Those who teach the nice gospel will usually maintain that the gospel is good news but that they don’t want to be mean. This is false thinking. The opposite of the nice gospel is not a mean gospel, it is the true gospel. The true gospel is not mean, nor is it nice. It is the righteousness of God, the judgment of sin, the eternal hope of Christ, and the salvation of the world.

Last Sunday there was a shooting at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. A celebrity prosperity preacher, Osteen boasts forty to fifty thousand attendees each weekend and is among the world’s most well-known pastors.

Joel Osteen is not a good pastor. Only God knows if he is truly a Christian, but he is certainly famous. He is best known for his book Your Best Life Now and for his extremely diluted prosperity gospel messages. He doesn’t teach the Bible in context. He doesn’t preach about repentance, the blood of Christ, the cross, or the wages of sin. In other words, he doesn’t preach the gospel.

Instead, he preaches about being nice and about the nice things that can happen to you, primarily related to money, relationships, and health.

Evil and Tragedy

On Sunday, February 12, an armed woman entered Lakewood Church and began to open fire before being killed by church security staff. The shooter was a woman who used the name “Jeffrey” and is believed to have been “transgender” to some degree. MSN called her a transgender Palestine supporter. The shooting’s sole fatality is currently the shooter herself, though she brought her seven-year-old son along who was struck by a bullet and is in critical condition at the time of this writing.

Joel Osteen made a brief statement about the matter: “There are forces of evil, but the forces of God are stronger than that.” This is possibly the first time Osteen has used the word “Evil” in a pastoral capacity. He is very conscientious about avoiding the word “sin” as well. A number of years ago he famously described homosexuality as “Not God’s best,” atoning for offense to the homosexual community by praying at the inauguration of Houston’s first lesbian mayor in 2010. Everyone smiled at the ceremony, while she continued down her road to perdition, and Osteen helped make sure it was wide and smooth, and “sanctified” by prayer.

The Nice Gospel

Osteen is the poster child of the problematic “gospel of nice,” a gospel that he perfectly exemplifies. He is always smiling, always has something amusing to say, and always has a winsome and pleasant reply. He never complains, never points fingers, and never identifies sin. If his goal is to be inoffensive and agreeable, and he’s doing his job immeasurably well.

But this is not the goal of the pastor – rather, the goal is meant to be bringing glory to God. If Osteen (or any “nice guy evangelist”) wins a convert by being nice, who gets the glory? The nice guy who smiled at them and made them feel welcome, or the Son of God? If Osteen fails to win a convert, what lessons are learned? “Be nicer” next time?

In addition to robbing God of his gospel glory, the “nice gospel” does not work. It has no explanation for human depravity.

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