Thursday, October 18, 2007

I Just Lost My Breakfast

Joel Osteen is on The Early Show this morning being lauded as "America's Pastor." If his neutered Christianity, poppish feel-good sermons, and Jesus-as-Santa theology makes him America's pastor, then it's just one more reminder of how badly we need to take a hard look at American Christianity. It's probably already too late at this point to turn the American church around before the inevitable collapse spreads wider than it already has. But, we can at least start working for the future revival and rebuliding that I can only pray and hope will come in time.

5 comments:

"Nick" said...

Yeah, I saw some of it too. Same feelings. I also checked out the 60 Minutes piece on him, which was actually quite good.

Ward said...

I didn't get to see the 60 Minutes piece. I'll have to check that out.

Nomad said...

Keep in mind, tho, that this is THE EARLY SHOW. These are the same folks who would show paintings of clowns on velvet as examples of "genuine American art."

Sean said...

I watched the first segment with him and had a couple of different thoughts.
A)He's really on his game avoiding the pitfalls of all the topics they were asking him about that were aimed at making some sort of scandal.

B)I didn't really disagree completely with anything he said. Which, as you can imagine, was a rather large shock.

C) C.S. Lewis said that the way the devil works is he takes the truth and changes it just enough that it's not the truth and then presents it to us as truth (I'm paraphrasing of course). This is the way I feel about Osteen's comments this morning. They're close enough to the truth that if you're not looking or don't know what to look for then it would be easy to accept what he says as truth.

He says that he talks about hope because it's a dark world any everybody needs hope. This is true, but what darkness is he talking about. He openly says that he doesn't talk about sin. What's the point of preaching on Jesus if you're not going to talk about why Jesus came to earth. Sure everybody needs hope, but it's not the everything's gonna be fine if you just think positive crap that Osteen is putting out there. Rather it's the Jesus has forgiven you your sins and in turn has allowed you to do great things in the earth.

I think that I may dislike him more after this because I feel like he's avoiding the important stuff. I hate talking about sin - especially my own - as much as anybody, but still it's a truth that needs to be dealt with.

Anonymous said...

10/19
I am watching him and his wife on Fox & Friends right now. He is publicizing his latest book. I can see why he is appealing to many. He hasn't said anything wrong, but I can see how the previous comments are correct.