Gospel of Prosperity as advocated by Pentacostal, charismatic, and dominionist churches is different in many ways from the Bounty Ministry of Numenism.
The preachers of the Gospel of Prosperity start with the premise that one is poor because one lacks faith in their God, and they say that by keeping the faith and by giving to the right churches (themselves, generally), they will find favor with God and thereby become wealthy. If they continue to be impoverished, it’s because they lack faith, sufficient faith.
They back this up with the judicious cherry picking of scriptural verses, like Corinthians II, where Paul writes that Jesus became poor so that by his poverty others could become rich. Their “Name it and Claim it” and “word of Faith” teachings all taught of the pressing needs of here and now with no thought for the spiritual ramifications of their teachings. Many of these preachers depend upon the fact that they’ve convinced their followers that they speak directly to God and they bear back the word of God, which, not surprisingly, always has to do with giving more money to their church (and through the church to them). Oral Roberts may be the best known evangelical to claim direct conversations with God that brought about personal profit for himself. And people, desperate people, believed that the wealth showered upon Oral Roberts would be showered upon themselves if they just believed hard enough and gave more of their own money t Oral Roberts and those like him. Pat Robertson, for example. And Rev. Dollar.
The followers of the Gospel of Prosperity believed – still believe, actually – that wealth comes directly from God as a reward for being faithful.
In our Bounty Ministry, we believe we already have all the wealth the gods will bestow upon us. It is already ours. We need to recognize that fact, accept it, and look to see what of the wealth we have is what we need. In many cases, people who look deeply into their own personal assets, spiritual, physical, and social, they find they have a surplus. They are encouraged to share that surplus around. We acknowledge that some people need more than others, so we’ve incorporated the concept of “rightsizing” into our Bounty Ministry. The Bounty Ministry I symbolized by a cornucopia, filled and overflowing. Each person is a cornucopia, a vessel that needs to be filled. What spills out flows into other cornucopias, whether that “cornucopia” is a friend, a pet, a stray animal, a homeless person, a supervisor, a wild animal, a plant.
We all have basic needs.
We require breathable air. The gods gave us – free of charge – a world full of breathable air.
We require potable water. The gods gave us – free of charge – lakes, rivers, and aquifers full of potable, sweet water.
We require shelter. The gods gave us – free of charge – caves, trees, rocks, mud, straw, and other materials from which to build suitable shelters. As part of shelter, we require protective clothing. The gods gave us – free of charge – plant materials and animal hides and the knowledge and skill to convert them into wearable items.
We require food. The gods gave us – free of charge – edible plants and prey animals.
We require companionship. The gods gave us – free of charge – family and friends, pets, and plants to keep us company and the skills and knowledge to communicate with them and interact with them on many levels. The reward of companionship is our ability to give and receive what we do with the gifts the gods bestowed upon us.
We require occupation. The only thing the gods gave us that requires no conscious effort on our part is breathable air. For everything else, the gods placed them in easy reach for us and them gave us the skills and knowledge of how to acquire them. To keep us occupied even after our basic needs were satisfied; the gods gave us three more gifts: creativity, passion, curiosity. It is with these gifts that we create a bounty from the basic gifts of the gods.
The gods gave us one last gift. Some may consider it a curse, but it is still ours, nonetheless. The gods gave us free will. They gave us these gifts and then left us to do with them as we will for so long as we live.
All this, the gods gave us. They have asked no payment for them except our death. That death comes through only two venues: illness and injury. Even death is mitigated by generous gods who gave us the skills and knowledge to cure most illnesses and heal most wounds. By those acts, we believe the gods would like us to live long, happy lives.
It is we, the people, who impose prices and payments on things. It is we who put words in the mouths of our gods to goad others into doing things for us. It is we who deprive others of the things the gods gave us. It is we who inflict the majority of our pain and suffering upon ourselves.
With the gift of creativity came intelligence and awareness. With intelligence and awareness come other, less pleasant gifts – like greed, selfishness, jealousy, covetousness, ego, and fear. The ability to make tools to pluck fruits, harvest grains, build shelters, hunt animals, and create clothing also gave us the ability to hoard, wound and kill.
Still, the gods demand no price from us for the bounty placed in this world along with us. They do not require us to be nice, to share the bounty, to care about one another. They do not require us to beat one another or kill in their name. They have given us all these gifts to do with as we please. Judging by our history, we please to hurt one another, to kill one another, to deny one another basic needs just because we can.
In our Bounty Ministry, we teach that we don’t have to impose pain and suffering upon ourselves or others. The gods gave us large and versatile brains, and many physical abilities. Combined, we have – for free – all we need to prosper, all we need to live long and happy lives. Yes, there are elements in our lives that aren’t “fair”: diseases, natural disasters, birth defects, and genetic mutations that mimic diseases, but the gods gave us the skills and knowledge to even the odds. Life isn’t always fair because we have the gifts we can use to alter that, to make it more fair, to ensure we all have all that we need.
That we can also use those blessings and tools as weapons is a choice we have been given the freedom to make for ourselves. There are no gods hanging over our shoulder, telling us we can’t hoard more than we need. There are no gods condemning us for killing others for what we think we need. No god will bless us for the good we do as we wend our way through our lives, for they have already given us all the blessings we need.
For some people, this freedom unbalances them – they react in fear and greed, hoarding, wounding, killing to snatch all they think they need and more. Others become timid and barely take the minimum they need to survive. Holiness and sanctity are interpreted in many different ways, as is evil and unholiness. What could be a balanced and peaceful system of barter, enhanced with a token system representing real goods (money) became a system of greed with some proclaiming power over others, including the right to control their basic needs.
This is the core of Bounty Ministry: we have all we need and more. The gods have given us blessings and tools and the ability to acquire knowledge to make our lives even better. We have each been given one life filled with passion and beauty, and the freedom to use it as we will.
It is possible we were meant to play a competitive zero-sum game like “King of the Hill” – where each of us fights and struggles to collect all the resources for just one person, and the last person left standing wins everything – life, the universe, godhood, the whole and all.
In the Bounty Ministry, we choose to believe the goal is not a competitive and violent game like “King of the Hill”, but closer to “Elf Chess” where each player adds to the game board to create a work of art; the final product is more than each piece and it means different things to each player – it is an accomplishment of both individual and communal joy and pride. The pieces can be anything – from a grain of sand to a mechanical device that uses or acts upon all the other contributed pieces. It may take weeks and ingenuity to create the perfect piece to add to the game board, or it may be a matter of finding the right thing to put it in the right place at the right time. It is a cooperative and intensely creative game that enriches the players and the observers.
We choose to believe we were meant to use the gifts we were give by the gods to transcend who and what we are, to be more than the sum of ourselves. In our spiritual worldview, we live lives of many layers, the numena live in layers beyond and interwoven with ours, with the gods encompassing all those layers and more. Using our gifts in selfish, violent, fearful ways contracts us down, limits us, makes us less, separates us out. The gifts we were freely given, used well, would allow us to expand beyond our limited layers and well into the divine spheres. We would become more: more powerful, more knowledgeable, more flexible, more wealthy, more healthy, more creative, more divine.
In the Bounty Ministry, we take the gifts of the gods, our basic needs, and combine them in ways that fulfill our longings and passions – from music to travel to beauteous things to things to make our lives more convenient. We advocate a concept we call “rightsizing” – each person has their own basic minimum needs, and the little extra that will make them feel secure and bounteous. This comprises their cornucopia, and anything that falls outside it is their bounty – to share, to put up for a future need, to give away as freely as the gods gave to us. We help people find their rightsize, help them learn to know when their cornucopia is full, and what to do with the overflow.
