MyWalkBlog

Review

Rating: 5

I read this book on the challenge of a friend who works for Dave Ramsey. He was quite troubled by my post Prosperity? Complete charge of your financial picture?! so he challenged me to read the book. While there are many things with which I agree in the book, there are some foundational things with which I take issue. The most significant is the whole premise around which the book is built. He opens recounting the story Jesus told about the man who finds a treasure in a field and after finding it sells everything he has so he can buy that field. Incidentally, this is where the book draws it’s name. This premise drawn by Alcorn from this story is the slant from which he spends the rest of the book explaining how to be rich in Heaven for eternity. He presumes, though he never comes out and directly says it or never denies it, that there will be some form of economy in Heaven and that some will be “rich” and others will be “poor”. Building on a concept made popular by the movie Pay It Forward, and applying the wisdom of man to the things of the world and eternity, Alcorn lays out a strategy by which someone wanting to be rich in Heaven can assure himself a spiritual nest egg in the afterlife. I realized recently how truly simple what Jesus taught is. Having been a teacher I often illustrated a concept by telling a story. Sometimes people would come away more enthralled by the story than having learned what the story was being used to illustrate. I’m beginning to realize most teaching in religion focuses on the context which Jesus used to teach his message rather than on the actual message. His message was the Kingdom of God. And sometimes he illustrated with examples from the marriage relationship, sometimes with examples from an economic perspective, sometimes with illustrations from a government perspective. But his message was always and simply the Kingdom of God. Alcorn, and many others teaching a prosperity message are focusing on the illustration Jesus used to teach about the Kingdom rather than on the actual message Jesus taught. In actuality the treasure principle taught by Jesus in the story was not focused on us having lots of “stuff” when we get to Heaven, but on the simple reality that when a person gets a glimpse of what the Kingdom is like, the things of this world pale in importance. Then, rather than investing ourselves in pursuing them we turn to pursing things that matter in the Kingdom. What Alcorn, and many others like him have done is to impose our troubled sense of economy on earth over into eternity. The hearts of the natural man are so selfish that if we are not careful we will interpret all of the teachings of Jesus through the eyes of the world and apply them to a way to live that will make us rich or that will give us power or help us have a sexually charged relationship with our spouse. Jesus is still the best teacher that ever walked the face of the earth and always will be. He always found a way to illustrate his message using stories and techniques centered in areas that interested people. So when he was asked about divorce and marriage, he taught about the Kingdom using marriage or divorce to illustrate what was truly important… the kingdom. When asked about money or pressed by people with economic interest, Jesus taught about the Kingdom using money or economy to illustrate. In our search to make the messages of Jesus complex and to provide enough teaching to allow us to continually go deeper into Bible study we have complicated his simple message. It’s interesting that Jesus did not go into detail about what the man did after he purchased the field. He doesn’t tell us how rich he became or how much power he wielded. Instead the focus of his story was on the lengths to which someone would go to acquire something of true value once that thing of true value was recognized. End of illustration. And because the theme of Jesus’ teaching was the Kingdom of God, one who gets a glimpse of how amazing God’s Kingdom is will place less value in things previously pursued in order to pursue God’s Kingdom. End of teaching.