This was meant to go somewhere else, but…no such luck. So it’s here!

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Joel Osteen, one of America’s most famous pastors, is under fire. Recently, Osteen invited his wife Victoria to address his Lakewood Church congregation, resulting in the following remarks:

“I just want to encourage everyone of us to realize when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God – I mean, that’s one way to look at it – we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we’re happy…So I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?”

Since the brief monologue, the Osteens have been accused of all kinds of heresies plus blasphemy. Given the strength of the outcry, it’s hard not to feel sympathy for the pastor and his wife, whose controversial ‘prosperity gospel’ inspired ministry has been the source of Christian suspicion for sometime. The media is prone to misunderstand Christian messages – just take Pope Francis, for instance, who was accused of trying to spark a tenth crusade – which means normal Christian speech will periodically be misconstrued as shocking or contradictory. But in the case of the Osteens, this slip-up is pretty much par for the course.

In fact, though the Osteens and Pope Francis share the media spotlight when it comes to popular Christian messaging with mass appeal, Victoria Osteen’s remarks demonstrate the sharp divide between the two brands of ministry. For the Osteens, Christian faith is about individual successes and private, personal solutions to life’s problems – all with God’s blessing, of course:

“I believe God wants you to prosper in your health, in your family, in your relationships, in your business, and in your career. So I do … if that is the prosperity gospel, then I do believe that […] I always talk about God rewards obedience. When you follow His way, the Bible says that His blessings will chase you down and overtake you.”

At first glance the Osteen reading of the Gospel looks promising: all God wants is your personal happiness in whatever you apply yourself to, be it relationships or business or your career. If you obey God, Osteen suggests, then you’ll get the outcomes you want – be they promotions or raises. But that leaves open a disturbing alternative. If you don’t succeed – suppose you’re poor, you loose your job, or you’re chronically ill – does that mean your problems are linked to disobedience? And can they be repaired by reforming your personal behavior?

For the Osteens, it would seem so. Their focus is individualistic, meaning that the action of faith is played out on the private, personal level. In his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis addressed this brand of Christian thought:

“The Catholic faith of many peoples is nowadays being challenged by the proliferation of new religious movements, some of which tend to fundamentalism while others seem to propose a spirituality without God. This is, on the one hand, a human reaction to a materialistic, consumerist and individualistic society, but it is also a means of exploiting the weaknesses of people living in poverty and on the fringes of society, people who make ends meet amid great human suffering and are looking for immediate solutions to their needs.”

In other words, pop Christianity gets its traction by promising immediate, personal solutions to individual problems. Because the poorest people need help the most and have the fewest resources with which to seek it, messages like the Osteens’ are deeply appealing – but they may also leave vulnerable people empty-handed.

For Pope Francis, the action of faith is not only played out on the individual level, but also the community and global level. Thus, he writes “we can understand Jesus’ command to his disciples: ‘You yourselves give them something to eat!’ (Mk 6:37): it means working to eliminate the structural causes of poverty and to promote the integral development of the poor, as well as small daily acts of solidarity in meeting the real needs which we encounter.” Solving the problems that produce human suffering means, for Pope Francis, more than individual acts of worship and aid – though those are required. It means addressing the deeply rooted causes of poverty and unraveling them ourselves, as a community motivated by Jesus’ example and teaching. In some cases, answering structural causes takes much more than personal, private intervention, including political action.

While Osteen-style Christianity is about you, Pope Francis’ Christian message takes a much broader view: it addresses us. When it comes to addressing massive problems like poverty and inequality, it seems Pope Francis has the more promising approach. The only question is whether the people who need to hear him will, given the appeal of the alternatives.