The  Journey 151

Thursday, May 31

Read: 2 Kings 5:1-27

People always love to look at the Church. Some people look up to certain church’s because of its worship styles while some for their preaching diet. While some people look up to church, some people look down on the church. This happens when the church and its  ministry is not transparent and it consciously or unconsciously deviates from its God  given mission. New York Times recently reported about a large gospel network which is now in the thick of a raging controversy over its way of managing its finances.  The ministry that is now in the centre of controversy is the TBN network, who for the last 39 years, have urged its viewers  to give generously and reap the Lord’s bounty in return. It was Paul and Janice Crouch, who built together TBN network, which was a single station, into the world’s largest Christian television network, The focus of these ministry was prosperity theology or in other words how in the name of our Lord, millions of dollars are collected by way of funding or by the healing ministry that they tend to  do. With money pouring in the life style of the leaders also became opulent.  Now one of the granddaughter, Brittany Koper, who was in charge of TBN’s finances, has gone public about  financial improprieties  and mismanagement in the TBN network. This was after both Koper and her husband were fired by the network for allegedly stealing about 1.3 million dollars.  According to TBN sources both Koper and her husband wants to divert attention from their own crimes to something else.  It is very common here in the United States for the televangelist to live opulently preaching the  gospel of prosperity preaching about God who blesses everyone with material prosperity if they are willing to give to the Lord. This type of preaching is prevalent in most of the televangelist including in India whose main focus of preaching is about healing and deliverance from all negative sources.  It is this focus that make people to flock to them so that they can also move up in the financial ladder.  Today prosperity theology is criticized by the evangelical Christians too  as they feel, that the focus of all these ministries is physical healing and also raising huge amount of money in the name of mission work only to be spent in managing their opulent lifestyle.  In other words, ministry that are done using the name of our Lord, but using the pain and suffering of others,  as an instrument to fleece innocent believers and to make riches through the suffering of others.

This week we are  meditating on the theme “ Transformation in the life of the sick and suffering” based on 2 Kings 5:1-27. Here we find the healing of Naman and if we observe closely we find that King of Aram sending Naman to the King of Samaria, requesting for help. But as he goes out to  meet the king, the King of Aram, the Naman took ten talents of silver and about six thousand shekels of gold and ten changes of clothes to be given to the King. The king is very upset and tears his cloak in anger. But what was the perspective of King of Aram and Naman. Here are two individuals who think that it is through the gift of silver and gold that they can receive the gift of healing. This attitude is also prevalent today as  many of the believers give away huge money, because their focus is to get deliverance from the disease as early as possible. Today lot of people are hooked on to different types of Christian broadcasting, where sometimes the message of the meaning of Christ suffering and ascension is not taken at all presented while only the message of prosperity is presented with the sole focus of amassing enormous wealth through God’s ministry. Therefore let us think whether we focus today more on the material blessing that we want to receive from the Lord or are we ready to be transparent and work for the Lord without thinking about the material and financial gain in doing certain types of ministry.