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I was imporessed with this Youtube video of Joel Osteen. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwL1DThtxYg&feature=related He’s on Larry King, and a caller asks him why he sidestepped a previous question of whether a person must believe in Jesus Christ to be saved. Osteen made the comment that he can’t judge anyone — that only God knows the state of a person’s heart. He emphasized this a number of times. He also said that he just “preaches the truth as he understands it”. Which to me, is becoming the heart of my involvement in the LDS faith — recognizing that we all understand the truth differently, and that no one has absolute truth. That was implicit in Osteen’s answers, that he only preaches truth as he understands it, and that others may disagree. No claim to have absolute truth at all.
There’s another youtube video where King asks Osteen if he’d vote for Mitt Romney, and if he believed Mitt Romney was a Christian. Again, Osteen comes out with a great answer — that Romney says he believes Christ is his personal Savior, so who is he Osteen, to judge? Osteen said it’s not up to him to get into the nitty gritties of the meaning of Christian — again, that only God can judge. Osteen also said that if he felt like voting for Romney, the fact that he’s a Mormon wouldn’t prevent him from doing so.
I won’t post the video because some anti-Mormon has splashed anti-Mormon slogans across the front of the video.
More than once I’ve liked his preaching and his message. Some criticize him for being non-doctrinal, but in the world of Christianity, I find him refreshing in how he seems to accept Mormons even though there’s little hope they will join his Church. He ends his talks by encouraging people to get involved in a Bible-based Church. I wonder what he thinks about our LDS religion — would it qualify as a Bible-based Church? To me it does.
What do you think of Joel Osteen?
I believe Joel Osteen is a good man. I personally find that his teachings fail to ascend from the mundane deceptiveness of the Prosperity Gospel to the heights of the message of Jesus. But whose modern teachings besides maybe Eckhart Tolle’s (or Dieter Uchtdorff’s?) 
Tom Haws wrote:I believe Joel Osteen is a good man. I personally find that his teachings fail to ascend from the mundane deceptiveness of the Prosperity Gospel to the heights of the message of Jesus. But whose modern teachings besides maybe Eckhart Tolle’s (or Dieter Uchtdorff’s?)
I agree that he seems to, at times, leave people with a sense of false hope. Not everyone will be healthy, wealthy and successful simply because they believe, as he often implies. Look at Job. He lost everything…and he was a righteous man.
However, Osteen does make a lot of other good points about how to approach life and so, like Mormonism, encourages one to avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater. And he also is NOT out to posture against the Mormons or persecute us. He comes across as sincere about his inability to judge other people.
It makes me personally feel that I’m welcome and included in his view of Christianity — something I don’t feel in relationship to any other religion I’ve experienced…..
I think he preaches the non-exaltative, good-feel Gospel really well, and I don’t mean that as a criticism. He’s very good at what he does. I also have problems with teaching the Prosperity Gospel as applicable to every individual in all circumstances – and I’m not sure how much he focuses on serving others and “sharing the wealth”. I just don’t listen enough to know.
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