Watching Joel Osteen2008-7-24 11:58:00

Watching Joel Osteen
Posted by Sean Lucas
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2008/07/watching-joel-osteen.php

Last night as I was flipping the channels during a second straight depressing late-inning loss by my Cardinals, I happened onto Joel Osteen's program. As someone professionally-trained as an American religious historian, it was striking to watch Osteen once again and note both the themes of his message and the manner of his method. In both respects, his popularity is not the result of originality, but his skillful repacking of positive thinking/self-esteem and Pentecostal/charismatic elements. [On this particular episode, his wife Victoria was presiding at the Lord's Table. While watching that gave me the shivers, it was also striking how much less skillful and how much more plastic she was compared to Joel.]
作者以他美国宗教历史家训练的背景指出，Joel Osteen 受到广大的欢迎不是因为他的信息有什么原创性，而是他很有技巧地把积极思想/自我价值，以及五旬节/灵恩的元素结合在一起。

While there were a lot of things to critique, I couldn't help but ask the historian's analysis questions: why does this message appeal to so many (upwards of 15,000 attend services at Lakewood Church each weekend)? what are the verbal and facial cues that draw people in? why does it seem that Lakewood is amazingly interracial (a fact that is much more common in Pentecostal-oriented churches than Reformed); how do you account for that?
作者问道：为什么这个信息会吸引这么多人？而且是多族裔的人？

I think the driving reason that Osteen is hugely popular is that he sells hope. Books like Your Best Life Now and Become a Better You provide a message of hope that my life does not have to be the way it is right now; that God is powerful and able to change my life; that God is profoundly interested in my life and is near to me. And while that message of hope is packaged in the code language of the prosperity Gospel and positive psychology (like the phenomenally successful book by Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier), at the end of the day, people leave Lakewood feeling as though there is a greater meaning and purpose for their lives.
作者认为，答案是Joel Osteen 所贩卖的是盼望——我的生活不一定必然会是现在这个样子；神是大能的，祂一定能改变我的生活；上帝非常关心我的生活，祂与我很亲近。而这个信息以成功福音与积极心理学独特的语言作为包装时，那些听了道，离开Lakewood教会的人会觉得，他们的生活会更有意义，具有更大的目的。

As I thought about all this, though, I couldn't help but think about John Piper's question from God is the Gospel (and other places): do you delight more in the fact that God makes much of you in the Gospel or that the Gospel frees you to make much of God? The fault in Osteen's message is that it overplays and wrongly prioritizes the fact that God makes much of us (and God does make much of us: as I read in my morning worship today, God cried out to a wayward Israel, "How can I give you up, O Ephraim?...My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender" Hosea 11:8).

作者由此想到 John Piper 曾讲过的一篇信息：你更喜欢神在福音中看重你，还是更喜欢福音使你得自由，因而高举上帝？Osteen 之信息的错误之处，是他夸大并错误地将上帝看重我们放在一个更优越的地位 （虽然，上帝的确很看重我们：因为上帝曾向悖逆的以色列人说：以法莲哪，我怎能舍弃你？以色列啊，我怎能弃绝你？我怎能使你如押玛？怎能使你如洗扁？我回心转意，我的怜爱大大发动。何11：8）

The biblical priority is that God in the Gospel rescues, delivers, frees and sustains us to make much of God. He is the great good in the Good News--and it truly is amazing: that God would save his wayward children for the fame of his name; would shape worshippers who will find their deepest satisfaction in making much of God; and would gather together a worldwide body of worshippers who hallow his name!
圣经的优先顺序是上帝是在福音中拯救、释放我们，使我们得自由，并维系我们，好使上帝自己得到高举。祂是好消息中最大的好处——而这真的是很令人惊讶的：神竟然会为了祂的名，拯救祂悖逆的儿女；竟然会塑造一群敬拜者，使他们在高举神的当中找到最深的满足；而且竟然会召聚那些在全世界称颂祂的名的崇拜者，成为一个团体。

And that is the great hope: not that our material position would be better or our relationships grow stronger. Rather, our great hope is that the steadfast, committed love of our God is transforming us into worshippers who find our hearts satisfied in God himself.
作者下结论到，这是伟大的盼望：重要的不是我们在物质上更富裕，或者我们的人际关系变得更好。而是，我们的盼望是那神永不改变、向我们承诺的爱，会继续更新变化我们，使我们成为一群真正的敬拜者——我们的心在神自己身上会得到最大的满足。

阅读全文 | 回复(0) | 引用通告 | 编辑