So when Victoria Osteen says we worship God for our sake and not His, she’s wrong. But she’s not wrong because she’s choosing man instead of God as her answer to the question “for whose benefit do we gather for worship?” Rather, she’s wrong because she’s made an either/or proposition out of the matter. And while it’s perfectly fair to criticize Ms. Osteen for this error and for a shallow, “God just wants you to be happy” theology of praise, I do find this offense rather minor in comparison to the Osteens’ overarching error of “pretty much everything we say is incompatible with the Scriptures and we will never, ever, ever point your eyes to the cross of Christ.”

When Donald Sterling had to sell the Los Angeles Clippers because he was caught on tape saying he didn’t want his mistress bringing black people to his basketball games, many people cheered. But if you had paid much attention to Sterling prior to the TMZ-leaked audio, you probably didn’t cheer—not because you weren’t troubled by Sterling’s comments, but because Sterling’s downfall over those particular comments felt a bit anticlimactic.

Sterling was sued for racial discrimination in basketball. He was repeatedly sued for housing discrimination against blacks and Latinos. Sterling’s wife allegedly posed as a health inspector to survey the race of people living in the couple’s properties and threaten them with fines if they didn’t keep their space clean. Not wanting people of a certain race to attend your basketball games is most definitely bad. But it is a minor tremor on the Racist Richter Scale in comparison to Sterling’s earthshaking brand of discrimination that directly hurt people’s lives and harmed their communities. So when you consider all of the insanely racist things Sterling has done, isn’t it a bit of a letdown that the least racist thing of the bunch served as his Waterloo?

From a theological perspective, I see something similar with the outrage from various Christian circles over recent comments from Victoria Osteen, wife of Joel Osteen and “co-pastor” of Lakewood Church, America’s largest congregation. At a recent service, Ms. Osteen commented that, when we offer God our obedience and worship, we do this for the sake of our own happiness rather than for the glory of God. Like Sterling’s TMZ tape, yes, Osteen’s comments are bad. Yes, the 37-second clip is a rambling mess born from almost incomprehensible Biblical ignorance. Yes, I hope these comments cause Osteen disciples to seriously reconsider their devotion to the most mega of America’s megachurches. But if these words succeed in toppling the Osteen empire, isn’t it a bit anticlimactic when the Osteens have said a thousand things that are even more theologically indefensible during their time at Lakewood Church?

A Long Tradition of Theological Ignorance

When interviewed, Joel Osteen won’t clearly affirm there is no salvation outside of faith in Christ and seems incapable of articulating a coherent doctrine of repentance. And, as both these clips show, Osteen’s default response to any theologically challenging question is essentially, “Well, whatever the Bible says about this, the important thing for everyone to know is that I’m nice.” So is it bad for one Osteen to tell Christians God wants them to be more concerned with their own happiness than His glory? Absolutely. But this pales in comparison to the other Osteen telling Christians they should be more concerned with mimicking Joel’s unflappable positivity than with knowing what the Word of God actually says.

In their sermons and books, both Joel and Victoria Osteen give full-throated endorsement to the prosperity gospel, a theology which states that those enduring hardships, poverty, and sickness have only their lack of faith and confidence to blame for their suffering. There are, of course, some enormous theological problems with this Christianized version of “The Secret,” where you obtain God’s blessings by speaking them into existence. The first is that it has no basis in the Scriptures and conveniently ignores all of the words that Jesus speaks about the question of suffering, the cost of discipleship, and the blessedness of persecution. The second is that it offers nothing but despair to those who are faithfully enduring the crosses Christ has given them to bear. And the third is that such a doctrine simply doesn’t square with the lives of those who were the first to tell us about God’s blessings in Christ (self-promotion alert).

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