Successfully Syncretistic or Divinely Pure?

Successfully syncretistic that expands white privilege, that shelters the oppressed or divinely pure that releases the oppressed?

Recently, I heard a prosperity gospel preacher give this principle for success:  "You will only succeed when your assignment becomes an obsession."  He meant personal success, personal prosperity, personal blessing; in essence, the American Dream.  I would rewrite this principle:  "You personally and the church will only succeed when your divine assignment becomes a kingdom obsession."

I taught at Christian colleges for 35 years.  I would guessestimate that 90 percent of the graduates became Christian American successes, became middle and upper class.  Their Christian parents saw them as successes; their churches saw them as successes; their college alumni magazines proclaimed them as prized successful grads.  But many may have been kingdom failures.  Only 10 percent were obsessively focused on the biblical kingdom of God, focused on justice for the poor and oppressed, obsessively releasing the oppressed from their trauma, obsessively doing Jubilee justice, calling out the oppressed cleverly hiding in the church to repentance, restitution, and repair.

Only around 10 percent gave their highest priority to God's kingdom and his justice (Matthew 6:33 NEB).

The worst oppressors, the cleverest oppressors may be church members in good standing, upstanding members of the synagogue.  Check Amos 5:21-24; Isaiah 58; Luke 4:25-30; Luke 11:42; Mt. 23; John 2, the cleansing of the Temple.  Also the American church which tolerated or even participated in Indian genocide and African enslavement.  Some white slave traders professed to be Christian.

Watch out !  The oppressor might be sitting next to you in church praising God for his blessings.  Or, heaven forbid, the oppressor may have crawled inside YOU!  Or the church itself may have sanctified the surrounding system of economic oppression.

By the way, if you are committed to releasing the oppressed do it as a TEAM.  My wife and I have a team ministry; she practices what I preach!  This joke has a large kernel of truth in it; my gift is preaching and teaching; her gift is listening and loving.

Going back to Luke, chapter four.  Some of the oppressed had lost their farms during the last years to a corrupt economic and financial system often centered in the Temple.  But most of the members of the synagogue were themselves religious and ethnocentric against Gentiles---oppressors of a different kind.  Luke 4:25-30.