A Blessing and a Curse

Passage: Deuteronomy 11

There’s great tension in North American Christianity around the idea of benefits. The question is raised again and again, “What are the benefits of a relationship with God?” A significant number of American pastors and writers state outright that if you are connected with God, you will prosper. The prevailing view within this prosperity approach is that God wants to bless his people in material – even financial – terms. The promise of prosperity then becomes many people’s primary motivation for pursuing a relationship with God. In turn, many become discouraged in their faith when God doesn’t come through for them. Many are disillusioned when the God to whom they’ve appealed in prayer and with whom they’ve tried to connect on Sunday mornings fails to rain down material blessing. Does God want his people to prosper or not?

Deuteronomy 11 is one of many instances in which God seems to promise his people, the Israelites, prosperity in exchange for obedience. God says,

…if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today – to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul – then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

What does this mean for God’s chosen people? For the Israelites, God’s promise is this: If you live according to my rules, life will go well for you. Everything will work the way it’s supposed to. This promise has a corollary: If you don’t follow my rules, everything will fall apart. There’s a blessing, and a related curse. God provides the Israelites a template for living successfully as a society. God’s rules are myriad, and they touch on every kind of human activity and relationship – including the people’s relationship with neighboring nations and their relationship with the very land they inhabit. God’s blessing and God’s curse have a spiritual or supernatural component: God states that there are guidelines for living in right relationship with him, and if people can’t live by those guidelines, they can’t have a relationship. Living in right relationship with God has benefits that go far beyond the merely practical or material. But God’s blessing and God’s curse have a fairly simple, practical component, too. God created the world and God created people. He knows how both are supposed to operate, and gives people the gift of insight into how both can work optimally. Living by God’s rules means living optimally. Blessing. Ignoring God’s rules for living has the inevitable consequence of some kind of breakdown. Curse. On this basis, God promises that life will go well for the Israelites so long as they all follow his rules.

How does this translate into the life of God’s people today? God’s people, the church, are no longer a single nation. Rather, we are a community spread throughout the nations of the world. We can’t force the societies in which we’re imbedded to live by God’s rules. That being said, we can create communities that live by God’s rules: the communities of our families and our congregations. It is a lie to say that if you live by God’s rules today, God will make you wealthy. However, it is taking God at his word to conclude that if we, in the communities of our families and churches, live by God’s rules, life will work the way it’s supposed to. Our relationships will grow. Our kids will flourish. Those in our communities who are at risk will be taken care of. Blessing.

We get off track when we think of prosperity in purely individual, and economic, terms. God offers a prosperity that goes far beyond your bank balance. God offers a wealth of relationship, a richness of community, and an overabundance of peace that comes from knowing you’re living the way you were meant to live. That was God’s promise to the Israelites as they were poised to enter the Promised Land; that’s God’s promise to his people today.