He startled me at first.
“OSTEEN!!” I exclaimed aloud, hands clenching into fists.
I was inadvertently glancing into a stranger’s car as they hopped behind the wheel and from the passengers seat I saw the bastards face smiling from the cover of a “Your Best Life Now” book. It was as if my heart had curdled into a black hate - my arch nemesis, Joel Osteen, invading my life for one miserably prolonged moment.
It all began, August 2003, downtown Minneapolis, 5:30pm – I was outside, inhaling a Parliament Light and exhaling a general sense of contempt and disgust with the world, thinking - what are all these freak kids doing here? These aren’t typical kids, these are hyper mature teenagers wearing Mario Brother tee-shirts and talking about Jesus, these are kids too symmetrical to form social groups, these are kids wearing the same things and eating the same things… these kids are the brainwashed and their numbers are massive.
“Joel Osteen, man. They came to see Osteen.” said my co-worker, after I had pondered these thoughts with him.
I learned later that Joel Osteen was a preacher so mighty he not only could sell out the massive Target Center Arena three nights running, he could fill the place solely with the 13-18 demographic. I learned later that Joel Osteen had purchased the old Houston Rockets stadium and transformed it into a “16,000 seat worship facility” that he sells out every Sunday, and from which he televises each service on fourteen channels throughout the world. I learned that Joel Osteen believes that Jesus wants you to be a millionaire, and I learned that Joel Osteen is a master preacher, a man overly worthy of my hate and far above being my arch nemesis.
**
Joel Osteen looks like the quintessential high school quarterback, the mold of 1950’s success, and the poster child of everyman who becomes something greater than you in life. He is a man who could surely steal your girlfriend and your dog in one day.According to Osteen Ministries :
Really Joel? Committed to helping every person? But your website is a shrine to your personal enrichment. You feature only two pages explaining yourself – a brief self-aggrandizing bio of you and your trophy wife along with a corny and pedestrian 10 line feature of generic god blather. Elsewhere on the website you can find links to a sophisticated online store, selling everything from your books, to music you sponsor to pre-bought text messages delivered from your profound wisdom. On each side of the screen are advertisements for your books, audio CDs, or links providing a gracious means to donate to the Ministries.
Really Joel? You believe all your followers can become millionaires, just as long as they spend $76.95 at your store and believe in that positive Lord, the great Jesus?
Really Joel… what sort of Elmer Gantry lies within you, how can you professes the beautiful lies you spew, how can you uphold the absurdity of a capitalist Jesus? Why do you torment me so?
***
Minneapolis, unclear, 2:43 am. I am slightly drunk, flipping channels, convincing myself to sleep, I happen across a Christian Public Access channel and there he is – alone onstage, in the arena “that once crowned champions in the world of sports,” the arena he had “transformed into a beacon of hope and inspiration.” He is speaking slowly. At least 75 lights illuminate him from the heathen Houston masses. The background is filled with flower bouquets and expensive looking marble formations. He is speaking of optimism and of not letting life’s little travails get you down - he believes in you, Jesus believes in you, and you should believe in yourself. It’s the sort of trite nonsense that if you wrote down and read it in the morning you would be laughing in relieved retrospect. But this is now and this is Osteen…
He is slow at first, walking the length of the stage and making extended eye contact with as many people as catch his calculated gaze. And then, without warning, he launches into it, the Great Believing, the message he and only he alone can deliver. He fully emphasizes every point with an aggressive nod of the head and equally exaggerated hand motion. He flashes his bleached white teeth in a superior perma-grin, crystal blue eyes unblinking, his gloriously spotlighted physique bold and unshaken. His message is triumphant and clear: Jesus, and only Jesus, is here for you, and Jesus and only Jesus is the true pathway to the lord, and Jesus, and only Jesus and Joel Osteen can provide you the means to spiritual and financial well-being.
I’ve lost the meaning to what he is saying anymore. All I can see it that game show smile, all I can hear are encouraging words and all I envision is a life more prosperous than my own. A life where I threw the game winning touchdown in high school, a life where I married the most beautiful blond in town, a life framed in flower bouquets and marble, a life where money flows freely and my spirit dances in optimism with the Lord.
And then the heart starts curdling black, and my chance at ignorant innocence is dashed… It was so easy, just $76.95, my high school quarterback, a little Jesus and a little optimism. But my consciousness follows me.
****
And so I sit here alone, writing, as Joel Osteen gazes out from thousands of book covers across America , sells out gigantic stadiums and rakes in money with the spirit of almighty Jesus. Osteen: the perfect image of the hollowness of a religiously capitalist society. Osteen: the beacon for that weakness in men to want for more than themselves and the weakness of believing the false words of other men. Osteen: my nemesis.
