Most Christians that I know can see the flaw in the “prosperity gospel,” the idea that God intends to bless Christians with material wealth here on earth. In the same way, they recognize it’s close cousin, the “health and wealth” gospel. It doesn’t take a lot of reading in the New Testament to recognize that following Christ is not about always receiving the things we want in this life.

I think there’s another close relative of those false teachings that often slips in unawares. It has several variations:

(1) God’s will is that people live in a democracy. You’d think we wouldn’t have trouble spotting that one, since we can look at the government that God set up in the Old Testament and quickly see that it wasn’t a democracy. However, I still hear people pray that God will bring democracy to certain countries of the world. They need Christianity; they may or may not need democracy.

(2) Christians must do whatever it takes to preserve our religious freedoms/prosperity/liberty/…. Sorry, but those things, nice though they are, were not promised to us by God. Actually, the Bible talks a lot about the Christian life being a life of suffering. Not always what we want to hear, but it’s what the Bible says.

(3) God wants us to be good citizens/patriotic/defenders of our country. OK, I’ve talked enough about that one. But it still rears its ugly head from time to time. Whether we like it or not, the continuing existence of any earthly nation is not our top priority. Our faithfulness to the kingdom of God trumps the existence of the United States.

Just as God hasn’t promised us health and wealth, he hasn’t promised us the privilege of living with religious freedom. Our job is not to work to preserve those freedoms; our job is to promote the kingdom of God.

[photo by Bill Davenport, sxc.hu]