Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Does the Prosperity Gospel = Karma?

The third funniest show on television is "My Name is Earl." It comes only after "Scrubs" and "The Office," both tied for first (in my opinion). "My Name is Earl" has received its share of criticism from the religious world. It has been said to have "spiritual ignorance" by pluggedinonline.

Earl's life theme is "do good things and good things will happen to you" is a take off on the Hindu concept of karma.

Here are a couple definitions:

  • “Karma is best translated as ‘cause and effect.’…The law of karma guarantees that all people get exactly what their actions merit. …karma teaches that whatever happens to people is the result of their personal actions in a previous existence.” (Winfried Corduan, Neighboring Faith: A Christian Introduction to World Religions, [Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998] 196.)
  • “No deed small or great, good or bad, can be without effect…. Karma makes him [mankind] the creator of his own destiny.” (Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, vol. 1, Our Oriental Heritage, [New York: MJF, 1963] 514).

You can look up karma at Wikipedia.

Now look at two quotes from a Christian website:
“A faithful man will abound, or overflow with blessings.” and “Faithfulness is a criterion for promotion.” These are courtesy of Creflo Dollar. Lest I be accused of cherry-picking quotes, here is the link, which has the outline from which these quotes come. Creflo Dollar's quotes seem awful close to karma.

Much of the prosperity gospel crowd espouse a philosophy that says, "If you please God (i.e. do good), then God will bless you." Sounds like Earl's philosophy.

Give Earl a Bible and he could be a prosperity gospel preacher.

1 comment:

Roy said...

Creflo and Taffi scare the tar out of me. I've caught their act on TV enough to be wise to their game. What they do to the gospel is a travesty, plain and simple.