Jeremiah and the "Health and Wealth Gospel"

I wrote the following seven posts for the Valley Community Church Bible blog during the week of April 14, 2013. I am reprinting them here in their entirety; please enjoy and leave a comment if you feel so led.

Jeremiah 12-16
 

Jeremiah begins this passage with a beleaguered complaint. "Yet I would speak to you about your justice: Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all the faithless live at ease" (Jer 12:1)? Without delay, Jeremiah brings up what might be called "The anti-health and wealth Gospel." The health and wealth Gospel is the teaching--often mocked and deservedly so--that God will shower you with material things because His chief desire is that you be happy and prosperous in this life. The anti-health and wealth Gospel, then, is the complaint that God seems to be favoring with material success those who do not profess and follow Him.

When you think about it, the anti-health and wealth Gospel really isn't the opposite of the health and wealth Gospel. In fact, there's actually no difference between the two at all. In the end, complaining about someone else's state is nothing more than a tacit expression of bitterness about your own. Jeremiah isn't upset that the wicked and faithless are doing well; he's upset that they're doing better than he is.

Jeremiah isn't the only Old Testament figure to voice complaints like these (see Job 21, Malachi 3). So how does God respond to him? By telling him that things are only going to get worse (Jer 12: 5-6). It's a similar answer to the one Job receives, and a superficially unsatisfying one at that. But when you dig deeper, it becomes clear that God is gently helping Jeremiah to recalibrate his perspective. God's enemies will be destroyed in the end (Jer 12: 7-17), and in the meantime, we need to spend a little less time worrying about the worldly balance sheet of our enemies and a little more time focusing on our own relationship with God. And if we want to have concern about our enemies' spiritual lives, that too is a commendable goal. Indeed, what could be more important than the spiritual welfare of ourselves and our (potential) brothers and sisters in Christ?