I was accepted to a four-year university in Oklahoma recently.\u00a0 They have a convergence journalism degree, and I\u2019ve been told I should be able to get in.\u00a0 I\u2019m excited, but I\u2019m afraid.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the move or the pressure or the impending dress code that\u2019s getting to me.\u00a0 It\u2019s the school itself.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Oral Roberts University<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t know, ORU is a private conservative Christian university.\u00a0 Its founder Oral Roberts was one of the first televangelists.\u00a0 He wrote dozens of books including The Miracle of Seed Faith, <\/em>which is where I start to get scared.<\/p>\n Seed faith is the idea that if you give to God he has no choice but to give you more than you gave him.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Give money<\/em> to God and he\u2019ll give more money<\/em> back to you.\u00a0 Seed faith became the basis for \u201cprosperity gospel,\u201d or giving money to the church so you can have material wealth.\u00a0 That application simply is not biblical.<\/p>\n There are so many people who expect God to \u201cfix things\u201d for them that a concept like seed faith could make a person think they\u2019ve found a holy way to quick riches.\u00a0 Others could think they could buy their way to material blessings like a new car, a bigger house or, oddly enough, lower debt.\u00a0 The potential misuses of this theology are too numerous to count.<\/p>\n It\u2019s entirely possible, though, that seed faith won\u2019t be emphasized as much as I fear.\u00a0 The university recently replaced their president of 14 years, Richard Roberts<\/a>, because of various scandals<\/a> related to misusing university funds<\/a> to supplement his family\u2019s rich lifestyle while the school retained $55 million in debt.\u00a0 The school has since made changes to their financial accountability and governing style.<\/p>\n Could one of these changes be a lower emphasis on seed theology?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 When I search the school\u2019s website for references to seed faith, the newest one I can find is 2008.\u00a0 On the other hand, the theology is one of its founder\u2019s legacies.\u00a0 How could they completely leave it behind?<\/p>\n I guess I\u2019ll find out soon enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was accepted to a four-year university in Oklahoma recently.\u00a0 They have a convergence journalism degree, and I\u2019ve been told I should be able to get in.\u00a0 I\u2019m excited, but I\u2019m afraid.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the move or the pressure or the impending dress code that\u2019s getting to me.\u00a0 It\u2019s the school itself. It\u2019s Oral Roberts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1185,1976,1212,1213,1215,1214,1016],"class_list":["post-4971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-christian","tag-meagan-ewton","tag-oral-roberts-university","tag-oru","tag-prosperity-gospel","tag-seed-faith","tag-university"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1ib","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4971"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15538,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4971\/revisions\/15538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}