Artificial Attraction

I lived in Tulsa, Oklahoma a long time ago. I moved there to pay off a campaign debt when I ran for the Iowa House of Representatives. Within a few days of relocating I had a job as a security guard at the World Museum Art Center built by famed global evangelist T. L. Osborn to help subsidize his international ministry.

Back then Tulsa was the center of name-it-claim-it Bible teaching. Adherents of this brand of Christianity stress the power of confessing the truths they perceive in the Scriptures. These declarations most often center on wealth and health, but they also emphasize thwarting any bad thing that can be conceived. Unconditional spiritual, financial, and physical prosperity can be achieved if the believer professes as often as possible the certainty that these blessings will come to pass.

For example, one morning at the museum I noticed the receptionist didn’t look like her usual bubbly self. I asked her if she felt alright. She replied she felt a little under the weather. Before I could respond with the typical do you think you should go home remark, she desperately rescinded her earlier admission that she didn’t feel well and replaced it with a far more positive, authoritative assertion that she was perfectly fine. Yet the altered declaration didn’t change anything about her actual physical condition. The next day she called in sick.

I admit in my early faith walk I was taken by this gospel tangent. The Bible appeared to be filled with verses promising goodness for those who believed. Indeed, if God’s eyes were on the sparrow to feed and protect it, then why wouldn’t he do far more for me? It seemed reasonable to believe bad things happened to bad people and only good things happened to the faithful.

While I never became a confession zealot, the residue from this teaching stayed with me long after I left Tulsa. I expected my life to unfold along a path of relative peace and success since I assumed I was impervious to harm and even disappointment. Fast forward twenty-five years and my life journey turned to the unimaginable with my son’s brain injury. No amount of positive confession would change the permanent damage done by a brain bleed, a bilateral stroke, and apnea.

I look back at that Christian club membership I bought in Tulsa with its lifetime warranty and money-back guarantee and wonder how I got duped. How was I convinced that T. L. Osborn and Nancy (the receptionist) and all the others like Oral Roberts, Kenneth Copeland, Kenneth Hagin, and Joel Osteen were apostles of truth peddling blessings of bliss? How did I overlook the suffering and martyrdom of the saints from all previous ages and consider I was somehow exempt from the same end?

It was like an artificial attraction to God that was only interesting so long as the return on my investment continued to produce all the good things I expected. Dissatisfaction was an impossibility because I was only going to reap God’s abundant promises. Every dollar of faith would yield one hundred dollars in real currency. Every day would be a victory parade adorned with confetti made of gold.

All this spongy, spiritual meringue in my life dissolved one summer day when right in front of me Matt stopped breathing. The same nurse who an hour earlier supposed he only had the flu now frantically pushed the Code Blue alarm. Within seconds the exam room filled with nurses and doctors. Matt was intubated and rushed to the ER. Almost immediately the story of my faith started to be revised.

Several years ago, I met a teenager who had experienced a tragic medical blunder. He had a heart condition requiring a surgical procedure that was not considered high risk. The night before the surgery he walked to the front of his church to receive prayer. He was surrounded by a large group of believers who earnestly asked God to be with him, to guide the doctors’ hands, and to bring him back healthy and strong with a testimony of the goodness of God.

Shortly after the surgery it appeared everything had gone well. Sadly, within a day signs emerged suggesting something had gone wrong. His condition worsened as it became clear he had suffered a serious brain injury during surgery from a lack of oxygen. Over the course of the next five years his life changed in every conceivable way. He was in and out of hospitals and rehab centers. He couldn’t walk or talk. His body became twisted and inflexible. He was in a state of being no part of which could ever be described as the goodness of God.

Before his death I watched his mother strain to reconcile her faith in God with the pain that filled her heart. As only a professional Christian can do, she expertly concealed the bitterness she felt inside as she considered that few if any of the prayers offered for her son over the course of his long journey were ever answered. I couldn’t help but wonder if she felt as I – that the American gospel had overpromised and underperformed.

A young boy with a brand-new black eye hangs himself in his bedroom because he’s been bullied relentlessly at school. A girl jumps from her inner tube into the river for fun with her friends and drowns. On the day of her high school graduation party the graduate gets into her car to drive to the 7-11 three blocks from home to get some snacks and is killed when her car is T-boned. A man in his apartment hears shots from the parking lot and goes to the window to investigate and is struck in the head by a stray bullet. A girl goes on a late-night joyride into the country with two friends who kill her because she annoys them. A couple tries for years to have a baby, and when he’s born it’s a prayer-bought miracle, but their joy comes to a miserable end when their only child dies of brain cancer twelve years later. Parents cling to their four small children, ages 2 to 8, in a flooded river until the raging current rips the children out of their arms and sweeps them to their death.

These are true stories. Random acts – unexpected tragedy – deep agony – unending sorrow. Siblings, parents, spouses, friends are left only with the memories of their loved one and the question why did this happen? If they turn to the prosperity gospel for answers they won’t find much in the way of pain relief. According to this doctrine, suffering in this life is reserved primarily for the unbeliever and the unfaithful because God shields the righteous from adversity and the snares of the devil. So, if you find yourself ensnared or afflicted in this world then the most logical reason for the trouble is the sin of commission (you did something bad) or the sin of omission (you didn’t do something good you should have done). Bad things happen to bad people because they deserve them, and bad things happen to good people because they didn’t do enough to stop them from happening.

In the face of unforeseen hardship and loss, the feel-good Good News can only go so far before it becomes stale and good for nothing. No wonder if feels fake. It’s like the old-style white oleomargarine that came with a packet of yellow food coloring so at a minimum the oleo could look like butter even if it could never taste like it. The prosperity dogma seems authentic because slick, crazy-rich televangelists look to be the proof that it works. How can you fault tailored suits, mansions on manicured estates, private jets, and mega-millions in donations from like-minded followers? What could be fake or artificial about those results?

For me – for the mother whose son became disabled after heart surgery – for the couple who lost their gift from God to brain cancer – for the pastor and his wife who buried their daughter only days after her graduation – for the mom and dad who lost all their children in a flood - there was no prosperity windfall of goodness or happiness, no miracles, nothing supernatural. All any of us had was the belief that God loved our children. Nothing else was available, artificial or otherwise, to soften the sorrow. A faith battered and frayed remained to traverse the unforeseen that’s so out of view it can’t even be anticipated. This is life, and it’s real.