John Stackhouse noted the other day that a lot of Christians don’t care about theology because they think it’s a dull, dry subject which has nothing to do with their lives. (I would note in response, as a sidebar, that these aren’t people who took theology from Dr. Stackhouse.) The problem is, theology is supposed to point us somewhere, and lead us somewhere; as J. I. Packer always insisted, theology should lead to doxology (praising God), and good theology does, but bad theology leads us somewhere else instead. Even the self-help-self-gratification theology of so much pop evangelicalism, which some would say is harmless, isn’t.As Jared points out, this is the lesson of the flap over Victoria Osteen’s alleged assault of an airline stewardess. Whether or not she was actually guilty of any sort of assault, what comes through loud and clear is her sense of entitlement, and her husband’s. As Jared put it,
That’s how Osteen and his variety of prosperity gospelism position Christian identity—to be better, higher, more favored by the world than anybody else. It is a position of entitlement.And it is the antithesis of grace.
And when that’s how you view yourself and your relation to the world, then you don’t live the life of humble service to which Jesus calls us; you don’t walk the road of self-sacrifice that ends in the cross; and your idea of Christian witness is not martyrdoom but one-upsmanship. It’s bad practice, and it’s born out of bad theology.