Joel Osteen

On Sunday night I watched the pastor of the largest church in this country preach one of his typical messages. I have heard about Joel Osteen, but never actually read his book or listened to him myself. His message was sad and even sickening. Instead of preaching about God, Joel preached about me (or we could substitute any of the other thousands of people that were either present or watching on TV). The sermon consisted of statements all about the congregation: "YOU are loved by God. YOU have potential. God approves YOU. Don't be down on YOURSELF." I would guess he used at least 500 personal pronouns in the half hour that he spoke.

The main point of his message was that since God is for you, you should be for yourself too. He quoted the verse "Love your neighbor as you love yourself" and said, you guessed it, "You cannot love your neighbor until you already have a healthy love for yourself." He constantly glossed over sins calling them "weaknesses" and "mistakes," and said "For every bad thing about you, God sees thousands of good things." He did sort-of contradict this statement later, however, by using the exaple of the prodigal son. "God treats us like the father treated his prodigal son. Instead of looking at all the bad things he had done, the father saw only his choice to return home." So do I have a little sin or a lot? Do I have a little goodness or a lot?

One thing that was sadly missing from his message was the righteousness of Christ. Osteen told me that God approves me (I am even wearing that piece of spiritual armor called the "breastplate of God's approval"), but he never said why. The cross, the perfect Christ, the atonement, and the fact that God sees me in His Son, were not mentioned. On the contrary, he preached that God is seeing the good in me and is therefore approving me.

His style was flawless; he moved from statement to statement without hesitating or checking any notes. But his content was blasphemous. The message included no admiration of the perfection and glory of God, but much fuss over the goodness and potential of man. It would be amazing if God gripped Joel Osteen's heart and caused him to magnify the Creator, not the creation. He has such a following, and would be able to spread that truth to so many people. But until that happens, I am sickened by the harm Osteen is doing to the name of Christ by making Him simply a coach to encourage us in our goodness instead of a perfect Savior who makes us righteous by His loving choice and infinite sacrifice.