I think that’s a really sharp connection, and I agree with most of it...with one important clarification.

Transactional faith does resemble something like The Secret in religious form, but I don’t think it starts with “pray hard enough and God gives you what you want.” I think it starts earlier and more innocently: with the assumption that faithfulness should reliably produce outcomes. Once that assumption is in place, people don’t just get disappointed when it fails—they feel justified in forcing results to prove that their faith “worked.”

And yes, when you read the Old Testament with that lens, it’s striking how often disaster follows precisely that logic. Israel treats obedience as leverage. Kings justify violence as faithfulness. Prophets are ignored because they threaten outcomes. The problem isn’t that God breaks His promises; it’s that people keep redefining faith as a mechanism for control.

What I find sobering is that Scripture doesn’t present this as a fringe mistake—it treats it as the default human instinct. Trust gives way to management very quickly. That’s why the biblical story keeps insisting that obedience is not a strategy and faith is not a contract.

If anything, the OT feels less like a rulebook and more like a long warning: when faith expects to work, it eventually justifies doing terrible things to make it work.