What this is about
The author of this site wanted to test a suspicion. A church can preach against the prosperity gospel (the teaching that faith and giving will make you healthy and rich) and still make the same kind of promise without saying it. It does it by showing one success and hiding the rest. In his words: “That is the same promise the prosperity gospel makes (do this, and God will reward you with earthly success), moved from money to children’s careers. Because it is never stated outright, it is harder to see and harder to challenge.”
He asked whether this is what the Bible warns against in two places: people “supposing that gain is godliness” (1 Timothy 6:5), and people “who mind earthly things” (Philippians 3:19).
What this page is not doing
The church is imaginary; the page describes no real congregation. It is not a criticism of medicine, of the young woman who became a doctor, or of parents who want their children to do well. Those are good things. It does not say a church should never celebrate. It asks one question only: what happens when a church shows one success, hides the other outcomes, and lets parents believe the programme will do the same for their children? Every modern example is made up by the page and labelled. Related dossiers: The Tower of Babel Method and Have You Opened a Favor Account?
The short answer
- One success out of many is not evidence. Almost any group of thirty children will produce someone who does very well, whatever their church does. Showing that one, and hiding the rest, is what the Bible calls a false balance.
- It treats godliness as a way to get ahead. Paul warns against people who think godliness is “a means of gain.” A career for your child, offered as the reward for joining a programme, is that kind of gain.
- It has the same shape as the prosperity gospel. Do this, and God will give you that; here is someone who got it; if you don’t get it, you didn’t commit enough. Only the prize has changed.
- It reverses the lost sheep. Jesus’ shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to find the one that is lost. The showcase celebrates the best of those who stayed and doesn’t count the lost.
- The Bible promises no career. “Time and chance happeneth to them all.” Many of the most faithful people in Scripture lost everything, and many godly parents saw their children go astray.
- Celebrating is not the problem. “Rejoice with them that do rejoice” is a command. The problem is the hidden promise, together with the silence about everyone else. The same verse goes on: “and weep with them that weep.”
One success is not evidence
Picture the congregation as thirty children. (The numbers are the page’s illustration; the author gave none.) Ten years on, twenty-two attend no church at all. Seven attend a church somewhere. One is at medical school. On a Sunday, new parents see one gold light. They don’t see the other twenty-nine, including several who left the church and have done very well (an engineer, an accountant, a nurse) and whom the church never mentions, because they left.
This mistake is older than Christianity. Cicero, writing in 45 BC, tells of a man named Diagoras who was shown a temple wall covered in paintings given by sailors who had prayed in a storm and survived. Didn’t this prove the gods cared? Diagoras answered that “there are nowhere any pictures of those who have been shipwrecked and drowned at sea.” Francis Bacon retold the story in 1620: “where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?”
Here is a simple way to see it. Imagine twelve churches of thirty children each that run no programme at all, where each child has a small chance (say three in a hundred) of becoming a doctor. More than half of those churches will end up with a doctor to point to, having done nothing to produce one. One success, on its own, tells you nothing about the programme.
The Bible names the dishonesty. “A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight” (Proverbs 11:1). A merchant who used one set of weights for buying and another for selling was cheating, even if each weight looked fine. The showcase does the same: a success is weighed as proof of the programme, a departure is weighed against the family, or not weighed at all. Paul applied the same standard to his own ministry: he renounced “the hidden things of dishonesty” (2 Corinthians 4:2).
An honest report might sound like this: “Ten years ago thirty young people were in our youth programme. We give thanks for every one of them. One is training to be a doctor; others are teachers, tradesmen, parents, an engineer, a nurse. Seven worship in a church today. Most of the others do not, and some have told us that their time here is part of the reason. We have not yet listened to them as we should. We are going to.”
Is this “gain” in Paul’s sense?
Paul warns against people “supposing that gain is godliness” (1 Timothy 6:5). In the original Greek the sense is “supposing that godliness is a means of gain”: treating religion as a route to something else. Six things that might happen around the imaginary church. For each, is godliness being treated as a means of gain?
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The career is innocent, and so is being glad about it. It becomes “gain” in Paul’s sense when it is offered as the return on the programme. Paul’s answer is a different kind of gain: “godliness with contentment is great gain” (6:6).
Gain, earthly things, and the same old shape
Whose gain? Paul aimed 1 Timothy 6:5 first at teachers who made religion pay. In the imaginary church there are two kinds of gain. The families hope for a career. The church gains families, numbers and a good name. The second is exactly what Paul had in mind: a teaching that grows because it seems to pay.
Earthly things. In Philippians 3, Paul lists his own glittering record: the right family, the right tribe, the best religious school, more zeal than anyone, a spotless reputation. Then he says, “what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ” (3:7). A few verses later he warns about people “who mind earthly things” (3:19). A church that holds up a child’s prestigious career as the sign of its success is displaying the very kind of thing Paul threw away.
The same shape. The prosperity gospel has five parts: something you do (give, believe), a link that makes God pay back, an earthly reward (money, health), stories of people who got it as proof, and, when it doesn’t work, the blame placed on you. The imaginary church has all five: join the programme; God will bless it; your child will do well; look at the young doctor; and if your child left, your family wasn’t committed enough. Only the prize is different. Augustine, writing about 413, explained why God doesn’t simply reward the faithful with earthly goods: if he did, “such a service would make us not godly, but greedy rather, and covetous.”
The lost sheep, and the credit
The lost sheep, reversed. In Jesus’ parable a shepherd with a hundred sheep loses one, and leaves the ninety-nine to find it. Then he throws a party: “Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost” (Luke 15:6). The party is for the lost one who came home. The showcase turns this inside out: most are lost, and the party is for the one who did best. God rebuked the shepherds of Israel because “neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost” (Ezekiel 34:4). Some of the children in the scenario say the church itself drove them away. Only asking them, and listening, can show which ones.
The Bible keeps an honest record. It reports its own losses. When Jesus taught something hard, “many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him” (John 6:66). Paul names people who left him: “Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world” (2 Timothy 4:10). A church that tells only its successes is not following the Bible’s way of telling its story.
Who gets the credit? A place at medical school comes from ability, years of hard work, good teachers, family money for tutoring, the young woman’s own choices, and some luck. One case cannot show that the church programme was the cause. Scripture warns against saying “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17), and Paul says of his own work: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). If God gave it, the programme cannot promise it.
Heads the method, tails the parents. If every success proves the programme, and every child who leaves proves the family was not committed enough, then nothing could ever count against the programme. That is the reasoning of Job’s friends, who decided Job must have sinned because he suffered. God told them, “ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right” (Job 42:7). And the explanation breaks down the moment one family has a child who stays and a child who leaves, as families often do.
What God has promised, and what “doing well” means
No promise of a career. “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11). Hebrews 11, the Bible’s roll of honour, ends with faithful people who were “destitute, afflicted, tormented” and “received not the promise” in this life. Good parents in the Bible saw their children go wrong: Samuel’s sons “turned aside after lucre” (1 Samuel 8:3). And “Train up a child in the way he should go” (Proverbs 22:6) is wise advice about how things usually go, not a guarantee. It speaks of the way a child should go, not the career he should have.
What doing well means. When Paul describes what the Holy Spirit produces in a life, he lists “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22–23). None of them is a job title. Paul tells Christians to serve God in whatever calling they have (1 Corinthians 7:17), and to give “more abundant honour” to the members the world honours least (12:23). A plumber who teaches Sunday school, a mother at home with three children, a young man caring for his disabled father: Scripture honours them as much as a doctor. The showcase never mentions them, because they don’t sell a programme.
The case for the other side
The other side has real points, and the page grants them. Celebration is commanded: “Rejoice with them that do rejoice” (Romans 12:15). Church can genuinely help children: research published in 2018, following more than 5,000 young people, found that those who attended religious services regularly while growing up were happier and less likely to use drugs as young adults (though the study showed a link, not proof of cause). The church may never actually say that its programme made her a doctor. Young people leave for many reasons; the most common one given in a large American survey was simply moving away to college. And parents carry much of the responsibility.
But look at what those points defend. Every one of them defends the celebration, or defends the church against blame. None of them defends the hidden promise, and none defends the silence. Even the research is an honest count of thousands of young people, including those who did badly, which is exactly what the showcase avoids. And Romans 12:15 doesn’t stop at rejoicing. It goes on: “and weep with them that weep.”
Celebration, or showcase?
Six things a church might say about its young people, all made up by this page. For each, is it a celebration that promises nothing, or a showcase that implies a promise to other families?
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A congratulation can mention one person, because it is about one person. It becomes a showcase when the story is used to tell other families what they can expect, and the rest of the count is left out.
What does this prove?
It is easy to claim too much for this argument, and easy to dismiss it too quickly. Six claims. Does the argument of this page show each one?
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The church is imaginary, and the argument reads no one’s motives. A church can slip into this pattern simply by telling the stories people like to hear. What the argument shows is that the pattern has the shape of the prosperity gospel and fails the Bible’s test of an honest weight.
Check it yourself
Five things. The first takes ten minutes. The last is the one that matters.
- 1. Read 1 Timothy 6:3–10. What does Paul set against those who treat godliness as gain?
- 2. Read Philippians 3:4–21. List Paul’s credentials. Then read what he says about them.
- 3. Read Luke 15:1–10 and Ezekiel 34:1–16. Who is celebrated, and what did the bad shepherds fail to do?
- 4. Read Ecclesiastes 9:11 and Hebrews 11:32–40. Does faith guarantee an earthly outcome?
- 5. One count. Do this one. Think of a church, school or group you know, and the young people who came through it ten years ago. Write down every outcome you know, not only the ones people talk about. What does the full list say?
Want the whole thing?
The full dossier lights up the whole congregation, runs a testimony machine, reads Paul’s credentials phrase by phrase, swaps the reward in the prosperity formula, divides the credit for a child’s success, sorts eight church announcements by what they celebrate and what they promise, answers the objections at full strength, gives you a seven-question test for any success story, and publishes the prompt that produced it all.
Read the full dossier → Simple English →