I honestly wish the Bill Cosby blurb wasn’t added at the end, as my intention is not to mock the Osteen’s or to bash on them personally. This clip was the only one available as the original clip (that didn’t have Cosby) had been removed from Facebook.

There is a fine line between bashing a famous Christian person and doing needed honest critiquing of damaging and dangerous doctrine. I normally don’t do posts like these and my intent is not to bash, but I feel like what Victoria Osteen said in the video is so blatantly unbiblical, and I think shines a light on the overall message of the Osteen’s ministry, that something clear needed to be said about it for the sake of the true gospel.

God is meant to be at the center, the hub, and everything else in our lives revolves around him. Everything we do is meant to obey him, give him glory and make him happy.

The opposite message of this is to put ourselves in the center of the bike tire. We become the hub and God just becomes one of the spokes. He becomes one of the many variables in our lives revolving around us, meant to make us happy.

Victoria Osteen’s statement that God takes pleasure when we’re happy and that (our happiness is) the thing that gives him the greatest joy is incredibly manipulative and misleading. First of all, you won’t find this anywhere in Scripture, which is a huge problem in and of itself. In fact, you’ll find the opposite in Isaiah 55:6-9, which tells us God’s thoughts and his ways are completely different from ours.

But worse than this, it turns the entire message of the Bible around and is going to mislead tons of people. Think about it: if what gives God the greatest joy is my happiness, what types of things are then going to make him happy?

Well, I’m quite happy when I sin. I’m married with two children but there are many days I’d be very happy if I were single. If I had no responsibilities. If I could flirt with and have sex with whomever I want. Or if I could take a peak at porn when I needed a little release from life. These things would make me quite happy–it’s why people do them. Pursuing power, self-glory and all the material possessions I want would also make me quite happy.

In fact, personal happiness is the basis for pretty much every sin ever committed.

Now back to Victoria Osteen’s teaching: God wants you to be happy…

Pause on that for a moment.

And yes I know, she is talking about “doing good.” But doing good according to whom? Isaiah 55:6-9 tells us that my idea of “good” and God’s idea of “good” are going to look very different.