Do I think that God ordained the world so that everything would be in place for me to have that education? It seems a bit self-centered to imagine that.

“The blood of all these people that you have sucked [and on which] you have lived, is a cry to the Lord, it is a cry of justice."

Unfortunately, it can be hard to see God present in churches. Our eyes too quickly skip over the generous and quietly effective congregations in our midst. It's much easier to sneer, justifiably, at predatory preachers traveling on private jets and counting the money they've fleeced from misled donors. How will God protect us all from their deceits?

From a theological perspective the problem with the prosperity gospel is not so much that it assumes that one's actions have miraculous or "supernatural" repercussions, even actions related to monetary exchange. The problem is, rather, the way in which it inverts a more "orthodox" logic.