Ketchum: Miser or generous to a fault, God loves you where you are

And they’re off! In many ways, as it turns out.

America’s annual time to worship at the altar of Amazon – the Christmas shopping season – swung into high gear the day after Thanksgiving. Actually, that’s not true. It’s been surging since about Labor Day, or maybe the Fourth of July.

It never really starts or ends officially anymore. Love may make the world go around, but money, and buying, both grease the wheels. It’s been that way for a long time. It’s just getting more pervasive.

Americans always have been fascinated with wealth. Gathering it and spending it drive most everything we do. That’s why I should not have been surprised to run across some interesting statistics about something known as the Prosperity Gospel in the most recent issue of The Christian Century.

According to numbers gathered by Lifeway Research, an evangelical-based research and program-development organization, faith in the belief that you can love both God and mammon is growing.

Most recent numbers show 52% of Protestant churchgoers say their congregations teach that God grants financial blessings to those who tithe or give to charity. The startling bit of research is that only 38% bought into that idea in 2017.

Beyond that, 76% of those polled agree God wants them to prosper financially, 43% strongly agree.

For me anyway, the most startling bit of information was this: 45% of those who claim to be Bible-believing Christians say they have to do something to get material blessings from God, with 21% strongly agreeing.

After that, I needed to sit down.

I’ll admit I am not an expert biblical scholar, although I’ve managed to get through the Good Book at least once in my lifetime, and I try to read some of it every morning. Nowhere in all of this reading have I found anything to back up any of the previously mentioned beliefs.

I do not believe God is running a shakedown at the blessings window. The idea is not that, unless I pony up big bucks, the Almighty won’t look kindly on me and withhold blessings. That is not how I’ve seen God work in my life and in the lives of those I love.

Dealing with God is not like investing in the stock market. It’s not a game where success is measured by how much I get in return for what I’ve invested. That’s heresy, pure and simple. There is no Prosperity Testament tucked in between the Old and New testaments.

Yet a growing number of Americans are getting themselves bamboozled by proponents of the Prosperity Gospel. Chances are pretty good the guy preaching such a gospel also rides around in a stretch limo or a private jet, bought and paid for with contributions generated by followers who want to be prosperous just like him. Guess who ends up prosperous.

I believe God wants us all to do as well as we can. The Almighty condemns no one to a life of poverty, addiction, broken relationships or sorrow. It’s this free-will thing that determines a lot of how life goes.

The best we can do is pray daily for guidance in managing the resources we have, to give generously, to spend wisely and to be at peace with all of it.

Miser or generous to a fault, God loves you where you are. No amount of money will buy you out of that.

Jim Ketchum is a retired Times Herald copy editor and a former religion editor. Contact him at jeketchum1@comcast.net.

This article originally appeared on Port Huron Times Herald: Miser or generous to a fault, God loves you where you are