Osteen on 60 Minutes

Sunday night CBS's 60 Minutes ran a story on Joel Osteen who leads the largest church in the US.
I watched the interview and had read and listened to much of Osteen's teachings. I came across thinking that he is a very sincere man.
I do think there are some insincere, shady preachers on tv. I do not think Osteen is one of them and this confirmed that for me.

Regardless I often get teased by friends that I am critical of Osteen. I may be to argumentative about the subject matter as prosperity theology has been the central debate between some of my former college roommates and friends. Hopefully I can not be argumentative and just lay out my thoughts here.

Nevertheless I do disagree with Osteen's teachings....not because he has the largest church in the US, not because he is popular, not because he is a best selling author, not because his cool hair style or Texas accent.
Honestly he seems like a very nice genuine guy.

The problem is simply when I read his message and when I read my Bible they do not line up or make sense together. Never have I seen Osteen use the texts of the Bible as more than a proof text. I have never seen him dive into context.

Osteen admittly shy's away from the cross and sin in his teachings. There is not one cross in the church. I can't help but wonder how the early church might feel about this modern thought of trying to attract people to church thinking the message of the hope of the gospel was somehow deficient and laying down much of the cornerstones of Christian faith...the cross, communion, sin, hell, satan, the atonement.

Yet the Bible is clear that the entire reason Christ came was that there was a big sin problem and the cross is what it took to solve it. Christ payed our ransom. That is the Gospel. You cannot dismiss sin and the cross or you dismiss the salvation part.

Osteen confesses that his teachings are about self esteem and making his people feel good about themselves. While I think he genuinely feels that this is the highest good, yet I am left thinking is this message anywhere in the gospel?

Did Christ spend any time in his teaching raising the banner of self esteem or trying to inflate his followers self worth? Did any of the New Testament authors spend any length of time teaching/preaching this message? Did the Apostle Paul get stoned, flogged, shipwrecked, beat so that the people he was reaching out to could feel better about their self esteem? Feeling good about ones self is not a measure of anything in the Gospel.

In fact I think once you become a believer you see how far your heart is from where it should be. You experience what Paul says as doing what you hate and not doing what you want.

The apostle Paul felt quite good about himself when he was a Pharisee persecuting Christ's church on the road to Damascus and yet in 1st Corinthians 15:9 he calls himself the least of the Apostles. Doesn't sound like he had more self esteem.
It is interesting to me in my faith journey that the more I study the Word the more I see my failures, and my heart and the more I see my need for Christ and treasure his grace.
It's not about self esteem. I need truth. I had lots of self esteem as an unbeliever.

If the message of God wanting us to "Have our Best Life Now" was true then I would be sad to depart this world and be with Christ! Yet that is not what scripture teaches. To Die is GAIN!

If it were true logically then why should I not give my children everything they want when we go to Target & Toys R Us? Why not get them the pony and power wheels. They throw a fit and I get it for them because they really want it.
The kid turns into a brat and the parent is to blame? Everyone knows that, yet that is the logic of the prosperity message. Get it all now, what ever you want! As Benny Hinn says," I don't need gold in heaven, I need it NOW!"
Sometimes what we think is good is not the best thing for us. God knows the big picture.

60 Minutes also interviewed Michael Horton a professor at Westminster Seminary in San Diego. Here are his writings with Biblical support to the dangers of the message & teachings of "Your Best Life Now". I think it is dangerous. I think we need to keep our Bibles open whether reading Piper, Osteen, Graham, Hybels or Warren.

At the end of the day it is about Christ and the Gospel, and not our self esteem.

I pray that God will use Joel Osteen to seek to teach his people truth and to see that Christ is our only hope for esteem from God.

That is more important than how we feel about ourselves.

As Sam Storms recently wrote in a must-read meditation on "The Mega Church and the Mini-Gospel":

if you are a pastor or member of a mega church that faithfully proclaims the gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ alone, I pray that your congregation would expand to even greater heights. If you unashamedly affirm the reality of divine wrath (without redefining it as simply the inevitable moral consequences of sin), the pervasive depravity of the human heart, the necessity of the new birth and repentance, and the centrality of God’s glory in all things, I’m thrilled that your church is mega! You have my permission to ignore the rest of this article. My complaint isn’t with you. In other words, as long as your gospel is as big as your membership roll, I praise God with you for such an outpouring of divine favor.
. . .
What bothers me is the consistent and somewhat humanistic message of human potential, personal fulfillment, and hope for prosperity, together with an obsession for self-esteem, that is proclaimed from pulpits that rarely hear the echo of solid exegesis or communication of the content of Holy Scripture. This soul-shrinking “gospel” serves only to distract people from what makes the biblical gospel good news: the majestic, mind-blowing beauty of a transcendently holy God who graciously condescends in the person of his Son to absorb in himself the punishment we all so richly and eternally deserved