When I first heard the news about Joel Osteen’s church not housing people who were losing everything in Hurricane Harvey I didn’t expect it to be as big of a deal. I had never thought of Osteen as anything more than a motivational speaker. I can’t think of a single time I’ve listened to him and gained new Biblical insight. Personally, I know I am not his target audience so I respect people who buy his books but I choose not to.
I hoped that it would be an opportunity for us to look critically at the structure of the megachurch. Who is holding these pastors accountable? Who is making decisions in a time of emergency? Yet, instead I saw a lot of varying responses. Many focused specifically on Osteen’s church. His church holds over 16,000 seats… his church brings in about $77mil a year… etc etc. Most Christians thought that the $77mil income was irrelevant. Their underlying premise was that God wants us to be wealthy and it’s not any of our business what anyone else does with that wealth.
While that is a perfectly fine capitalist argument, I wonder when we shift our focus to the power that people with wealth have over people without it. The Bible speaks often about “oppressing the poor” (my personal favorite is Proverbs 22:16 (NLT) “a person who gets ahead by oppressing the poor or showering the rich in gifts will end in poverty”) and I believe that many Christians don’t acknowledge that the Church (big C) does a lot of that oppression. Ever since I was small I remembered seeing Creflo Dollar ask for money on the television. I would see pastors live in luxury often while telling their congregants to find joy in the immaterial things. In church, we would collect multiple offerings to build buildings that still, after many years, are not built; that’s manipulation. In the most extreme cases, that’s financial abuse.
With Osteen’s church front and center, how do we begin to reverse the financial abuse that has been done in the name of Jesus? In 2 Corinthians Paul says “Right now you have plenty and can help those who are in need. Later, they will have plenty and can share with you when you need it. In this way, things will be equal.” (2 Corinth 8:14, emph added) so if large churches such as Osteen’s and Dollar’s are not being taxed in the same way businesses are, how do we create that equality? How do we call out churches and pastors who are mishandling funds and using church money to get personal gains?
I don’t know the answer. Right now I do know that we must begin to ask ourselves questions. We must include a broader financial analysis that includes systemic injustices in the church. If we don’t we will hurt far more than we can heal.