel uses in each chapter. Some have a translation listed next to them, and some do not. This one does not. I searched no fewer than twenty different versions of the bible reading that verse and none of them matched Joel’s translation. Furthermore, I have yet to receive a response to a letter I sent asking him which translation he used.
Anyway, Joel continues:
John 14:13-14 “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
John 15:7 “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
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,”
Anyway, Joel continues:
In other words, you must make room for increase in your own thinking, then God will bring those things to pass. Until you learn how to enlarge your vision, seeing the future through your eyes of faith, your own wrong thinking will prevent good things from happening in your life. God will not pour fresh, creative and blessings into old attitudes.
This idea is asinine, that we can control God through our thoughts and feelings. Let us again turn to scripture.
John 15:7 “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
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,”
1 John 5:14-15 “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”
As you can see, we don’t need to think happy thoughts, cross our fingers, or use pixie dust; all that we need do is ask. Make sure you’re sitting down for the next one; it’s what we in the business call a big fat lie.
Joel refers to Jesus’s conversation with his apostles about putting new wine into old wineskins in Matthew 9:17, a fairly well-known passage. The historical context, as he points out, is that as you put wine into a wineskin the wine would ferment and expand. New, supple animal skins used for wineskins could tolerate the expansive force of fermentation, but only to a certain extent. Once a skin was stretched to its limit, putting new wine in it, wine that had yet to ferment and expand, would farther stretch and rupture the old wineskin. With this in mind, what Jesus is saying seems elementary. But as usual, Jesus is speaking metaphorically. According to Joel, he’s trying to convey to the disciples that “you cannot have a larger life with restricted attitudes.” In other words, “you need to open your minds, so you can have more stuff”. Not only does Joel not care about the context of the scripture that he uses, but also not about the extrabiblical historical context, what actually happened to those disciples. Each and every disciple died penniless and was tortured to death by the Roman government with the exception of John, who was exiled to Patmos and wrote Revelation there. If you take the passage in its historical and cultural context, you can tell by the surrounding verses that Jesus is answering a question about fasting and, according to IVP NT Commentaries, that “[t]raditional rituals must never become a straitjacket that hinder us from celebrating sinners' embrace of the good news of God's kingdom.” The Concordia Self-Study Commentary points out the fact that “He is not a patch that can be sewn on the old garments of Judaic piety; he is the new wine that will break the old wineskins, the old forms that cannot contain Him”. The fact that Joel would stretch the meaning of this passage to one no one not looking to make a quick buck would ever have imagined it having would be laughable if it were not for the fact that people actually believe it. It is so absolutely absurd and totally contrary to the rest of Jesus’s teachings that no one in their right mind could possibly come to that conclusion with the interest of correctly interpreting scripture at heart. Let’s take a look at what the Bible really says on that matter.
As you can see, we don’t need to think happy thoughts, cross our fingers, or use pixie dust; all that we need do is ask. Make sure you’re sitting down for the next one; it’s what we in the business call a big fat lie.
Joel refers to Jesus’s conversation with his apostles about putting new wine into old wineskins in Matthew 9:17, a fairly well-known passage. The historical context, as he points out, is that as you put wine into a wineskin the wine would ferment and expand. New, supple animal skins used for wineskins could tolerate the expansive force of fermentation, but only to a certain extent. Once a skin was stretched to its limit, putting new wine in it, wine that had yet to ferment and expand, would farther stretch and rupture the old wineskin. With this in mind, what Jesus is saying seems elementary. But as usual, Jesus is speaking metaphorically. According to Joel, he’s trying to convey to the disciples that “you cannot have a larger life with restricted attitudes.” In other words, “you need to open your minds, so you can have more stuff”. Not only does Joel not care about the context of the scripture that he uses, but also not about the extrabiblical historical context, what actually happened to those disciples. Each and every disciple died penniless and was tortured to death by the Roman government with the exception of John, who was exiled to Patmos and wrote Revelation there. If you take the passage in its historical and cultural context, you can tell by the surrounding verses that Jesus is answering a question about fasting and, according to IVP NT Commentaries, that “[t]raditional rituals must never become a straitjacket that hinder us from celebrating sinners' embrace of the good news of God's kingdom.” The Concordia Self-Study Commentary points out the fact that “He is not a patch that can be sewn on the old garments of Judaic piety; he is the new wine that will break the old wineskins, the old forms that cannot contain Him”. The fact that Joel would stretch the meaning of this passage to one no one not looking to make a quick buck would ever have imagined it having would be laughable if it were not for the fact that people actually believe it. It is so absolutely absurd and totally contrary to the rest of Jesus’s teachings that no one in their right mind could possibly come to that conclusion with the interest of correctly interpreting scripture at heart. Let’s take a look at what the Bible really says on that matter.
Proverbs 11:28 “Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf.”
Mark 10:25 “’It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’"
Conversely, the Bible tells us numerous times we are to suffer on behalf of our beliefs.
Philippians 1:29 “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him”.
1 Thessalonians 2:2 We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition.”
1 Thessalonians 3:4 “In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know.”
Next, Joel goes on to give personal examples of how he or others thought they could never achieve something, but later “conceived it on the inside” and viola! To support this, Joel cites Isaiah 43:19, “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?” Joel takes this to be God “trying to promote us, to increase us, to give us more. Yet it’s interesting God asks the question, ‘do you perceive it?’ In other words, are you making room for it in your own thinking?” If we look at the passage properly, we can see that Isaiah is prophesying to a nation in captivity in Babylon that God had a future in store for them; that they “did not only have a past… it had still a more glorious future. It could expect ‘a new thing’, a miracle so marvelous as to eclipse the things of old (The Concordia Self-Study Commentary). Joel subsequently likens his philosophy to the virgin birth: it’s not something that will come about through the will or power of a human, it will be by the Holy Spirit, a statement which is not untrue. However, every lie is based on a grain of truth. Using the well known verse Mark 9:23 “Everything is possible for him who believes”, Joel asserts that if we believe, if we “get rid of those old wineskins. Get rid of that small minded thinking and think as God thinks (how does he know how God thinks?). Think big. Think increase. Think abundance. Think more than enough.” If we follow the preceding, according to Joel we will get all our heart desires because “everything is possible for him who believes.” I hate to break it to you, Joel, but all-powerful does not mean all-giving. Jesus uses the Greek word dunatos here, which is translated as "possible." In the Greek, dunatos means, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, strong, mighty, able (to do), and in its neuter form it signifies “possible”. Joel is stretching the meaning of the word at best.
Mark 10:25 “’It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’"
Conversely, the Bible tells us numerous times we are to suffer on behalf of our beliefs.
Philippians 1:29 “For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him”.
1 Thessalonians 2:2 We had previously suffered and been insulted in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in spite of strong opposition.”
1 Thessalonians 3:4 “In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know.”
Next, Joel goes on to give personal examples of how he or others thought they could never achieve something, but later “conceived it on the inside” and viola! To support this, Joel cites Isaiah 43:19, “Behold, I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it?” Joel takes this to be God “trying to promote us, to increase us, to give us more. Yet it’s interesting God asks the question, ‘do you perceive it?’ In other words, are you making room for it in your own thinking?” If we look at the passage properly, we can see that Isaiah is prophesying to a nation in captivity in Babylon that God had a future in store for them; that they “did not only have a past… it had still a more glorious future. It could expect ‘a new thing’, a miracle so marvelous as to eclipse the things of old (The Concordia Self-Study Commentary). Joel subsequently likens his philosophy to the virgin birth: it’s not something that will come about through the will or power of a human, it will be by the Holy Spirit, a statement which is not untrue. However, every lie is based on a grain of truth. Using the well known verse Mark 9:23 “Everything is possible for him who believes”, Joel asserts that if we believe, if we “get rid of those old wineskins. Get rid of that small minded thinking and think as God thinks (how does he know how God thinks?). Think big. Think increase. Think abundance. Think more than enough.” If we follow the preceding, according to Joel we will get all our heart desires because “everything is possible for him who believes.” I hate to break it to you, Joel, but all-powerful does not mean all-giving. Jesus uses the Greek word dunatos here, which is translated as "possible." In the Greek, dunatos means, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, strong, mighty, able (to do), and in its neuter form it signifies “possible”. Joel is stretching the meaning of the word at best.
In the final paragraphs of the chapter, Joel tells the story of a professional golfer who is invited to play in a tournament by and with the king of Saudi Arabia. As said golfer is leaving for home, he is offered a gift by aforementioned king, whatever he wants. The golfer asks for a golf club and, weeks later, receives a deed to a five hundred acre golf course. The moral of the story is, “[s]ometimes kings think differently than you and I think. And friend, we serve the King of kings. We serve the Most High God, and His dream for your life is so much bigger and better than you can even imagine. It’s time to enlarge your vision!” He was doing fine until about halfway through. While it is true, according to Ephesians 3:20, that God is able to provide us with as much or more than we can ask or imagine, that by no means signifies that what is provided will be of a material nature.
The problem with Joel’s philosophy in this chapter is that he is relegating God’s blessings to strictly material and financial gain, claiming to intimately know the thoughts and mind of God, and using an absolute if/then formula. Joel Osteen would do well to take the following maxim to heart: a text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.
Part two coming soon.
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