Blogging yesterday about the Heavenly Jerusalem led me to remember my misspent youth where I would listen to many religious broadcasters. One that I remember clearly was the Rev Ike. The cadence of his voice was almost intoxicating. The alliteration was memorable. Rev Ike had learned his trade well from Pentecostal colleges.
One line of his I will always remember:
I do not want no pie in the sky, I want my pie NOW, with ice cream on top.
I found it hard to disagree. I am sure that the bad grammar was his choice. Thus he would probably like a portion of what I said yesterday, with an emphasis on the here and now as manifestations of the eternal.
It even, to a degree, has biblical roots.
As the King James version tells us in Proverbs 23:7, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Sounds like our internal “self-talk” is important! But alas, this is an example of a doctrine based on obscure wording in the King James, that doesn’t really mean what people think it means. Here is the NIV:
6 Do not eat the food of a begrudging host,
do not crave his delicacies;
7 for he is the kind of person
who is always thinking about the cost.
“Eat and drink,” he says to you,
but his heart is not with you.
8 You will vomit up the little you have eaten
and will have wasted your compliments.
As you see, this passage really has nothing to do with positive thinking. (This is an example of the type of faulty Biblical interpretation used by prosperity preachers.) But there is another scripture that does relate.
Paul in Philippians 4 tells us:
8 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
It does seem to me that what we think about on the inside will manifest itself on the outside. As Jesus said in Mark 7:
20 He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. 21 For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, 22 adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
So while having a positive outlook is a good thing, it is not a magic wand that you can use to make yourself wealthy. (This concept is really a type of phony magic—“sympathetic magic,” as it is called.) Nor will sending someone like "Ike" money cause wealth to magically rub off on you. Nor is your gift to a ministry a "seed of faith" that will yield a harvest that will miraculously fill your wallet.
I too do not want pie in the sky, I want my pie now with ice cream on top. The pie I want is not a gold plated Rolls Royce, or 15 other Rolls Royce's like the Rev Ike. The pie a-la-mode I want is this:
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
Here is the Rev Ike himself: