The Prosperity Gospel We Should Be Living

I used to slam up against a prosperity gospel that promised me that if I commit my life to following Christ, goodness and mercy and joy would surely follow.

I didn’t buy it.

And then one morning. In the dark night of my love story. After doughnuts and bulletin passing and a stream of breathless “Good-morning-welcome-to-Coast-s,” the words transformed, the world shifted. That all-familiar, oft repeated phrase,

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me and I will dwell in the house of the Lord, forever and ever and ever Amen.”

Slowly at first. A question. A nuance. An emphasis. Where before I had only seen goodness and mercy and good outcomes and answered prayers and false hope, I now saw a new word. A new focus. Bold and brazen.

Follow.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me. Follow me.

Follow me?

The dictionary definition of follow is, as follows:

1. Go or come after (a person or thing proceeding ahead); move or travel behind: "she went back into the house, and Ben followed her."

2. Go after (someone) in order to observe or monitor.

Surely goodness and mercy will COME AFTER me. Not be given to me. Not be indebted to me. But come after me. In my wake.

Who then is the bringer?

I am.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me.

I am called to be this peddler of good things, this exemplar of righteousness.

Come again?

Could it be that following Jesus is less about the goodness of life’s outcomes and more about the goodness that we bring, that we carry, that follows us for all to see?

That sounds like a lot of pressure. That sounds like things could get real legalistic real quick.

But it’s not just up to me.

Perhaps as followers of Jesus we are heirs to a journey of growth and refinement that cultivates holy, loving qualities within us. Perhaps the promise is not for happiness and success and a house and a car and 2.5 children, but for fruitfulness.

This can be prosperity, too.

Not the kind of prosperity that aces tests and rains down riches, but the prosperity of a life well valued, a life well lived. A life that where goodness and mercy spring up in its wake.

A prosperity of caring for our brothers and sisters. A prosperity in seeing the gifts this world has to offer. A prosperity in bringing joy and defending the weak.

A prosperity of being followed by goodness and mercy because of a life-giving relationship with the One we follow.

Now that’s a prosperity gospel I can get behind.

*The image at the top of this post is the handiwork of my wonderfully creative brother, Cameron Lewis. Thank you!

Why am I here?

I’ve started taking a spiritual writing class. It must be good because it’s already spurred a million blog ideas and an existential crisis with just one assignment: why am I here?

Not why-do-people-exist or what-is-the-meaning-of-life, but why am I HERE at this juncture in my life. At this computer in this house with these roommates waiting to drive this freeway into this job to do these tasks.

One answer is this:

February 2006, San Jose, Costa Rica

In class I usually sat in the back, jammed against my neighbor in the filled-to-capacity classroom. There were strange wooden pillars inconveniently placed throughout the room, forcing us to cram together in clumps. Our professor, Don Mike, would pace back and forth like a lion waiting to go in for the kill. His sporadic mumblings sounded like growls and soon he would be roaring. My jaw would clench as my heart pounded. He would reduce my beliefs and upbringing to egocentric self-validation. A means of exclusion. Judgment. My faith was offensive, a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty God. A darkened city on a hill. The tasteless salt of the earth. The hypocritical light of the world. The hair on my arms would stand up and it would feel like I’d swallowed a car battery. If anyone, he’d be the one to know when the church was being ineffective; he used to be a Catholic priest.

He would be panting by now; his gruff voice would crack as he condemned American Christianity and everything it stands for. I felt personally attacked as he recounted the horrors of conquest-driven, smallpox-bearing missionaries and money scamming “Gospel of Wealth” televangelists. The blood of every person killed or exploited in the name of God since the dawn of time would stick in the crevices of my guilty hands.

By this point, the pulsating vein in the middle of his scrunched forehead looked ready to burst. I would forget that he coined himself a “recovering Catholic.” I would forget that he did not hold a monopoly on truth. And while I hated him and everything he was saying, I still began to believe that maybe I was the enemy.

***

That’s part of it. That’s part of why I’m here. Writing this blog. Working at this nonprofit that serves the rural poor. Thinking these thoughts.

It’s the why of a life built around overcoming a stigma that my faith is self-serving, self-fulfilling, self-consuming. It’s a why of a life working to not be the world's enemy, the poor's enemy, my own enemy.

It’s not the whole why and it’s not the whole story. But it’s a part. It’s not the best part or the most redeeming part or healthy part.

I’m reminded of a quote by Henri Nouwen (honestly, when am I not?) in Compassion:

"Action as the way of the compassionate life is a difficult discipline precisely because we are so in need of recognition and acceptance… But even setting up a relief program, feeding the hungry, and assisting the sick could be more an expression of our own need than of God's call.

But let us not be too moralistic about it: We can never claim pure motives, and it is better to act with and for those who suffer than to wait until we have our own needs completely under control."

Today, HERE, I am grateful to drive into a job that acts with and for those who suffer and for a God that is using my needs, my why’s, my unclean motives, to accomplish His call.

T.S. Tuesday: The Lost and Found Pile of My Faith

“There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again.” T.S. Eliot, East Coker*

God answers prayer. Sometimes I forget this. Sometimes I lose this. Sometimes I find this. Then I lose it again. Daily I fight to recover what has been lost.

Today, this post, is a fight to recover and reaffirm my childlike faith.

As Ann Voskamp said in the chapter in One Thousand Gifts that I just read, “I confess, even after all that I’ve seen and tasted and touched, I do scoff.”

After I, Aly Lewis, have seen and tasted and touched and felt that the Lord is good, I still scoff. I scoff at my cheesiness in writing “childlike faith,” I scoff at this blog and my prayers seeking answers, I scoff at my lists of gifts and my love letters to myself.

But I have seen and tasted and touched and felt that the Lord is good. And I will not let my scoffing get the best of me. Instead I will keep writing, keep praying, and keep saying, 'Thank you, Love, for being good.'

***

*I promise I will one day venture out of the Four Quartets, but as long as I keep rediscovering nuggets of wisdom within these four pieces, Four Quartets it is. Please show your discontent by sending me wonderfully aged, used copies of additional T.S. Eliot compilations. Otherwise, I will take your silence as consent.

You Sneaky God

"The first step to atheism is bad theology." Dallas Willard

My latest in bad theology: I believe in a sneaky God.

I'm sure you've all seen it. And if you haven't, it is a must. This Halloween, Jimmy Kimmel issued a challenge to parents to trick their kids into thinking they ate all of their Halloween candy. The resulting video was epic.

There's kicking, there's screaming, there's crying and snot, there's name calling.

All because of these sneaky moms and dads.

I want to call these kids bratty. I want to mount my high horse of "dang, these kids are entitled," but the truth is, I identify with them. When you really expect something (whether you're entitled to it or not, whether it's a realistic expectation or not) the disappointment of not getting it is harsh.

There are times I want to kick and scream and cry out, "You sneaky God," when my prayers aren't answered, when my plans are thwarted, when my Halloween candy is taken away.

It's more than just a knee jerk reaction to disappointment, though. I've discovered I've started to base my life and my beliefs and my prayers on the premise that God is trying to trick me.

My faulty beliefs started out innocent enough.

God wooed me from a place of anger and cynicism and doubt.

He showed up when I didn't ask for it or expect it or even want it. And my response, an awe-filled: "You sneaky God."

I was wooed by a God who cut through my anger, hopelessness, and numbness to show his surprising, redemptive, and mischievous face.

And now all I can see is the mischief. Now that I believe in and follow this God, I fear he will abandon me in the same mischievous way that he first showed up. That I will ask and beg and cry out desperate for his presence and his answers, and he will go into hiding, a smirk on his face, as I respond with a bitter-tinged: "You sneaky God."

Somewhere along the road, I started to counter his tricks with tricks. I've found myself striving to concoct the perfect blend of anger, cynicism, and doubt to trick him into showing up. I've made it all about me again. I have to act a certain way, jump through hoops, manipulate him into answering me.

I forget that he showed up not to spite me, but to love me.

I forget that I came to love him because he loves me, not because he tricks me. I mean, sure, I appreciate a whimsical amount of mischief and surprise, but that's not what made me fall in love. It was his love. His exceeding of my expectations. His grace and mercy and compassion. That never fails. That doesn't go into hiding just because I look for it.

As much as I fear he won't show up when I ask him to, this is the part that makes my relationship with God based on faith. It's true he doesn't always show up in ways that I think he should. It's true he isn't always readily tangible to me. It's true I don't always get what I want. It's true that sometimes it feels like he took away my Halloween candy just to spite me.

But that doesn't make his presence and his goodness any less real.

In a very apropos message at church yesterday, my pastor talked about trusting God in the dark. In the times when he seems silent and sneaky, a perpetual trickster.

Two pieces of advice he had: 1. Be totally honest with God and 2. When it comes to faith, perseverance pays off.

So, 1. God, I am scared that because you showed up when I didn't ask you to, that you won't show up now that I'm asking.

2. God, I will trust you. I will wrestle with you. I will press into these lies I tell myself about you. I will (try) to stop manipulating you. I will practice resting in your love. I will replace, "You sneaky God" with "You stubborn God" and "You lavish God." Stubborn in your love for me, and lavish in your gifts for me.

Expect Joy

Lately I’ve been a glass half empty kinda girl. I’ve been feeling defeat and despair and dullness where life and joy once teemed.

But God spoke to me yesterday.

After the tears on the phone to my mom. While washing dishes in the sink. While scraping day old coffee gunk from the bottom of a ceramic cup.

God spoke.

A melody at first. A refrain.

"restore unto me the joy of thy salvation..."

A Sunday school hymn.

And then the words of the living God. Whispered to me. To me?

"I will restore your joy."

Restore. Because something has been broken. Because something has been lost. Because something needs to be mended and tended.

My joy.

Psalm 51:10-12

"Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me."

I don't know what that means or when that means. But I believe it. And I want it.

I want a clean heart. A renewed spirit. A heart that expects God to show up. That expects joy.

Because he WILL restore my joy.

I am going to expect joy.

Maybe there is something to this naming of gifts, naming of joy. As I type these words, my heart settles. The panic panic grasping subsides. My fists unclench, open to receive this joy. Expectant. Vigilant in the pursuit of joy.

Vigilant in the pursuit of God.

Unthanksgiving

My New Year's reading has entailed one of the best books I've ever read: One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp. She writes about choosing, learning, deciding to see the gifts in our lives. To give thanks. To name our thanks. To name our gifts and reclaim our lives.

The book started with a map of her own tragedy. Of pooling tears and shut in grief and tamped down faith. I liked it then. I liked the acknowledgement of the pain of life; eyes that see "a world pocked with pain."

And then she shifts direction, subtly, like a shadow passing over, from grief to life, from ingratitude to grace. To see the world through different eyes. Eyes that see through the "losses that puncture our world" to God.

A dare to see a world where "that which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To him. To the God we endlessly crave."

I wanted to go with her. To see with her.

I have no problem believing in the power of words, of our thoughts, to transform our lives. I have no problem believing that there are immeasurable gifts of grace and delight sitting below our noses, below my computer to the sparkling gold-gilded placemats that dazzle the room--a literal and metaphorical gift to my roommate that now garnish our table.

But right now, drowning in year-end regrets and plowing through a quarter-life crisis, I don't want to be grateful.

I want to be justified in my discontent. I want to mourn what I've lost. The unmet expectations. The disappointment. The disillusionment. That I'm 25 and haven't published a best seller or met the man of my dreams.

Okay, those may seem too cliche or far-fetched to warrant empathy. But the disappointment is real. The daily defeat of not being who I thought I would be. The sum of a million unmet expectations, moments when I could have chosen to learn and grow and live fully, when instead I sulked and balked and grew more deeply discontent.

This is and isn't what I want.

I know I need gratitude. I know it is the only way to truly live. I know it is The Way.

In the book, Ann starts an audacious list of 1,000 gifts in her life.

I'm starting one too. Right now I'm merely going through the motions. But I pray my pen and my prayers and my lists will reveal the places pocked with pain as gifts, as "seeing-through-to-God-places." That I would end the attitude of unthanksgiving. That I would learn to live.

1. Honest words typed across a blank screen...

T.S. Wednesday: Making a Scene

"I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you

Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,

The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed

With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,

And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama

And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—"

It's not Tuesday, but my heart needs T.S. Eliot this morning. I need to be reminded that I'm not the first to question the darkness of God. To watch in alarm as the stage of my life dims, fearful of the dark, of the unknown. To lose hope in the changing of scenes. To mistake the dimming lights and the quiet rustle in the dark for the end. Not the beginning.

I say to soul, be still. And it says to me, "Yeah, right." I crouch, poised for action. If only I knew which step to take. What the next scene holds. But right now all I can sense is the movement of darkness on darkness. The creation of a scene not yet revealed to me.

And I say to my soul, be still. And wait for God to make a scene.