Pastor David Platt, author of the new book “How to Read the Bible,” recently reflected on a poverty-theology debate at a 2011 Elephant Room event. YouTuber Ruslan asked Platt about some money-themed sound bytes and whether his views have morphed in the past 14 years.
Platt is pastor of McLean Bible Church in Washington, D.C., and founder of the mission organization Radical. When he was “super green,” he participated in an Elephant Room dialogue with megachurch pastors including James MacDonald and Mark Driscoll.
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During a conversation about money and sacrifice, Driscoll told Platt, “You are in the process of getting typecast as the poverty-theology, evangelical-guilt financial guy.” Platt had said that wealth and money, while “morally neutral,” are “extremely dangerous in the hands of sinful men and women…Money is dangerous and damning.”
David Platt Gave a ‘Needed Corrective’ to Materialism
In that 2011 Elephant Room chat, the pastors discussed extremes, noting that some church leaders were calling for higher salaries while others were teaching a form of asceticism. “A lot of people are attaching a spiritual value to poverty,” MacDonald said, “and it’s not some guy who’s been working for 30 years who’s divesting himself of everything at a responsible period in his life.”
“It’s kids in their 20s sitting in apartments playing video games all day,” he said, “reading John Piper and calling poverty spiritual.”
In another clip, Driscoll said prosperity theology teaches that “if you love Jesus, you’ll have rims on your [tire] rims, and everything will go well for you,” while poverty theology teaches that “if you really love the gospel, you’re going to sleep in a tent and send all your money to third-world nations, where people are suffering and hurting.”
This week Platt told Ruslan, “I didn’t realize what I was getting into, and so it was all of a sudden…‘Whoa, what happening here?’” The pastor was just trying to give “a needed corrective” for our “materialistic culture,” he added.
The Elephant Room format, “while entertaining,” wasn’t the most helpful or “productive,” Platt said. Plus, though he loves deep conversations, that was the first time he had interacted “relationally” with some of those leaders.
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Platt said he hopes he has “grown in maturity in all kinds of ways” since 2011, but he backed up his theology from the long-age conversation. “There’s a way to care for your family, love the poor, steward resources well to the glory of God, and enjoy the good gifts he gives,” he told Ruslan. “There’s a way to be God-glorifying with ambition, there’s a way to be self-indulgent with ambition. And possessions play into really both those.”
