Eileen Flanagan

Those who know of Joel Osteen may be surprised to hear that I’m reading his #1 New York Times bestseller Your Best Life Now and trying to figure out what speaks to me and what doesn’t. For those unfamiliar with the famous smile pictured here, Osteen is the pastor of Lakewood Church, said to be the largest and fastest growing church in the US with a weekly attendance around 38,000. An additional 20 million people per month view his weekly sermon on television, which is what publishers call “a platform,” the kind that helped his first book sell over 4 million copies. So, when I saw Your Best Life Now available for a quarter at a used book sale, I was curious. 

In some ways, Osteen’s core message is not that different than mine: God is good, and life goes better when we trust that. Many of his stories of faith are inspiring examples of what Quakers call “way opening,” moments when we get aligned with our purpose, and God opens doors for us. Osteen encourages gratitude, trust, and optimism and says that holding onto resentment and fear can block blessings in our lives. On a very basic level, I agree with him.

My disagreement starts with his understanding of how blessings work. He uses the word “favor” a lot, arguing that God will give us “an edge,” presumably because God likes us (Osteen’s readers?) better than all the other people “He” created. Obviously there is a particularly narrow version of Christianity at work here, even though it is never articulated. It reminds me of Peterson Toscano’s recent Facebook wall post: “Jesus Loves You! But he seems to love you more if you are healthy, white, male, American or European, middle/upper class, in a monogamous heterosexual marriage and able to reproduce.”

The assumption that material prosperity is a sign of God’s favor is the second problem that I have with Osteen’s approach. Although he acknowledges that blessings can come in many forms, so many of his stories involve people getting rich that I started to wonder if he reads the same Gospel I do. While I don’t believe that money itself is evil (as some Quakers seem to), Osteen makes buying a mansion sound like a spiritual practice. I’m sure this is part of what is so appealing about his message, as well as books like The Secret, which says a lot of the same things without the Christian veneer.

My third objection is that the first two approaches can lead to a total lack of compassion for people who are poor or suffering. Taken to its logical conclusion, his philosophy seems to imply that if you are sick it’s because you didn’t have the faith to be healed; if you are poor, it’s because you were blocking God’s blessings or didn’t have God’s favor. I think of the many people who have been starving and dying of poverty related diseases in Zimbabwe, and I wonder if their problem is a lack of faith or a history of colonialism followed by dictatorship. Somehow I think Jesus would judge the people who got rich exploiting Zimbabwe’s wealth, not the people who are suffering because of it.

Despite my discomfort with so much of Osteen’s philosophy, I find myself wanting to finish the book. I feel like I am still recovering from the opposite religious message, that God wants us to suffer all the time, which can be equally harmful. There is something in Osteen’s message of hope that speaks to me, even though I have to constantly edit and translate it into my own spiritual language. In the end, I wonder if this book is spiritual junk food, something people crave, even though it is really bad for them, or if it’s more like fruit, sweet and good for us, but needing to be eaten in balance with other types of food. Either way, many people are clearly hungry for it.

Update on Friday, June 4, 2010 at 7:32AM by Eileen Flanagan

As was implied in this post, I hadn't finished reading the book before writing about it. Last night I discovered that one of the last chapters is called "Keep Your Heart of Compassion Open." I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but in the interest of fairness felt I had to post this follow up.

I like observing the wild way my mind works. I’m a fascinating case—as are we all, I suspect. I’m especially interested in intuition, where it comes from, and whether we can trust it. Usually I do trust it, though that doesn't mean that things work out exactly as I expect.

What got me thinking about this was the recent resolution of an intuition I had months ago when I first read about the Nautilus Book Awards in a writing newsletter. The thought immediately popped into my mind, “I’m going to win that thing.” I looked up the award—saw that is was for books that “promote spiritual growth, conscious living, and positive social change as they stimulate the imagination and inspire the reader to new possibilities for a better world”—and thought, “I’m really going to win because those are exactly the things I hope to do in my writing." My editor assured me that Tarcher/Penguin submits all their books to Nautilus, so there was nothing for me to do but trust and wait for the spring announcement.

Several weeks ago, I read something that made me think that the awards had already been announced. “Oh darn,” I thought, equally disappointed that I hadn’t won and that my intuition had been untrustworthy. Then, some weeks later, I saw a press release from my publisher announcing that The Wisdom to Know the Difference (and some other Tarcher books) had won the Nautilus Silver awards and were finalists for the Gold. I love it when good things happen right after I totally let go of something—which seems to happen often. I felt grateful for the honor (and that my intuition had been vindicated). 

The problem was that now I started wondering if my intuition had been fulfilled by the Silver, or if I might still win the Gold. I felt my ego get hooked by the prospect of posting the little gold icon on my website and telling people that I won an award previously won by people like Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle, and the Dalai Lama. In hindsight, my ego got attached to this prospect, so I was disappointed when Nautilus posted the final results yesterday, and I was still on the silver list—something that made me wildly happy a few weeks ago. 

Partly it’s a reminder of things I already know: watch out for those ego hooks; don’t get attached to outcomes; let go of “the picture” (as Dan Gottleib put it). But it also got me thinking about intuition and what purpose it serves. What I realized yesterday morning was that my intuition about Nautilus had served its purpose. At a time when the obstacles to a little-known writer launching a book during a recession seemed formidable, that intuition brought me reassurance that “way would open,” as Quakers put it—that I would get help from the Universe, if you prefer. All that has been true. Not only does the Silver Nautilus give me a publicity boost, but two other boosts came this week, unsolicited by me. First, The book was quoted on the Huffington Post by Therese Borchard, author of the new book Beyond Blue and the popular Beyond Blue blog on Beliefnet.  Then I found that Gay Edelman, a senior editor at Family Circle, mentioned it on her blog and the site Momster. I ended up feeling that the essence of the intuition was right, though I may have jumped to conclusions about what exactly it meant.

My own experience of intuition is that it usually points in the right direction, but doesn’t give precise coordinates. I also find that premonitions that lead me to trust are usually trustworthy, while those that hook my ego or fear are usually not. I’m curious if these observations ring true to other people’s experience.

How do you know when you can trust an intuition?

Update on Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 11:14AM by Eileen Flanagan

P.S. I should say congratulations to all the authors honored by Nautilus, especially fellow Quaker author Iris Graville for her beautiful book Hands at Work, which won in the Best in Small Press category. 

Yesterday, after running into a woman whose husband is in remission from brain cancer, I realized how many reminders I’ve been getting lately of life’s fragility. A member of our meeting has entered hospice after many months of treatment for brain cancer. Another member’s ALS has progressed to the point where, for the first time on Sunday, I couldn’t understand something she said. A good friend, who is my age, just got diagnosed with breast cancer (which is mercifully easier to treat than ALS or brain cancer), and the father of one of my son’s classmates died suddenly of a heart attack on Monday. Another friend’s father-in-law also died this week, all of which prompted me to remember to include our health in the things we thank God for at prayer-time each night.

An awareness of life’s fragility can make us fearful and paranoid (When am I due for a mammogram?), but it can also prompt us to appreciate the present. The meeting member with brain cancer continually posts things on the Internet about trusting God and experiencing peace. The member with ALS made us all get up and dance in our places after worship on Sunday in order to advertise the Brazilian dance party she will be leading from her wheelchair next month. I suspect I’m not the only one who has been moved by these two members’ example.

I finally got through most of The Science of Fear, which I mentioned a few posts ago. It is really a well-written, thought-provoking book. While there were many parts that confirmed things I already believed—(George Bush manipulated people’s fear to lead us into a war that’s not making us safer.)—there were other parts that challenged my beliefs, particularly the author’s assertion that environmentalists manipulate statistics and fear just as much as other groups. He put my fear that my children are being exposed to all kinds of toxic chemicals into the context of childhood mortality rates before we had chlorine in the water, arguing his conclusion that “There’s Never Been a Better Time to Be Alive” in terms of actual risk. Although he may err on the side of underestimating the threat of climate change, he offers a helpful perspective, when so much media is designed to prey on parental insecurity. I found the book just one more reminder that I don’t want to live in fear or encourage the fears of others, despite the real and constant fragility of life. 

So on Saturday, I’m planning to drive my Toyota, full of children, in a snow storm, to take my first snowboarding lesson at age 47. Do I trust God, or what?