Book Review: It's Your Time

A Fair Trade Book

Title: It's Your Time

Author: Joel Osteen

Author's web site: www.joelosteen.com

Date: 2009

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 978-1-4391-0011-0

Length: 304 pages

Quote: “The book begins with a section entitled 'It's Time to Believe,' because tough times require strong faith...'It's Time to Trust' builds your resolve by reminding you...that all things work together for good...”

When +Andria Perry  identified Joel Osteen as “her preacher,” what came to my mind was another book by him I'd seen somewhere, which I remembered as a generic evangelical Protestant book identified with another currently popular TV preacher.

When somebody started sponsoring ad messages, “What's Wrong with Joel Osteen,” to clutter the screen of my e-mail...the Advertising Age is sooo over. If you seriously want me to buy, read, or believe something, you don't want me to see that thing in an ad. I'm sorry. I would like to believe that slick commercial ads work for somebody, but for me they do not.

So I was biased in Osteen's favor...until I read this book.

This is what's wrong with Joel Osteen: If your face is contorted in a strained, squinty, toothy grin because you are looking at harsh lights, that might just mean that you don't have the best TV crew in the world. If you are grinning because you are talking about one of the Bible passages that are in fact funny, like the inconsistent teachers who “strain at a gnat and swallow a camel,” that might offend people who think reverence equals solemnity, but I'm not one of those people and I don't read Jesus as one of them either. If you are grinning because you are the pastor of a church that just got a good deal on a restaurant building you plan to use for bigger and better fellowship dinners, cheers to you!

If you are grinning because you have somehow convinced people who are in financial straits, themselves, to send you enough money to make you wealthy, and you are raking in the money as you tell them to be sure and say grace while they are eating either rice or beans because they can't afford both, then...I want to be very very charitable here...the kindest thing for Christians to do about you is for everybody to sit on their own money and let you try living on head trips instead of actual wages. The experience of foraging through dumpsters for something to eat might give some credibility to your message, and no right-thinking Christian should interfere with your having that experience.

I'm sorry to report that that's how I read It's Your Time: another round of “Send all your money to me and you just think about growing rich, through some mystical 'spiritual law' unrelated to any actual or potential plan to generate or recover any money.”

Meh. I could probably preach that, the way so many people seem to have got rich doing. I've never had telegenic teeth, always said I'd have to have the good-looking kind of teeth implanted and always felt it was easier to live with the ugly teeth I have, but Osteen's teeth don't look all that expensive. I don't like the way I look on television, but people who are older and fatter in real life seem to survive. And anybody can repeat the Proof Texts of Positive Thinking while ignoring the original New Testament altogether: just keep chanting “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” and forget about “As ye have done unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done unto Me”...

...Unless, of course, that person actually believes any part of the Christian message. That's fatal. That accounts for the weird, off-putting quality of the grin in the cover photo. Real Christians can't forget "As ye have done unto the least of these My brethren," no matter how hard they try.

Real Christians might even find themselves remembering the actual context of "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." It does not preach Positive Thinking. The passage is warning a young man about false friends and hypocrites. (You can click on the lighter-colored text in those Bible quotes to read both of them in context at Biblia.com. Isn't that a nifty web site?)

Osteen's notoriety surged, of course, during the Houston flood, and the Twitter chatter about whether he was setting up a shelter for flood victims in the less than floodproof basement of the Lakewood church, and whether it would have been better to start packing people into the said basement when the waters might have continued to rise and the people might have had to be packed out again...Some people are too quick to pounce on any possible error any Christian might make. It would be interesting, if anyone wanted to bother, to see how many of Osteen's instant critics were themselves using Twitter to search for friends and offer lodging to them. But, er, um...I don't think I ever left the bus station in Houston, I know I never actually visited my cousin there, but from the words "floods in Houston" my mind automatically jumps to "Is my cousin out there dry? If not, does she need to come to my house? Does she know she's welcome to pack a van with needy neighbors, if she has any, and of course she should bring her cats?" (I'll admit I'm glad she didn't need lodging.) So the idea of a "church family" where some of the "brethren" might be sweltering in city shelters, and others are not automatically going "Do they need to come to my house?" sounds less than family-like, not to mention less than Christian. 

Positive Thinkers...if you sit at their table, beware, for what they're thinking in their heart is what they really are, and that's likely to be: false friends and hypocrites. Sincere Christians have been attracted to Positive Thinking, have tried to believe it, have even been confused enough to mistake it for solid Christian teaching, and of course we can't be completely sure that Osteen's not one of them. But Positive Thinking is a completely different way of thinking, more Pagan than Christian, and my heart goes out to those sincere Christians who expect Christian fellowship from Positive Thinkers. So many of them have been so badly disappointed.

Can this web site say something a tiny bit more encouraging to Osteen? What about the closing points from the greatest sermon ever preached...Matthew 7, copied here from the Biblia page:

"

7 fAsk, gand it shall be given you; hseek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall beopened unto you: 8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that hseeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. 9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall iyour Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? 12 Therefore all things kwhatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: lfor this is the law and the prophets.

13 mEnter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 14 ||Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.

15 nBeware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are oravening wolves. 16 pYe shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19 qEvery tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore pby their fruits ye shall know them.

"

Positive Thinkers blather about how people should tell themselves not to feel like victims while sweltering in shelters. Christians give whatever God has allowed them to give. It is not impossible for a Christian to break the habit of Positive Thinking and become a real, radical, sincere follower of Christ...who neither hoarded worldly goods, nor told people how to feel, and most assuredly did not tell people to try to feel like something other than victims when a natural disaster had destroyed their homes. I can't say much in support of Osteen's books but I can say that it's still possible for him to start following Jesus.

Wow. Way not to sell a book! Well...if you want to preach against Positive Thinking, buying a secondhand book that's full of it may be useful, and if so, I have a copy of It's Your Time, yet another title from that book-clueless friend...I'm not even halfway through her contributions yet, Gentle Readers. $5 per book, $5 per package, $1 per online payment, and if you do buy this book here, this web site will indeed send $1 to Joel Osteen or a charity of his choice. And we (yes, Grandma Bonnie Peters, and likewise Lisiwayu, as well as me) will pray for Osteen.

He certainly writes as one who could use a lot of prayer.