I was accepted to a four-year university in Oklahoma recently. They have a convergence journalism degree, and I’ve been told I should be able to get in. I’m excited, but I’m afraid. It’s not the move or the pressure or the impending dress code that’s getting to me. It’s the school itself.
It’s Oral Roberts University.
If you don’t know, ORU is a private conservative Christian university. Its founder Oral Roberts was one of the first televangelists. He wrote dozens of books including The Miracle of Seed Faith, which is where I start to get scared.
Seed faith is the idea that if you give to God he has no choice but to give you more than you gave him. Aside from being based on slightly out-of-context scriptures and the idea that God is formulaic and predictable, what really bothers me about seed faith is how often people use it to focus on money. Give money to God and he’ll give more money back to you. Seed faith became the basis for “prosperity gospel,” or giving money to the church so you can have material wealth. That application simply is not biblical.
There are so many people who expect God to “fix things” for them that a concept like seed faith could make a person think they’ve found a holy way to quick riches. Others could think they could buy their way to material blessings like a new car, a bigger house or, oddly enough, lower debt. The potential misuses of this theology are too numerous to count.
It’s entirely possible, though, that seed faith won’t be emphasized as much as I fear. The university recently replaced their president of 14 years, Richard Roberts, because of various scandals related to misusing university funds to supplement his family’s rich lifestyle while the school retained $55 million in debt. The school has since made changes to their financial accountability and governing style.
Could one of these changes be a lower emphasis on seed theology? I don’t know. When I search the school’s website for references to seed faith, the newest one I can find is 2008. On the other hand, the theology is one of its founder’s legacies. How could they completely leave it behind?
I guess I’ll find out soon enough.