Joel Osteen And ‘Self Positivity’…

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Hey guys, Colin here, and welcome back to Fight For Truth, the channel where we bring you Christian commentary about the things that matter.

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In today's video, we're going to be talking about a sermon from Joel Osteen. The sermon in question is entitled, quote,

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Stay Positive Towards Yourself. So we're off to a bad start. And this only proves what we've known for a very, very long time.

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Joel Osteen is a pseudo -pastor who peddles self -help motivational drivel in order to line his pockets with tons of cash.

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But for those who aren't familiar with him, Joel is, at least on the outside, simply the pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas.

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Yet, as we will demonstrate in this video, Joel Osteen is one of the most deceptive and unbiblical teachers in America.

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What we're going to do today is analyze his preaching in three separate clips from the aforementioned sermon and compare them to the

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Word of God. In the first clip, Joel is talking about how a person ought to think about themself in the

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Christian life. Watch this. I want to talk to you today about staying positive towards yourself.

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The most important relationship you have is the relationship with yourself. Too many people don't like who they are.

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Now, this is perhaps one of the most irresponsible statements I have ever heard from a so -called pastor.

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Joel says that the single most important relationship you have is between you and yourself.

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How any Christian teacher, even a fake one, could suggest this is beyond imagining.

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It boggles the mind. Yet, while it may seem utterly ridiculous to many of us, let's not forget that there are thousands, if not millions, of people who listen to Joel Osteen and take him seriously.

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And many evangelicals will hear statements like this, and at the very least, they'll make an excuse for it.

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They'll say things like, what exactly is the big deal? All he's saying is that the way you relate to yourself is important.

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Don't you think that's important? Well, the reason it's a big deal is because that's not actually what

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Joel said. He did not say that it's an important relationship. He said it was the single most important relationship that you have.

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And again, I could understand this from someone who is young in their faith and maybe confused about some things, but coming from a so -called pastor with decades of experience in apparently teaching the

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Word of God, this is dangerously irresponsible and frankly, absurd. Contrary to what

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Joel thinks, the most important relationship you have, by far, is that between you and God.

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Nothing else even comes remotely close. And this isn't just true for Christians, but for non -Christians as well, equally so.

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In Matthew 25, verse 46, Jesus says this, and these, the unrighteous, will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

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You see, your relationship to God and His holy standard is the most important thing about you.

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After all, this determines where you will spend literally all of eternity. Will you be with God forever, or separated from Him forever?

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The answer lies in what your relationship is to God. Specifically, whether or not you have been given the righteousness of Christ by God's grace through faith in His Son.

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When you claim to be a pastor and an evangelist, this is pretty basic stuff. At least, you'd think so.

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This is Christianity 101. We haven't even scratched the surface here. In fact, it's perhaps the most basic part of the

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Christian worldview. It strikes to the heart of the Gospel, and it seems that Joel Osteen, a pastor of over two decades, hasn't got the foggiest idea what we're talking about.

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And if that's not concerning, I don't know what is. Again, to make it clear, the Bible does not say that your most important relationship is the one between you and yourself.

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Rather, it is that between you and God. Indeed, the way you relate to God is so completely important that it defines the trajectory of your whole existence into eternity, forever.

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And it's hard to see what could possibly be more important than that. How could the stakes be any higher?

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This brings us to the second clip, in which Joel attempts to offer biblical support, and I use that term loosely, for his position.

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Watch this. Jesus said, love your neighbor as you love yourself. You can't love others if you don't first love yourself.

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The best thing you can do for your family, for your friends, is be good to you.

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Be kind to you. So this has become a very tried -and -true argument for modern Christians.

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For some reason, now that loving yourself has become a huge fad, and now that self -love and self -care are so popular in the world, now all of a sudden, every church is trying to make it sound biblical so they can hop on the worldly bandwagon.

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And at the very least, some good has come out of this, because this really helps us to separate the good, solid churches from the unstable churches who are obsessed with imitating the culture.

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But is Joel Osteen right? That's really the question. Did Jesus command us to love ourselves?

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Well, let's see. Mark 12 31, quote, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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So the argument effectively goes something like this. Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself, and they really like to highlight this phrase.

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Therefore, they say, He was telling us to love our neighbor as we love ourself at the same time.

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In fact, He was saying that loving yourself is a prerequisite to loving your neighbor, such that you can't love your neighbor properly if you don't first love yourself.

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But this is foolishness. The passage didn't say any of that. When Jesus says to love your neighbor as yourself, it is clear that He is describing the manner in which you are to love others.

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That's the actual point being made. He's not telling you to love yourself. He's telling you to love others, specifically in the way you would usually love yourself.

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In other words, the idea is this. You are always naturally loving yourself by looking out for your own interests and pleasures and preferences.

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Instead, you want to love others in that way, looking out for their interests in the way the

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Bible tells you to. The idea that Jesus was advocating for some sort of modern concept of self -love is simply not in the text of Scripture.

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It's completely made up. In fact, it's taking a modern worldview and injecting it into the teaching of Jesus, where it frankly doesn't belong.

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The passage does not command you to love yourself. Rather, it assumes that you already do.

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And of course, we can never forget that the direct statement being made in the passage is to love others.

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Loving yourself is never directly commanded. So to try and turn this into some sort of proof text for self -love is completely disingenuous.

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It's simply not an honest way to look at the Bible, and everyone can see that. The two greatest commandments given by Jesus here are love

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God and love others. He does not explicitly or clearly add any third category of self -love, and anyone who suggests otherwise is either purposely deceiving you or they've been deceived themselves.

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Either way, the idea is not biblical and does not flow naturally, to any degree, from the biblical worldview.

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Joel Osteen is manufacturing this so that he can advance his worldly and cultural agenda, as always.

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This brings us to the third clip. Watch this. I heard someone say, I discovered the enemy, it was me.

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Are you your enemy? Are you defeating yourself, limiting your dreams, sabotaging your relationships?

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All because you don't like him? Notice how Joel Osteen talks here about being your own worst enemy.

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Additionally, notice that he mentions examples of being your own enemy and ruining things for yourself.

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Practical examples. He asks this, quote, are you limiting your dreams, sabotaging your relationships, all because you don't like you?

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He mentions, in the very same breath, limiting your own dreams with sabotaging your relationships with others, as if those are somehow on the same level.

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And also, there is absolutely no consideration of how your actions in sabotaging these relationships may have affected other people.

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That doesn't even come into the equation. It's all about your dreams, your goals, and your relationships.

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You are your own worst enemy, says Joel Osteen. Why? Well, because you don't dream big enough for yourself, and you aren't making enough friends for yourself.

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But the Bible, it uses very different language, doesn't it? Jeremiah 17, 9 says, quote,

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The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick. Who can understand it?

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This is your position. Your heart is not good. You don't need to love yourself and appreciate yourself.

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It is desperately sick and wicked within you. In other words, your problem is not that you need to enjoy yourself more and exalt yourself more and please yourself more.

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No, instead, the idea is that you need to recognize you are deeply sinful and self -centered, and you enjoy yourself far too much.

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Ephesians 2, 1 -3 says, quote, And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

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We all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

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Your problem, you see, is not that you don't love yourself enough, but that you love yourself too much.

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The natural unsaved man lives to carry out his own desires. His goal is to please himself.

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The natural man likes himself so much that he is willing to dishonor God completely in the process.

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Yet Joel Osteen says that virtually all of your major problems come as a result of, wait for it, quote, you not liking you.

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Joel is completely unable to point out the real problems facing mankind spiritually. Instead, he has to make up his own problems and his own solutions in order to please the culture, because he has left the

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Bible as his standard of truth. The standard he follows is that of the secular world. According to modern secular wisdom, your biggest problem is that you don't have enough confidence.

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You don't have enough self -love. If you would just learn to look out for yourself, your life would go so much better.

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If you'd just recognize how smart and beautiful and talented and amazing you are, and help everyone to realize that too, well then you'd finally start doing better.

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Anything bad that happens to you, anything that you don't like, can be fixed by exalting yourself and having a better, higher self -perception.

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This worldview has produced bumper -sticker phrases like, love yourself, you do you, follow your heart, and all the rest of it.

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But instead of confronting this falsehood with the Bible, Joel Osteen has tried to blend the two together.

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The result is a rancid cest pool of lies that has been filled up with just enough sugar to hide the fact that the mixture is poisonous to the core.

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Joel Osteen is happy to tell you to love yourself when the real problem is your sin against God.

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Thus, the Gospel message ceases to be about Jesus and His glorious sacrifice, and instead it becomes all about how

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Jesus can help you accomplish your real goal, which, all along, was to love yourself and realize how amazing you were.

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This new, pseudo -Christian worldview has taken American professing Christians by storm.

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Many people now only go to church so that they can hear a pep talk about how great they are, and God's Word is being mangled and manipulated

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Sunday after Sunday to accomplish that end. The clips we've seen today are the epitome of man -centered false teaching.

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It's a great example of why we should flee from Joel Osteen and teachers like him, and instead we should seek true instruction in Biblical doctrine from real men of God.

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That will yield true spiritual growth. I pray that this has been a blessing to you, and please know that this video isn't meant as a sinful attack, but rather as a

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Biblical critique. And let's pray for Joel, that he would stop this false teaching by God's grace and turn to the truth of God's Word.

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