This dynamic view of our relation to God totally reverses much of our usual understanding of religion. It is trusting in God, not in our own virtue or accomplishments.
Paul’s radical understanding of faith had enormous cultural consequences. As a Jew who now saw his Judaism in a new light, he went from synagogue to synagogue proclaiming Christ. Sometimes he was accepted, sometimes not. Occasionally Gentiles were interested. But it was in Antioch of Pisidia that an immense change came (Acts 13). Being rejected by the Jews there, he proclaimed that he would now turn to the Gentiles. Now one of the most dedicated and energetic of early Christians would devote himself to proclaiming the Good News to non-Jews.
Paul’s hope that it is God’s grace and not the law that will open the door for non-Jews to enter the faith, with the accompanying difficult questions about how their cultural beliefs and practices will, or will not, facilitate their new faith. This problem is still with us.
American Basics
If God’s grace is an irreducible aspect of Christianity, a sine qua non of the faith, what are the basics of the American way of life, its own sine qua non, that without which it would not be what it is? I will explore five characteristics of the American faith, the American belief system, and seek to relate or contrast them to God’s grace, if and when it is possible.
The first thing that comes to mind about America is what has been our innate optimism. We are the “can do!” people. This can account for much of our success in the political realm as well as in the sciences and engineering. If there is a problem, it is there to be solved.
This often includes an optimism about ourselves, our basic goodness, and the goodness of our goals. The question that necessarily arises is to what extent this is compatible with the biblical and traditional Christian teachings about grace.
Nowhere is this issue more obvious than in the preaching of Joel Osteen. He is at this time among the most influential of American TV preachers. His books are best-sellers. Immense crowds come to hear him in person. Clearly, his message resonates with something in the American psyche.5
To his credit, he proclaims God’s love for us all. He also insists on the need for personal integrity, honesty, selflessness, and sharing with others—something not always observable in many modern clerics.
Yet the heart of his message and the greater part of his appeal is his positive thinking. In this he stands in the tradition of Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller. He offers a salutary antidote to guilt-ridden lives and philosophical cynicism. It is precisely here that he is most in keeping with American optimism, but he may be proclaiming a cultural belief while at the same time denying what is central to the New Testament and the great thrust of Christian tradition: sin and the need for grace.
To begin, it seems apparent that Osteen’s faith is that God wants for you exactly what you already want for yourself. God wants the best for you. He wants to make life easier for you, and to give you an advantage. He wants to give you the desires of your heart. He wants you to be complete and content: a good marriage, happiness, and abundance.
Our response to this, he says, is faith. This means seeing yourself on a new level. It means believing that your business will take off, that you will prosper financially. Setting your mind on higher things is seeing yourself as stronger, healthier, and victorious. It involves believing that you will get that promotion. It believes that you can get that house that you seemingly cannot afford, just as the Osteens obtained the huge stadium in which they now worship. So then pray! Have faith that God will get you customers.
It appears that there is little or none of the offense of Christianity left here. While God affirms our personal values, it is hard to find anywhere that he confronts them or holds them in question.
While Osteen insists that our success in life is ultimately by God’s grace, he also says that if you do your part, God will do his part. If you keep the right (i.e., positive) attitude, he will repay you double for your trouble. Behind this is the belief in the innate goodness of us all.
It is no accident that Osteen seldom mentions sin. This may have a positive side, since for so many preachers sin is whether you smoke, drink, or swear. He knows his Bible well enough to say that sin is “missing the mark.” But Osteen’s heart is surely elsewhere. A positive attitude toward ourselves, our goals, and God’s approval of us is his dearest belief. While God forgives us, it is more often for mistakes we make, with little awareness that there a deep spiritual disease in the human heart—except, perhaps, for negative thinking, which may be for Osteen something close to the ultimate sin.
It is also telling that he very seldom mentions Jesus. We can well understand why this is so. It is not surprising. Why would we need Jesus? We certainly do not need the Jesus of Luther, who stands between us and the Father’s wrath, nor the Jesus of Augustine, who brings healing to our deep disorientation.
The cross is simply not mentioned. In the more than three hundred pages of Your Best Life Now, there is only one reference to Jesus giving his life. And this is in another context.
It is clear that Osteen’s message is both appropriate and appealing to a culture that wants to think positively, and strongly resents any hint that we who are part of it may ourselves be infected with hopes and desires that can warp and distort our very beings and our relationships with other persons and cultures. What we have here is clearly a matter of American positive thinking: a la Peale, Schuller, and, of course, Osteen himself. Russell Moore is certainly right when he suggests that these thinkers “are more akin to a Canaanite fertility religion than to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”6 That is, our relationship to God is one where we attempt to gain the most we can from him.
One serious problem that arises when the Christian faith is reduced to positive thinking is the problem of evil. We refer here not to the evils that beset us all simply due to the fact that we are human and mortal. The problem for Christians is that we are called to suffer because we are Christians, and we are sometimes called to take stands and act in ways that are counter to our culture. Old Testament prophets were often rejected. Jeremiah was called “the weeping prophet.” Jesus himself was crucified by the powers that ruled. He admonished his followers to take up their cross, and told them that he would bring not peace, but a sword. Paul, a persecutor himself, was then himself persecuted. Many early believers felt the wrath of Rome. In our own day, believers who feel that their faith puts them in opposition to their cultural zeitgeist of the day have found suffering in their paths: witness Christians under Stalin and Hitler, as well as Americans who have fought for equal rights, and on and on.
It is wonderful when believers can live out their lives honestly in their culture, but all too often belief brings antagonism with society, and the accompanying suffering that attends it. On the other hand, many of us may avoid suffering for our faith by being all too willing to turn our eyes away from the false gods and the injustices around us.
A second aspect of American thinking that is observed by almost all is pragmatism, a philosophy that is uninterested in theoretical musings, but only concerned with what works. We are a practical people! In fact, we totally reject as impractical any abstractions that offer no worthwhile results.
It is interesting that America has until recently never adopted the many philosophies emanating from Europe. And the only philosophy that we have ever developed on our own is pragmatism. Probably its most important advocate has been John Dewey. He actually preferred to have his views labeled as “instrumentalism.” Here, the mind is seen as an instrument that makes it possible for us to survive in the best possible way. He explains that the only relevant question to ask is what real effects will result from an action or belief. In one of his writings he offers this analogy: Imagine that you are going somewhere, but on your walk you find that the way is blocked by a huge gulf in the road. What do you do? You may think about jumping across, going around, placing a board over the gulf. Which is the correct answer? The one that works!
This philosophy has been a hugely successful way of thinking for Americans. It is largely responsible for the almost unbelievable progress