So much so that here in Botswana, a new law was passed to curb the proliferation of churches. A reason given is that these 'new' churches are robbing the people with great promises of health, success and prosperity if they give great amounts to the church but the promises don't come through. National leaders don't like it.
But why has the Prosperity Gospel engulfed this continent more than other places around the globe? Are Africans more greedy than anyone else? No I don't believe so.
It's all about worldview - an honour/shame worldview.
Gaining honour and avoiding shame are two partner goals of African culture, as I've said many times before.
The Prosperity Gospel offers wealth, health and success. To be wealthy, healthy and successful is honourable in the society. In other words the Prosperity Gospel offers what an African sees as honour.
WEALTH
The West looks at the apparent poverty of Africa and thinks that the offer of prosperity is something new and attractive. Not so. African's have not suddenly become eager for wealth.
As the West observed Africa, it saw what it thought was poverty and lack of wealth.....but that was according to the West's definition of wealth - big house, electricity, air-conditioning, plumbed hot water, flash car, Western Education, TV, DVD, computer, Cell phones, access to supermarkets etc etc.
What the West didn't think about was other forms of wealth....such as cows! Yes cows.
Here in Botswana people don't live on their farm. They don't live and have fields and graze their cows all in the one place. They live in the village, with their fields further out from the village in another area and the cows are in a different place again - the cattle post where the men go. You may look at a little hut in a yard and say they have very little.....but they may have 30 cows and fields under cultivation. The number of cows you had was a main measure of your wealth. Even now cows are valuable. 30 cows if they were sold could net at least P90000 - almost $10,000. It's like saying a person doesn't have a TV but they have $10,000 in the bank, or they don't have running water but they have a nice car. Of course traditionally the chief was the one with the most cows and the most land. Another traditional sign of wealth was the number of wives. African's have always desired wealth. Wealth is honour and honour is power.
Urban Africans don't always have lots of cows (although many still have their cows and lands out at their home village) or lots of wives, but they do have the opportunity now days for lots of Western style wealth to show off. Wealth still brings honour and honour still brings power.
The inverse is also true: Poverty is shame and shame is fear and insignificance.
Everyone wants to look the 'big man'!
HEALTH
Traditionally, sickness in Africa is seen as shameful, maybe the result of a curse and to be hidden. Temporary illness is bad enough and traditional medicine is sought to reverse the curse. But Chronic illness or permanent disability that can't be reversed is perpetual shame and so the only way to overcome it is to hide it. The book 'Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana' talks about this very issue. We have a friend doing post-graduate study here focusing on enabling the disabled, and I asked him how it was going. His reply was that he faced a problem in that it was hard to find the disabled as they are hidden away.
As I think I have mentioned before, there is a widespread belief that when a person becomes a Christian, God has promised that they will no longer be put to shame (Romans 9:33). Because the gospel has not been explained with any reference or teaching relating to shame, people bring in their cultural definitions and thus interpret that God is saying they will now not be ever having any shame in the eyes of other people. This wrong understanding then leads to the view that whatever will alleviate shame before other people must be God's will, and whatever brings shame in the eyes of other people cannot possibly be God's will.
Thus there is a belief that God would only want their physical healing.
This, combined with the widely held doctrinal belief that there is present healing in the atonement, not least through a mis-understanding of 'by his stripes we are healed' (Is 53), just fuels and re-inforces the possibilities offered by the Prosperity Gospel.
SUCCESS
Thus success is seen as good health and great wealth - that is honourable. Poverty in any form and illness/disability is seen as shameful.
So what we see is the Prosperity Gospel slotting in very nicely to traditional belief - a traditional belief that kept people trapped.
People are busy trying to look rich in the eyes of others and look healthy in the eyes of others.
People don't share their physical struggles - always everything is happy and fine!
People go into huge debt to 'look good'
People don't want to be seen going to 'cheap' shops or buying 'cheap' items,..... they want to be known to be wearing the latest clothes, and driving the latest car and smart phone. (the clothes might be on credit card, the car might have almost no fuel and not been taken to the mechanic for the proper tune-ups, the phone might have no call credit to be able to make calls, and there may be almost no food in the house but people don't see that.)
People don't save, because tomorrow and the future is not where Africans live - they live today and for what others see today.
Prophecies are attractive because a prophecy in itself brings a sense of honour in being 'chosen' to be 'blessed' and of course the 'blessing' in the prophecy is eagerly received as a promise of success and thus further honour.
The need for success isn't just personal either, because there is associated honour and associated shame. Who a person is seen with affects how they are 'seen'. So a person will want their family to be seen to also be successful.
A Christian girl I mentored graduated from University. Her mother (who also was a regular church attender) just happened to graduate from a Post Graduate degree at the same time and her mother decided to have a combined big graduation party. The daughter had just finished doing a bible study on materialism and decided she didn't want to spend her entire bank account and more on the clothes she would wear on that night (under her graduation gown). But her mother got very angry with her when she saw how simple and ordinary (though still elegant and new) the clothes were that her daughter was going to wear - 'what will all my friends think?' was the mother's cry. She demanded her daughter wear something more expensive and glamorous. It was a very difficult time and eventually there was a slight adjustment made but the mother still wasn't happy although she eventually accepted her daughter wasn't going to budge any further. There was great pressure that she would bring shame on her mother by not dressing with the appearance of wealth and honour.
Replacing the Mis-placed
It saddens us greatly when we see the destructive twisted lies of the Devil still impacting people around us under the guise of Christianity. But it reminds us again how vital it is that people hear the truth and let the truth set them free.
Mis-placed cultural and Prosperity gospel beliefs need to be replaced with what God says about honour and shame. This involves good Bible teaching and also teaching folk how to read and understand the text of their Bibles in context. We are reminded that when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness he used Scripture out of context and made error sound believable and attractive.
Not only do culturally mis-placed shame perspectives need to be replaced, so do religious ones.
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