NEW YORK (dpa) – Britt Jones prayed three times a day, every day. And the words he uttered were always the same: “Dear God, please let me be able to afford a house of my own.”
It only took a few weeks and seemingly his prayers were answered. Jones’ videotechnology firm in Colorado Springs promoted the eager supplicant to head of department and he was able to take out a loan for a new home.
Jones had simply taken the advice of a slim volume on how ardent praying to the Christian God can make those dreams of a luxury villa, a new Mercedes-Benz sportscar or a Rolex wristwatch all come true.
The book has become a sensational bestseller in the United States and Canada, and after a initial print run of 30,000 the “Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life” has since sold 4.3 million copies.
This booklet the size of a palmtop computer has been described as the “Bible of the Me generation” and has been setting publishing records for weeks on ends. It occupies the number one slot on the New York Times’s self-help manual bestseller list and tops the non- fiction charts of Publishers Weekly.
Author Brue Wilkinson, now several million dollars better off, sees the success of his modern-day prayer book as underscoring the authenticity of the guidelines it contains.
It was 30 years ago that Wilkinson first heard of Jabez, a little known Bible figure. In the Old Testament, Jabez is only mentioned in passing but the Christian God smiled on her.
In the first chronicles 4:9-10 the prayer itself goes: “Oh, that you would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.”
Wilkinson interprets the prayer as a kind of carte blanche for self-aggrandizement and a person’s right to happiness and affluence as enshrined in the American constitution. With this message in his knapsack he tramped through the countryside as a wandering preacher. People laughed and sniggered at first but the audiences grew larger. Now Wilkinson easily fills venues holding thousands of people.
Wilkinson did not find it easy to find a publisher for his 270- page Jabez manuscript but after some more divine inspiration, he chopped out large chunks of theology and ended up with 90 pages of easily digestible nuggets. That was when Multnomah Publishers of Sisters, Oregon stepped in after company president Don Jacobson realized he was onto a good thing.
“We’ve gotten so used to fast food, we need things in smaller bites,” said Jacobson.
Yet even in a society where few things enlarge a person’s standing more than the ability to accrue money Wilkinson’s attempt to make the Christian God seem like Father Christmas is controversial.
Karen Bach, United and Presbyterian chaplain at the University of Toronto said of the book. “It is consistent with the Me generation and the individualism that grown up in North America. It is not about the welfare of the world, its is about the welfare of myself.”
Wilkinson counters that he is not trying to revive the gospel fervour of the 1950s and 1960s when believers thought nothing of asking for a red Cadillac in return for regular churchgoing.
“When I talk to business owners or managers, I tell them that if their business is honouring the public and they’re treating their employees well, it’s right for God to bless their business.”
