Mississippi Mendacity

Over this past Mardi Gras, I witnessed what could be considered a perfect display of the self-centeredness of American Christianity.  While on a mission trip to Mississippi, I stayed at a certain church as a guest in the old parsonage.  I of course attended Sunday morning service at this church with the rest of my group.

The church was very inviting at first, had great music, and was in all quite welcoming to us.  Yet when the preacher began to speak, I became unsure of him.  Being a religious studies major I of course critically analyze everything, especially when it comes to religion.  So when the pastor started speaking a toned-down prosperity gospel on Numbers 11, I decided to pull out my own Bible.  I generally do this in order to check what is being read against a translation I trust, as well as to read the passage in context in order to get anything that I might otherwise miss, and, more importantly, to make sure that the Bible isn't being taken out of context and skewed for the preacher's own purposes.  While I can't assert whether or not it was intentional, my last concern was in fact validated.

The preaching that day was on the providence of God, or in simpler terms, God giving you lots of stuff if you just ask.  It was half-based on the asking the Lord to provide for you in ministry, which is generally not considered a bad thing in the evangelical Church, but there are large numbers of more appropriate verses, especially in the New Testament, which pertain to God providing for the Church to accomplish His work.  For Numbers 11, as I discovered, is not a story of providence, but of a great curse.  And the point to the story is certainly not to tell people to ask God to give them more than He is giving them.  This isn't Matthew 7.  This is the Old Testament.  People die.

And that is exactly what happens.  In Numbers 11, the exiled Israelites with Moses complain to him about only having manna to eat and having had no meat to eat in a long time.  They are actually complaining about God's providence.  Moses eventually gets tired of it, and he pleads with God to not have to care for this complaining people.  So what does God do?  He decides to give the people all the meat they could ever want, in the form of quail piled three feet high for miles in every direction.
And this is where the preacher stopped.  He stopped with God providing the Israelites everything they complained they weren't getting and were asking for.  And he used that to make a point about asking the Lord for whatever you want.  But that's not where the story ends--you see, he left out the last three verses:  

^"33 While the meat was yet between their teeth, before it was consumed, the anger of the Lord was kindled against the people, and the Lord struck down the people with a very great plague. ³⁴ Therefore the name of that place was called Kibroth-hattaavah [lit. graves of craving], because there they buried the people who had the craving. ³⁵ From Kibroth-hattaavah the people journeyed to Hazeroth, and they remained at Hazeroth" (Numbers 11:33-35, ESV).

These are probably the most important verses in Numbers 11, chronicling the mass death by a curse of all who complained and ate the meat.  Interestingly enough, those who didn’t eat the meat, as is shown in 11:35, lived and journeyed onward unharmed.  So a number of interesting messages could be derived from this verse—but certainly not one of prosperity and providence.  This is one of the great problems with the American Church:  seeking what God can do for you, what you can use God for, instead of how you can serve One who, if you are a Christian, you believe gave the ultimate sacrifice for your sake.