Why does the intersection of “being into Jesus” and “being into money” always seem so correlated with “fraudster”?
> And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
In the original Greek of Matthew's prayer, the word is "ophelilema", as in financial debt. There are other words for more metaphorical debts like when breaking rules, which were notably not used.
Akhshually Jesus would have been speaking Aramaic. So even if Matthew wrote his Gospel in Greek it may not necessarily be the most accurate translation of what Jesus actually said. /end pedantry
In any case, the "gospel of prosperity" types in Christianity are second only to the "secretly a sex pest" types in regards to how obnoxious they are and how much of a black eye they give to Christianity's reputation.
Actually, like most people in the world, and especially people in "border lands", if he existed, he probably will have been multilingual. Aramaic for sure, but he might also have spoken some Hebrew, Greek and maybe even Latin.
A true Christian will by definition be preaching the gospel to the lost and dying world at every opportunity
When a regular person says "heaven has blessed me with this and that", that's making a statement of fact, that person says he has this and that and he credits the deity, nothing more. But when a prosperity gospel guy says such, that person is engaging in theurgy. He believes that the deity blessed him in such and such a manner and by publicising the fact the deity must necessarily bless him with much much more money.
Positive thinking and "law of attraction" is less overtly Christian but made from the same cloth and just as detestable.
If you find that theology distasteful, childish or blasphemous you are not alone.
Also worth noting that being active in an organization like a church provides one with a sizable community of people, many of whom are probably at least doing okay, and depending which church, can be quite wealthy and they will automatically find you more trustworthy because you are in "their group," so fraud is baseline easier to execute. And, in the odd event you are caught out, a well performed "reformation" will have you as a in-good-standing member of that community again, and probably benefiting from the charity of it's members in short order.
This is a big part of why MLM/pyramid schemes, the Mormons, and the state of Utah are so deeply intertwined.
And I mean, let's not leave out the obvious one: people big on magical thinking aren't generally the best at critical thinking.
This is not to say that religious people are the only ones who can be scammed, that's of course nonsense. But people who believe things like "god has a plan" and indulge in the just world fallacy freely and "everything happens for a reason" are on balance just plain easier to manipulate, and even if as that one quoted pastor says, that Hwang is a true believer, well that could just mean he believes his schemes are god's plan, that his actions are god's creation, that what he has done is what he was put on this earth to do, and all that. He could be a swindling liar or a true believer, it doesn't matter. How many people have done diabolical things in our history believing whatever deity they believe in had created them to do it? It's just motivated reasoning. You believe in a just and mighty god, and you have ideas for how to do anything, steal from people, amass wealth, harm people, whatever, and it just so happens that you find all the passages from your god that cosign what it is you already wanted to do? No kiddin, weird how that always works out.
It would probably say:
Jesus explained in in Matthew 19:24 the two interests might be incompatible.
As the article implies, it’s not like he cherished the high life and bought lots of assets. He seems like someone addicted to stock gambling.
I'd guess at some social function of the equalizing narrative of universal/original sin and Jesus being the scapegoat for it. Being highly reductive about it, I can imagine the prosocial lens and the antisocial one.
Through the prosocial lens, it says that we must all be humble regardless of our propriety or material accomplishments, because even the greatest and purest of us are not above sin. We must respect the struggle of our fellow fallen man against the unrelenting pull of temptation to commit transgressions, and remind ourselves to demonstrate Christlike mercy when they fail.
Through the antisocial lens, it says that you might as well lie/cheat/plunder/exploit/murder and beg for forgiveness if you're caught, because you're considered tainted in either case. In an odd way, the stereotypical evangelical redemption/rebirth narrative arguably values greater sins more than lesser ones: "if the blood of the Lamb can cleanse this sin from me, then your salvation is certain".