The ensuing two pages of this article deals with concepts surrounding these two teachings. The first one however is not a popular teaching at all. It is a strawman argument designed to allow Baker avoid the truths that are contained therein. No one is saying poverty is a spiritual value but there is no mistaking that the poorest areas of the world often have the greatest faith. Why? Corrie Ten Boom once quipped that you cannot learn Christ is all you need until He is all you have. Under this first argument however, Baker tries to get away with some whoppers:
"God calls each of us to be stewards of the money He provides. To be a steward, you must have something to steward. In the kingdom, everything we steward multiples and increases.
If money is bad for us, why doesn't Satan just pour money on Christians? The more money, the quicker we would backslide.
If money is so bad, why did Satan take it away from Job? Why at the end of the book did God reward Job with a double portion?" - Jim Baker
God provides us with so much more than money. We are to be stewards of the gifts He has apportioned to us and the gospel message He has entrusted in us. The church focus on monetary stewardship is lazy faith. It promotes the notion that as long as you give your church 10% you can look the other way on far mor weightier matters; just as the Pharisees used to do. As for Satan pouring money on us, who is to say that he doesn't? That promotion at work that required Sunday work and took you away from church and eventually your faith came from where? Truth be told it sounds like Jim Baker falls into the same Charismaniacal trap that so many others do in assuming that God and the devil are just spending their whole days worrying about you. The Book of Job is not a prescriptive text. The sad truth is the devil hardly needs to pour money over us to get us to "backslide." As for trying to use Job's account the answer to why God restored him with twice as much is because He is God. He is sovereign. This of course has nothing to do with money being good, evil or indifferent. Under Baker's second argument, he also tried to get away with a few silly points:
'There are times when Scripture directly ties a person's material blessings to their relationship with God. Look at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, SolomonGod was the direct cause of their blessing.
How much money is too much money? Whatever amount replaces trust in God. Some people get $100 in their pocket and forget there is a God in heaven. For others, $100 million wouldn't even move their heart because they are so anchored in His invisible realm. Loving God doesn't mean you have to be broke, and having money doesn't necessarily mean you are godly (just ask the Mafia).
Money is to the natural realm what the anointing is to the spiritual realmit is a way to make things happen. In the kingdom, money is a tool. Nobody brags about their shovel collection, because we recognize a shovel is just a tool to accomplish a task. We need to see money the same way. It is a tool by which we turn those dollars into soldiers to accomplish kingdom purposes.
One of the first and biggest problems people have with teaching on prosperity comes from the belief that prosperity is selfish. But biblical prosperity is not selfish because it's not all about you. Real prosperity is defined by how much we give away, not how much we keep for ourselves. Prosperity is about blessing, not possessing.
