Your Best Life Now:  7 Steps To Living At Your Full Potential

by Joel Osteen

Warner Faith:  2004   Pp. 310  

                                                Reviewed by Dr. Susan K. Hedahl

This review is written in honor of my students who honor a theology of the Cross.

Today the act of preaching involves many choices in terms of topics and ways to frame them theologically, biblically and confessionally.  This book is an example of the materials spawned in the arena of positive religious thinking, which is a bizarre cross between public speech and preaching.  This work is typical of its genre, a perfect Home on the Range book; where "Not a discouraging word is heard."

The book is a "How to get God to give you good things" work.:  "Enlarge your vision; Develop a healthy self-image; Discover the power of your thoughts and words; Let go of the past; Find strength through adversity; Live to give; and Choose to be happy." (x)

Certainly this is a laudable agenda for any human being.  The agenda, however, is not connected with an understanding God which orthodox Christianity recognizes. Osteen's version of God is one who grants favor for the specially blest, particularly those who will take charge, buck up, and make changes.  The God of this book (resolutely He throughout) is not Trinitarian in nature and the references to Jesus Christ are rare indeed.   The Holy Spirit does not figure in this book.   When the Bible is quoted it is usually paraphrased, drawn from Old Testament wisdom literature or used to proof text the God-will-give-me-anything mentality that marks the contents.

There is a great deal of moralistic "must' language in this work. Such statements are partnered with lists of what to do and what one will gain as a result.  There is no room for categories of human life such as tragedy, unanswered questions, unrelieved suffering or dark nights of the soul.  For example, "If you will leave your concerns in God's hands, He will settle your cases.  He will make your wrongs right. ...God can turn that situation around and make it all up to you, plus much more!" (173) or this "If you live with a commitment to excellence and integrity, happiness will be a natural by-product, because God will reward you far beyond your grandest dreams!"  (295).   The witness of Job on his dung pile, Mary at the foot of the Cross, God's radical inscrutability, and Jesus crying out his forsakenness in the final hours of his life provide a radical contradiction to this kind of 'theology.'  One has to ask:  Where is the Cross in Osteen's version of reality?

The following set of topics is not discussed:  Law, Gospel, sin, grace, accountability, mission, pluralism, and redemption through the Cross.  Instead, the God of Mr. Osteen is one whose chain, if jerked appropriately, will respond positively to any personal request (often financial in nature).  In fact, the element of magical thinking is everywhere.  One example of this is an incident Osteen notes at an airport in which he manages to get a camera on board an international flight, despite the rules, because God had "favored" him.  Forget the daily vocational work of the woman whose job it was to prevent him from breaking the rules.

The saddest part of this work is a single, final page, buried behind the index, a page easily missed.  It has a prayer the reader can address to Jesus Christ, asking for forgiveness and acknowledgement that He is Lord and Savior.  Why is this sad?  Because this should have been the first page of the book and the rest of its 310 pages a theological working out of why this is so important.