THE "DECEIFULNESS" OF RICHES

I just checked out the Christian PF (personal finance) website. They consistently make texts that, in their immediate context do indeed refer to money or material wealth, mean primarily that. There is no sense that the concept of "true riches" is what the canonical understanding should be. The website freezes a concept in its temporary place in the progress of revelation - a revelation that is flowing forward to the true riches in Christ and cannot be understood properly apart from the cross.

Christ was not concerned with "making money, saving money, growing money, budgeting money," ad material wealth nauseum. They list 250 verses they believe talk about money. There is no concern to understand these verses in any Christ-centered way.

Now, this is not Copeland or Hagin. It is "evangelical" and, in my opinion, misleading exegesis. We're continuing to inuendo (at least) that the Lord's blessing has material prosperity inclinations. I find this totally contrary to what the Lord is trying to teach us in the redemptive historical progression of the Bible.

Amway (or whatever it's called now), our conservative "American Dream" bastion of Republican orthodoxy is just a prosperity cult in marketing clothes.

I usually vote Republican, but mostly because of the abortion issue. I find much of its fiscal-economic policies, so attractive to multiple thousands of evangelicals, to be simply the voice of "unrighteous mammon," deceiving and distracting so many of God's people.

Many Evangelicals, again in my opinion (and I would certainly class myself as a brand of them), are theologically naive and culturally conditioned in an out-of-control way. I'm personally committed to seeing every book and every theme in the Bible as primarily a part of the grand meta-narrative of redemptive history, with Christ as its interpretive key.