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September 14, 2006
by Rabbi Daniel Lapin
1. It sells copies. 2. It demeans religion as a serious guide to life. 3. It disparages Christianity by ignoring Judaism's views on the issue. With reason number three seeming illogical, allow me to shed light on it right away. Nearly forty years ago Mcgraw Hill published a book by the anti-Semitic British historian Arnold Toynbee. It was a large coffee table volume entitled Cities of Destiny. Now I am not one for spotting an anti-Semite behind every bush so why do I denounce Toynbee as one? Like most religious Jews would do (as would most religious Christians) I opened the book, seeking the page describing Jerusalem. Astonishingly in a book detailing many utterly obscure cities Toynbee does not consider Jerusalem to be as significant to the destiny of the world as Timbuktu. Sometimes an omission is too conspicuous to be accidental. In this case, omitting Jerusalem revealed a strong anti-Jewish bias which many of Toynbee's books and speeches later confirmed. In the case of Time Magazine, omitting Jews reveals an anti-Christian bias. It simply has to be noteworthy when a major American journal discusses religion and money yet fails to mention the words "Jew" or "Judaism" even once. I am certainly not imputing sinister motives to the magazine or the authors of the article. However by their omission they betray perhaps a subconscious and subtle anti-Christian bigotry. After all, religion and politics never intersect, do they? So who but dumb Christians would think that religion and money intersect? The story begins with a slightly condescending account of a home schooling Christian dad. After losing his job, Time Magazine sniggers, his first action was to move his family closer to the prosperity-preaching-church he wished to join. The implication here is that only primitive and unsophisticated Christians actually believe that religion has anything to do with realities of life like money. By inference, everyone knows that Jews are far too worldly to confuse faith and finance and so do not belong in this story about simple folk whom clever clergy can easily bamboozle. You get the idea. The first reason I attributed to Time Magazine's "Does God Want You To Be Rich?" cover story was that it was guaranteed to sell newsstand copies. Do you recall when Readers Digest ran a lengthy series of articles entitled I am John's Kidneys or I am John's Spleen or Lungs or Heart? The series continued until we had pretty much exhausted John's anatomy. Why did Readers Digest run this strange series? Simply because most people are interested in their health, so a readable article on the topic was likely to attract new readers to the monthly. In exactly the same way, executives and journalists at papers like Time Magazine are discovering a secret that absolutely nobody at business school or journalism school ever even whispered to them. The secret is that a majority of Americans take God and the Bible very seriously. Over fifty percent of Americans try to take the Lord's wishes into account in almost every major decision they make in their lives. How they date and marry, give birth to children, raise and educate those kids, how they vote, and yes, how they run their financial affairs. In all these temporal matters and in many others, they seek to act in accordance with God's wishes as they understand them from the Bible. Obviously a cover story that suggests it will answer whether God wants you to be rich would appeal to these many millions of Americans. The cover graphics with a frontal shot of a Rolls Royce grille are quite excellent. Today, whether you are a politician or a publisher, you would be reckless to ignore all those Americans who take the God of the Bible seriously. Finally, after you have purchased the magazine on impulse at the airport newsstand, you open it to discover that nobody really knows whether God wants you to be rich or not. Here is a collection of Bible verses suggesting that God does not want you to be rich while here are five more that would indicate Divine pleasure in your bank balance. Here are a few prominent pastors who denounce prosperity doctrine while here are others who explain how they define and preach prosperity. So you see, the bottom line is that religion doesn't really have any more absolute answers than any of us in media do -- it is, after all, a relative world. Some say 'yes' while others say 'no.' Some say 'black' and others say 'white,' so quit taking religion seriously. So does God want us to be rich? Well, you might ask, does God want us to have great sex? The answer is that what the good Lord does want is for us to be monogamously and lovingly devoted to our spouse. It should come as no surprise to the faithful among us that He has chosen to reward those of His children who follow His prescriptions in this matter, with great sensual pleasure. It is not that God wants us to be rich, but He does want us to be obsessively preoccupied with the needs and desires of other people. He does want us to create ordered societies in which His rules of law are followed and in which people's right to their property is respected. He wants us to place others upon the economic escalator by charity that promotes independence rather than dependence. He wants us to avoid coveting but to work hard and diligently in order to imitate the first Adam who was placed into the Garden for that very purpose. He wants us to remember that the word service is correctly applied to both customer and worship. It should come as no surprise to the faithful among us that He has chosen to reward those of His children who follow His prescriptions in this matter with great comfort, security, and yes, prosperity. Does God want you to be rich? No He wants you to do the right things in close connection with many others also doing the right thing. Not surprisingly, His response to His children is prosperity. For over two hundred years this has been the secret of the greatest engine of economic prosperity that world history has ever seen, the United States of America. It is a secret to which clergymen may well contribute more than journalists and business professionals more than politicians.
Radio talk show host, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, is president of Toward Tradition, a bridge-building organization providing a voice for all Americans who defend the Judeo-Christian values vital for our nation's survival. Visit their website at http://www.towardtradition.org. © 2005 by Rabbi Daniel Lapin and reproduced here with permission.
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Here
are three reasons why the famous weekly's current
issue featured this question as its cover
story:
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