Dr. Ron Sumners
November 2, 2003
When I was pastor in Landrum, SC, I was only about sixty miles from Jim Bakker’s Heritage USA near Charlotte, NC. It was in the hey-day of his ministry and he and Tammy Faye were household names.
I remember vividly the day Jim Bakker was convicted of fraud and sentenced to forty-four years in prison. It was October 6, 1989. I had just moved to Whiteville, NC and I considered it a wonderful gift to begin my new ministry. I felt it was a just reward for Bakker and his fraudulent ministry.
I had no sympathy for him or his family. I thought that he was a huckster who gained millions of dollars from people by defrauding them using the name of Jesus. I had distanced myself as far as possible from the brand of religion he promoted. When he was hauled off to prison, my response was, “It serves him right.”
He wrote a biography several years later entitled I Was Wrong. It talked of his fall from grace and his first five years in prison. It told of a transformation in his life. He wrote, “God does not promise that we will all be rich and prosperous, as I once preached. When I finally studied the Bible while in prison, it became clear to me that not one man or woman – not even the prophets of God – led a life without pain.” He admitted, “I was wrong!”
His confession was brought on by self-examination and a true study of God’s word. I had to examine myself and I realized that I too had been wrong. I had judged and condemned him. He was a man of humble beginnings. He had grand dreams of what he could do for the kingdom. But he let his obsessions consume him.
I wanted to believe that Jim Bakker was an aberration. I was wrong. His greed and religious justifications were merely the symptoms of a much wider epidemic that has spread to the traditional church. We prosecuted Jim Bakker, but ignored the question of why thousands of people, when promised blessing, sent him money.
He confessed, in his book, to the temptation to have more, do more, earn more, build bigger, emphasize material things rather than spiritual, protect the image regardless of cost, look the other way rather than confront wrongs. Does that sound like the contemporary church? Even more disturbing, does that sound like my life and yours?
The obsession with material things is a congenital defect of humanity. To be born in the United States is to be heir to this affliction. Jim Bakker was merely the most blatant prophet of a philosophy that has become the norm, even in the church. His lifestyle was an exaggeration of a nearly universal merger of religious life and the predominant values of our culture. He sprinkled holy water on materialism!
Greed wrapped in a flag and holding a Bible is still greed! Avarice as a national policy with a religious mandate is an evil that permeates our society. It is an evil from which we need deliverance.
“Deliver us from evil,” is not a statement asking for personal protection. It is recognition of our tendency to accept the standards of the world.
Though there are many temptations in our lives, when the prosperous seek deliverance from evil, we are asking to be delivered from the temptations of wealth. The Bible warns, “People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim. 6:9-10). Getting rich is the American dream. Personal prosperity is the great American temptation.
Jim Bakker said, “To my surprise, after months of studying Jesus, I concluded that He did not have one good thing to say about money.” If you read the New Testament, you discover that Jesus thought money the most tempting alternative to God. Jesus warned his disciples of many temptations and traps, but He gave only money that status of a god.
Unfortunately, most of us seem convinced we can balance our commitment to God with our desire for affluence. That is a balancing act that is almost impossible to realize.
A life centered in personal prosperity and material blessing is a life built on a lie. Jim Bakker discovered that when his life was stripped of pretense and self-justification, all that remained was the ugly truth. He had worshipped an idol of silver and gold. The truth is that much of the church, whether actively promoting prosperity theology or not, has bowed down before the same idol. We are those as 1Timothy 6:5 tells us, “Who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.”
The message of Jesus concerning money is one that we don’t want to hear. We want to believe His words are aimed at someone else. The rich are the millionaires and billionaires. They are the ones who love money, not us. As long as there is someone more extravagant than we are, we justify our affluence. We fail to recognize they simply have more of what we hunger for! Indeed, they may not have made it their god as much as we.
We all seek more. Jesus commanded less. He said, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Luke 12:32-34)
We all want to earn more. Jesus commanded that we give more away. One day, Jesus was watching people bring their gifts to the Temple Treasury. He saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:3-4).
Generosity is not measured by how much you give. It is measured by how much you have left. When we focus on earning more, we seldom give more. There is actually a decline in the percentage of giving as we become wealthier. The most prosperous members are seldom the most generous. There is an old adage known to most pastors: In church work, you do not necessarily get money from people who have money; you get money from people who have the Lord!
The compulsion to earn more does damage to our marriages, families, churches, and the world. One of the top four reasons for divorce is money. We are committed to lifestyles that demand two incomes and deep debt. We pass each other on the way to our jobs. We have traded our family and leisure time for overtime. We have defined the successful church as the one with the biggest attendance and budget. I understand greed is not our only problem. But I believe that much of the pain in our lives, marriages, families, churches, and world would be eliminated if we were to acknowledge its power.
We believe that “bigger is better.” Jesus commanded us to build better relationships than bigger personal kingdoms. The proper use of wealth is to strengthen our relationships with God and man.
A bigger house, a fancier car, a fatter stock portfolio, a larger business, and a more influential ministry are not the goals of God. Jim Bakker said, “As with so many things done under my leadership at PTL, we started with the best of intentions and somehow got sidetracked onto a path of pride, arrogance and indulgence. We got trapped in the subtle snare that says, ‘big is better.’” While Jim Bakker’s ministry and bank account were expanding, his marriage, his family, and his own emotional and spiritual health were disintegrating.
Jesus said, “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet loses his own soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt. 16:26). In our culture, far too many of us have exchanged our souls for silver and gold. We have confused the riches of the kingdom of God with the wealth of this world.
At pastor’s meetings, one pastor will ask another, “How is your church doing?” The response will almost always be about attendance and financial figures. We measure the health of the church on the scales of prosperity.
There is no better indication of our confusion than the way we celebrate Christmas. We have taken the birth of Christ and turned it into the biggest commercial event of the year. We celebrate the gift of a relationship, our relationship to God through Jesus, by buying each other gifts that we do not need. We waste enough money during one month to meet the real needs of the entire world. We spend far more during the Christmas season in the malls than we do our churches.
We all protect our image of prosperity so carefully. Yet Jesus called us to service. He asked us to be servants.
The disciples of Jesus always resisted this call. One day Jesus grew so frustrated with them that He took off His outer garment, poured some water in a basin, and began to wash the disciple’s feet. This was a task usually reserved for the lowest of servants.
What would happen in the American church if we washed each other’s feet as often as we took communion? Isn’t it revealing how readily we adopt those acts that celebrate what God has done for us and resist those acts that represent our responsibility to serve one another? What would it mean if washing the dirty feet of the world became our commitment and joy?
The great American temptation is to want more, earn more, to seek bigger and better things, to emphasize the material at the expense of the spiritual, and to protect our image of prosperity at any cost. Yet God offers us far more than prosperity. God offers us a kingdom rich in blessings, blessings that cannot be measured in dollars.
We cannot serve two masters. The cost is too high. We must decide what we treasure the most: the things of God or the things of man.
Jesus reminded His disciples that God is “Our Father” and we are brothers and sisters. He asked us to commit ourselves to God’s kingdom and will. He commanded us to give and forgive. But I believe what will change our lives, and ultimately transform the world, is to acknowledge the temptations of silver and gold, to confess our desire for and dependence upon material wealth, and to be delivered from our lust for more.
In Alcoholic’s Anonymous, the first statement that has to be made before restoration can begin is, “I am an alcoholic.” What would happen if we began our worship service today by confessing, “I am Ron and I am greedy?” Attendance might decrease, but I suspect that our spiritual strength would grow.
I can imagine the testimonies. “Every morning I wake up knowing that greed can destroy my life. My greed can cause me to ignore my family, worship my job, destroy my health, and define my worth in dollars. I wish I could say that I don’t depend on money, but I do. My credit cards, savings accounts, stocks and bonds, pensions, and insurance policies are my security. Every day I want more and more. Only by the grace of God can I be delivered from this insanity.”
Confessing the temptation of prosperity is the first and most difficult step toward spiritual health. It will always humble us. In admitting our love of money, we become conscious of the ugliness of greed. In acknowledging our infatuation with wealth, we can more easily see how it ensnares us. In confessing we have too much, we are freed to live on so much less. Once we are honest, prosperity begins to lose its power to entice and destroy.
We can do great things! We can live as children of God. We can establish God’s kingdom and do His will. We can give generously to the needy. We can forgive those who sin against us. We can abandon our love of money and be delivered from our obsession with personal prosperity. We can finally be free to be the people of God.
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