The Prosperity Gospel
Part 6 of 7 on Recognizing & Resisting False Gospels
Trading the Cross for Control
Imagine approaching a vending machine. You’re hungry or thirsty, and you know exactly what you want—so you insert your money, press the button, and wait for the machine to deliver. You’ve done your part. Now it’s time for it to give you what you paid for.
That’s how many approach God today.
We “insert” faith—church attendance, generosity, prayer, positive confession—and expect God to deliver health, wealth, or success. When He doesn’t, we question His goodness or our faith. But the problem isn’t that God didn’t deliver—it’s that we approached Him like a machine, not a Master.
New Thought, Old Deception
This “vending-machine faith” isn’t new. Its modern roots lie in what’s called the New Thought Movement, a 19th-century philosophy that blended mysticism, metaphysics, and pop psychology. Founded by Phineas Quimby, a clockmaker-turned-healer, New Thought taught that illness, failure, and suffering came from wrong thinking—that your thoughts could literally shape reality (Hanegraaff, 2009).
Quimby’s followers—like Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science) and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore (Unity Church)—expanded his teachings, claiming that “right understanding” could heal the body and attract wealth. Later, writers like Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich, 1937) and Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking, 1952) mainstreamed these ideas into American culture. The result? A worldview where faith became a formula, God became a tool, and the gospel became self-help.
You can hear it in the slogans that saturate our world today:
“Manifest your destiny.”
“Speak your truth.”
“You are enough.”
Even in Christian spaces, it sounds like:
“Declare your blessing.”
“Visualize your breakthrough.”
“If you can dream it, you can do it.”
But this isn’t Christianity—it’s New Thought in Christian clothing.
It baptizes self-help in biblical language and replaces surrender with self-sovereignty. The self becomes savior, and Jesus is rebranded as a life coach. God is not a personal being to worship but a universal power to use for our benefit.
The danger? When we redefine faith as a means to control outcomes rather than trust a sovereign God, we poison the soul of the church. Prosperity preaching isn’t just false—it’s spiritually toxic. And according to Lifeway Research (2020), 46% of U.S. evangelicals believe that “God will grant material riches to those who have enough faith.” That statistic should alarm us—it means nearly half our churches are ingesting theological poison.
Scripture presents a radically different picture. Paul writes,
“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content... I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:11–13, ESV)
The true gospel doesn’t promise ease; it promises Emmanuel—God with us. It doesn’t offer control; it calls for surrender.
In the end, the greatest blessing isn’t something from God—it’s God Himself.
Grace & Peace,
