JOEL OSTEEN: OBSCURANTISM LITE

Several days after having seen Joel Osteen interviewed on the Larry King Show I'm still recovering. I'm recovering from the shock that this man, Joel Osteen, heads one of the largest Christian congregation in America. Let me get right to the issue: Please forgive my anger, but how in God's name is it possible that this latter day obscurantist can have the largest Christian congregation in the USA? Yes, he inherited it from his dead father to be sure. But another answer, which may be adequate, is that America is filled with cretins. Or, on a kinder note, possibly we are so desperate for comfort, reassurance and ever simpler answers and directions for formulaic living that such 'twinkification' of consciousness is quite effective and thus welcomed and even demanded by the American populace. As I recover from watching King's inteview of Osteen,still quite dumbfounded, astounded and befuddled, I find myself now being somewhat frightened by this phenomenon. This smooth-sell Elmer Gantry markets millions of dollars of books, apparently, about "faith" obviously to millions of the faithful. And as if this publishing horror show isn't bad enough, now his wife is getting in on the publishing act. She says she is writing about "women." I really can't wait for this intellectual giant to tell us all about 'women!' Suddenly, thanks to her husband, she's famous and just as suddenly she's an expert on "women." Have you heard Joel Osteen?!?! He has nothing to say. He could answer none of Larry King's questions regarding some of the major issues of the day not to mention of all times. None! Not one!!! He was blathering in short well articulated cliches, vague oh so vague generalities and disclaimers that he "just didn't know" but ever so smugly as if none of these questions mattered, as if he has the real and only answer. Yet, to the real questions that the world is asking, he had no positions, no answers at all. Not even an opinion. Not a guess. He's just so self-righteously sure that his "lite" version of faith and god will take care of everything. Cliches, generalities and positionlessness. It wasn't that he was non-judgemental. He simply had nothing to say. Every response to King was a matter of excusing himself from knowing anything or sharing any understanding of anything that literate people today are discussing. Apparently the major issues of the day never even occur to him as something he should possibly take some responsibility to think about, to discuss, to deal with in concrete Christian terms. But he is exempt from participating because he has "faith." His message is not to worry because your faith guarantees that god will take care of all the big issues. That gives him permission for relentless smugness, importunate smiling and absolute ignorance regarding real life. Obviously he never considered John F. Kennedy's famous statement that "God's work must truly be our own." Osteen exhorts with a soft-spoken intensity, selling the eternal panacea without argument but with much downhome persuasion, a Christian good 'ol boy kind of logic. All one must do is plan for faith and put it into action. After all, if you don't water the garden the tomatoes won't grow. The real question though is what all this has to do with the Bible since presumably this is a "Bible based" church. It seems to me that the Bible recommends a life in the world but not of the world. And yet the likes of Osteen always advertise a pragmatic faith whose value is measured in terms of the standards and practices of the world. What's missing here is the religious experience and that mode of spiritual being that permeates one's life. What's missing is that struggle with faith that Jesus endured to the very moment of his death on the cross. Osteen's brand of religion is about getting it all for me in my way without this "religion thing" getting in the way. Osteen's 'Christianity' does not ask, as Jesus did, "what am I for" but it opportunistically asks "what can this religion do for me." Not "what can I be for" in the eyes of God and in terms of the religious life but "what good can God and religion be for" in the eyes of my ego and in the light of my worldly desires. For Osteen, religion is a self-help forum in which one plans for what one wants on the basis of one's desires, begins to act on that plan, then presumes that "faith" will assure that it will happen. That's decent advice for common sense living. It also amounts to your run of the mill conformism, banal materialism and egregious know-nothingism. Questioning, creativity and critical thinking amounts to the work of the devil or at least a lack of faith. The text of the Bible is surely no longer a problem for Osteen's brand of parasitism. It's there merely to extract useful quotes in order to verify Osteen's common sense, quaint logic and abundant reassurances. All you need do is plug yourself into the faith circuit and the spirit will begin to flow. This is complacent Christianity for the comatose. Innocuous, yet insidious if not diabolical.