Jesus may buy you a double-wide, but don't count on it. He's more likely to admonish you to give your double-wide to someone in greater need than you are.
That's part of the message author Karen Spears Zacharias is trying to remind believers of in her new book, Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide ('Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV), a collection of essays and personality profiles presented in the author's uniquely down-home style.
She tells stories of people giving their time, sweat, blood and tears to the needy, downtrodden, sick, and homeless – people who are not profiting by their allegiance to the Christian calling, thus putting the lie to the current version of the Gospel of Greed.
The Secret is in the Hearts of Believers
In a recent conversation with Suite101, Zacharias said that her agent sold the new book to a publisher based on the title alone. He called to tell her he had sold the book, and she said, "but I haven't written it yet!" Luckily, she knew just what the book would focus on: the real life stories of believers.
Some of the people she profiles are successful business people. Some are struggling or nearly homeless. Some work with the homeless. The point of their stories is that Jesus blesses them in ways that have nothing to do with money. Their wealth is laid up in heaven, not the material result of wish fulfillment and greed that they could attribute to following the advice of books like The Secret.
“Somewhere along the line we’ve grown confused,” Zacharias writes. “The idea that God’s will must involve following one’s dreams contradicts scripture and disrespects the millions of impoverished Christians around the world who labor every day to provide for their families.”
Plain-speaking Author with a Clear Message
Zacharias is a former newspaper journalist, a wife and mother, the daughter of a soldier who died in action in Vietnam. Her commentaries have appeared in the New York Times and Newsweek, and on National Public Radio. Her writing is thoughtful, well researched, humorous, touching, and highly readable.
Read about the Entrepreneur, the Marine, the Redhead. Read about the "jubilee" in Mobile Bay (a time of year when the oxygen level in the water drops precipitously and fish surface by the thousands, where they are picked off my gigs and nets and buckets, and where Zacharias saw a metaphor for how one person's sacrifice is another's blessing).
Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide is a collection of essays about the people living and working and helping each other through this terrible downturn in the economy, and an indictment of those who are raking in the money by selling desperate souls on the false religion of prosperity.
Title: Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide ('Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV)
Publisher: Zondervan (March 1, 2010) – Hardcover, sugg. retail price $16.99
ISBN: 0310292506
Tony Simmons - Tony Simmons is a veteran journalist, having worked for The Tri-City Ledger, The Pensacola News-Journal, The Nautilog, and for the past 16 ...
