Why joel osteen is bad

In Hurricane Katrina, the heroes included the Cajun navy, everyday folks helping their neighbors, and Lt.

Russel Honore, that "John Wayne Dude," who arrived like the cavalry to bring order out of chaos. As the waters are still receding from Hurricane Harvey, the heroes are the Cajun navy, everyday folks helping their neighbors, and Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale , the Houston-area furniture store magnate who opened his doors to help people flooded out of their homes. Osteen became the quintessential bad guy when social media vigilantes accused him of closing his Lakewood Church, a ,square-foot arena formerly known as The Summit and the Compaq Center, to flood victims seeking shelter.

The televangelist-preacher and best-selling author was perfectly cast to be a scoundrel for several reasons, not the least of which is his high profile as a professed Christian leader and all that comes with that. You know, like:. Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. He also has that smarmy central-casting televangelist personna with a megawatt smile, tailor-made suits, and Hallmark card inspirational phrases like "A Night of Hope" the name of his current tour and "Your Best Life Now" his best-selling book.

Worst of all, Osteen preaches what is called the prosperity gospel, an unscriptural and unhelpful message that God always blesses the righteous with health, wealth and happiness.

If it were a form of music, I think it would be easy listening. A Houston-area meteorologist called Harvey "almost certainly the biggest US flood-producing storm of all time. Since Friday, at least 19 people have died , and over 30, in Texas and Louisiana, at last count , have left their flooded homes with no destination in mind but away. The George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston opened its doors and has already received 10, refugees , double what the Red Cross planned for.

People have also been received at smaller facilities across the Houston area, including many places of worship: Four mosques in the Islamic Society of Greater Houston are open as shelters , and at least 17 Houston-area churches have been operating as shelters or temporary staging areas for evacuees.

But Lakewood — Houston's largest church — was slower to open its doors, and found itself in the eye of an online storm. Once the worst of the rains stopped, Lakewood started receiving more donations than it could keep up with. Diapers, baby formula, clothes, and towels piled up along the walls as lines of cars waited to drop off more. Then, after city officials told Lakewood that the convention center was reaching capacity, the church opened its doors to those seeking shelter, and it is currently housing more than evacuees.

Lakewood Church is nothing if not a high-profile target for criticism. It is housed in the former Compaq Center arena originally The Summit , which, until , was home to multiple professional sports franchises, including the Houston Rockets.

With an estimated attendance of 52, people spread out over six worship services four in English and two in Spanish , Lakewood is one of the largest churches in the US. Osteen, its leader, is the smooth-talking best-selling author of books like Your Best Life Now and the host, with his wife Victoria, of a Sirius radio channel.

Within the evangelical movement, Osteen is seen as something of an outsider: a too-slick Elmer Gantry type who preaches a feel-good prosperity doctrine, drives fancy cars, and deals in bumper-sticker theology. Lakewood Church is part of the Word of Faith movement, a charismatic movement that teaches Christians that faith in God will heal illnesses, improve relationships, and bring about personal prosperity.

This teaching is not part of mainstream evangelicalism, which has condemned Osteen and the prosperity gospel in no uncertain terms for the last few decades. Gordon Fee, a prominent Pentecostal scholar, wrote a book called The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels , and the well-known Calvinist pastor John Piper once said that "the prosperity gospel will not make anybody praise Jesus. It will make people praise prosperity.

He repeatedly gets the Gospel wrong. And he does so when talking to millions. By the time Harvey had started to really unleash on Houston, people were scrambling for places to stay. But Lakewood Church was curiously silent, until, at a. Almost a quarter of Americans now profess to having none. Though precise numbers are hard to find, one in five Americans is estimated to follow a prosperity gospel church.

This offshoot of Christianity is quintessentially American — a blend of the Pentecostal tradition and faith healing. It is also expanding worldwide. Among its largest growth markets are South Korea, the Philippines and Brazil. They are at the cutting edge of consumer trends. Joel Osteen is a maestro of high-tech religious marketing. I met him behind the scenes before one of his Nights of Hope — a two-and-a-half-hour, all-singing-and-dancing show that he takes on the road every few weeks.

The sermon he was about to give turned out to be as candied as anything the town produces. Even on the th Night of Hope, his nervous energy was palpable. The second thing that struck me was his stature.

He was at least two inches shorter than me. The third thing was his hesitancy. Osteen, a youthful year-old, is said to practise his sermon for days until he gets it pitch perfect — when to turn to which camera to deliver the money line; which part of the stage to occupy at any given moment; when to vary his cadence; how to make the most of all the bling.

Without a script, he seemed painfully shy. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. How did he manage to keep sin and redemption out of a Christian message, I asked. If you keep laying shame on people, they get turned off. But how does telling people to downplay their consciences tally with the New Testament? Osteen smiled awkwardly. I want to help people sleep at night. I thought, along with 10, others.

Osteen knows his audience. We want fatted calves slaughtered in our honour. Osteen is more like Oprah Winfrey in a suit. He is not peddling the opium of the masses. It is more like therapy for a broken middle class.

If God had a refrigerator, Osteen said, your picture would be on it. If He had a computer, your face would be the screensaver. One man, a market day trader, had been to a Night of Hope in Cleveland. He packed his bags there and then and moved to Houston. He now attends Lakewood every day. Two years ago, in the midst of Hurricane Harvey, which pummelled the city, Osteen suffered a social-media backlash for having kept the doors of Lakewood closed.

The multi-storey megachurch sits on elevated ground next to a freeway. Yet it stayed shuttered to the tens of thousands of Houstonians washed out of their homes. That tweet got more than , likes. Lakewood was shamed into opening its doors. It took in several hundred people until the biblical-scale flood receded. But it left an impression that Lakewood was more of a corporation than a church. What did they think of that, I asked. His suburban Houston home has three elevators, a swimming pool and parking for 20 cars.

Osteen should be number one on that list. Everyone laughed. He became rich because he makes good investments. Everyone knows stories about profiteering televangelists. In the s, when the prosperity gospel was starting to become big business, Jim and Tammy Bakker were jailed for embezzling millions of dollars. He has put that skill to good use.

About the only book that Trump is known to have read from cover to cover is The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale, the grandfather of the prosperity gospel. It has sold five million copies since it was published in His message is that the more you give to God, the more he will give back in return.

The prosperity gospel is all about harvesting the seed. Poverty is a sign of godlessness. Every Sunday from the late s onwards, Fred Trump would take the family, including the young Donald, to hear his sermons.

He was the greatest guy. He could not have been more charming. Even then, however, Trump knew that any public association could damage Osteen. Though Osteen is politically conservative, he does not wear it on his sleeve.

In contrast to most southern preachers, he keeps his thoughts to himself on abortion and homosexuality. His congregation is racially diverse. When Barack Obama was president, he pulled Osteen aside after a White House prayer breakfast to be photographed together. Wealthy people crave selfies with Osteen. Presidents may covet his blessing. But his business model is targeted at the struggling middle class. The America of neighbourhood churches and intimate congregations is as faded as the small towns of the s.