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Does God Want you to be rich?diverden
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1532999,00.html
An interesting question posed in Time Magazine as the cover story. Maybe we should take a poll by political party to see how Republicans and Democrats answer the question. My guess is that the answers would be significantly different.
simp
Apparently not.
Except for that disgusting capitalist piggie Joyce Meyer. Traveller
They practise what may be termed "eisegesis" instead of "exegesis," that is, they put their own meanings into the texts instead of extracting the true meaning from the texts. In addition, they do so with particularly brief or unrelated passages, and remove the texts they quote from the surrounding context. Thus, you have the "name it and claim it" movement (also now called the "word of faith" movement) with infamous quotes such as praying, "you big, fat wallet, you" (I forget whether that was Meyer or Hickey, but I've heard the actual tape of that). Even more mainstream Christians are not completely immune to wanting to make God into a genie, as evidenced by the enormous popularity of the book, The Prayer of Jabez. It teaches (and its followers preach) that if you pray that prayer sincerely, then God must bless you in some material way. Again, however, those who are not as easily swayed by faulty theological interpretation see right through this horrendous misapplication of Scripture. In fact, someone has even written a parody of The Prayer of Jabez, called The Mantra of Jabez, which hits the nail right on the head. Finally, to illustrate the principles of interpretation used by the "word of faith" people, I typically use the following example. I say that, if I were to start my own prosperity cult, I would instruct the members to get as many loans and credit cards for as much money as possible without concern for the balance, since the Bible says, "I will repay, saith the Lord" (Rom 12:19). Of course, the quote I used is about not seeking revenge, and has nothing to do with the repayment of creditors, but that demonstrates the ways in which such out-of-context quotes are used by those with aberrant theology. r_y_e_20
Who does not want to be rich, we cannot say that richness is not a blessing, in fact that is a manifestation that God had loved you. However, we should be rich in a right way. When we receive a gift from someone what we usually do is to value it and take care of it. Same thing with God's gift, that what we should do to value it is to use it in a right way. What's those right way? i think its a common sense.
Traveller
Not necessarily. There are many absolutely evil people who are VERY rich, and a great many others who are very poor. Monetary gain may be a blessing, but it is not necessarily so, and certainly is not necessarily a manifestation of God's love. This is why Christ said:
Richness is a temporal thing, and has absolutely nothing to do with eternity, which is far more important. toughtrio
But what would you ppl do if God confirms eternity for anyone of you. Stop seeking the worldly pleasures !!!
My friends, its the world in which you get tested, either by blessings or by trials, it is that test which you need to pass in order to guarantee urself eternity in the HereAfter. How can you even think of both eternity and worldly pleasures at the same time, its only God who has to right to bless anyone with both, it wont matter if we say anything. N.B. I am a Muslim and know what my religion demands, it could be different for you people, but its jus about common sense that I wrote about it. Warm Regards, ocalhoun
Since when does God work by common sense? Everything in the world belongs to God anyway, He made it. He only lets you use it for a while, and that is the healthy way to look at wealth, or the lack of it. If you are rich, spend it in a way that would please God. If you are poor, spend what you have to please God anyway. Yes, God wants you to be happy, but not at the expense of more important things. (And yes, there are things that are more important than you being happy.) nopaniers
I agree with toughtrio and Traveller, who both made excellent points.
I'd just like to post some of 1 Timothy 6, which talks about exactly this question:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=61&chapter=6&version=31 Related topics
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