I’m not sure what to make of
Joel Osteen. You may have seen him on
TV
preaching from the pulpit of the megachurch he pastors in
Houston. I recently finished his book
I Declare.
I Declare is 31 declarations
intended for the reader to speak aloud.
Each is followed by a couple of pages of related comments or
illustrative stories. Osteen’s notion
is, as he puts it in the introduction, “Whenever we say something, either good
or bad, we are giving life to what we are saying.”
It is an attractive message. Osteen
even says some things I agree with.
For instance, he speaks and writes a lot about the goodness,
benevolence and love of
God. God loves us.
Christ
on the cross is the great evidence of this, and it is far from the only
evidence.
I even agree that what we say is important. The things we say should bless God and
encourage others. Our speech should be
full of
gratitude
and hope. I think that our thoughts and
emotions, and through them our actions, are affected by the things we say and
hear. We are helped and harmed by words. For our part, we should strive to say what is
helpful.
The leap Osteen makes is that “Our words have creative power.” He means actual power to directly affect
things in the world. He says we should
speak aloud to our problems because the world listens and obeys. Osteen alludes to
Bible verses
that support his view. I think he has
selected verses and emphasized them over the rest of the Bible. There are instances of God, prophets, and
apostles performing miracles through spoken words. They also prayed, smeared mud on eyes, built
model cities in the dirt, cast shadows, held up staffs, or were simply
touched. In the Bible we can see that
God is active in His creation, especially for the salvation of man, even when
His actions are apparent to us, even in Biblical books in which He is barely
mentioned.
I think this muddies the water on faith, too. Is faith fundamentally trusting God, knowing
that He is loving us and caring for us even in very difficult circumstances? Is faith a power in itself, made effective by
our words? Maybe these definitions
aren’t mutually exclusive, but they lead to very different expectations.
Though it has some Biblical dressing, it seems to me that
I Declare is little different than what
you might find in self-help books that come from other perspectives. Sometimes I thought the premise is little
different from that of
The Secret. I think
The
Secret was a great way packaging a message (and separating people from
their money), but it is not great way to improve a person’s life.
I encourage you to read the Bible for yourself. Get help from knowledgeable people and good
resources, but wrestle with God’s Word directly and prayerfully.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Osteen, Joel. I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak Over Your
Life. New York: Faith Words, 2012.
Google
