Christine Caine Appears to Be Harvesting What Joel Osteen Planted

Recently Christian motivational author Christine Caine settled a lawsuit with Christian author Carey Scott over material taken from Scott’s book and used in Caine’s book Unashamed. Caine has remained silent in the face of multiple requests for an explanation or apology regarding the plagiarism of Scott’s book. After I wrote about the situation and asked for a comment, she recently blocked me on Twitter.

Now it appears that Caine has harvested from another author. Earlier this evening I saw a tweet mentioning Caine with a quote that looked familiar to me. Here is the tweet:

This quote was claimed by Caine in 2015 on Twitter.

Caine also used this quote on her Facebook page in 2016.

This year, Caine’s publisher Zondervan produced a book of devotionals where they credited Caine for the quote in a chapter titled, “Buried or Planted?”

Osteen Was Planting in 2009

In 2009, Joel Osteen preached this quote in seed form.

 It’s easy to feel like we’ve been buried, but what’s interesting is the only difference between being buried and being planted is the expectancy of what’s going to happen next.

When you put a seed in the ground you don’t say, “I’m burying this seed,” you say, “I am planting this seed,” because you know it’s coming back.

We all face difficulties but you have the seed of almighty God on the inside. He breathed His life into you. When you go through disappointments, you’re in tough times… you might feel like you’d been buried, but the fact is, you’ve simply been planted.

Then in a 2011, he pruned the verbiage in his book, It’s Your Time.

When you go through disappointments and you’re in tough times, you may feel like you’ve been buried, but the fact is, you’ve simply been planted. That means you’re coming back!

Coincidence?

Now that Caine has blocked me and apparently isn’t going to respond to requests, I doubt I will find out from her if this is an amazing coincidence. The quotes are quite similar and it doesn’t seem right for Caine to get credit for reframing being buried as being planted. Perhaps Osteen got it from someone else, but it looks like he harvested that quote before Caine.

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Image: Warren Throckmorton

19 thoughts on “Christine Caine Appears to Be Harvesting What Joel Osteen Planted”

  1. I know I’m late to this conversation, but just want to share the earliest reference I can find of using the idea of planted, not buried in this context. On a the website selfgrowth.com, a 2007 article by Johnny Morney credits T.D. Jakes with the idea:

    ‘My pastor and spiritual father Bishop T.D. Jakes spoke about how some people react after you have temporally fallen from grace. He said “ people walk on you and step on you because they don’t think you are not coming back, they see you as buried and not planted.” But to paraphrase my great friend and mentor Les Brown “don’t let other peoples opinion of you become your realty.” ‘

  2. I’ll see your being blocked by Caine on Twitter and raise you with me being blocked by Russell Moore on Facebook…lol.

  3. Who cares about the 8th commandment when there is the opportunity to make some Mammon off of sheep? There is a certain narcissism involved about wanting to take credit for the work of others.

    1. Maybe because the standard Christian person doesn’t want to waste their time and energy interacting with a person whose motivation appears to be to “out” them? You might garner a different response if you were to approach them privately (Mt. 18:15 style) and experess an earnest desire to discuss a thing that you believe to be a serious matter.

      1. She was approached many times privately but disregarded the little people. Christine Caine isn’t the standard Christian person. She is much better than the rest of us. No offense but she is probably much better than you since you have descended to this lowly comment box. Also, truly plagiarism isn’t a serious matter; it is just something that some lowly people believe to be a serious matter. Among those who don’t have energy and time to waste with human interaction, plagiarism isn’t a serious matter.

  4. It also shows up in a 2009 book called “Broken-But Not Destroyed” by S. Miriam Clifford (page 221) (vanity press published). The one comment on the book points out a different case of plagiarism in it. Almost all other cases use ‘planted’ and ‘buried’ as synonyms.

    https://books.google.com/books?id=D_6bqlua-oUC&pg=PA221&dq=%22been+buried%22+%22been+planted%22+jesus&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwip262T5ozeAhUEvFMKHfueCJA4ChDoAQhZMAk#v=onepage&q=%22been%20buried%22%20%22been%20planted%22%20jesus&f=false

  5. John 12:24
    Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

    1. The problem with that verse is…if the seed dies, it becomes part the soil. The seed has to viable even when it’s dormant if it’s going to germinate, grow and bare much fruit.

      So as a metaphor for the Resurrection, it’s not a good one. It shows how much the ancients didn’t know that we now know, or that Paul was an urban sort of man and not a man of the soil.

      Paul had an odd view of nature, though I don’t know how typical he was for an educated person of his time.

        1. Thank you for the correction.

          I was thinking of 1 Corinthians 15:36.

          But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies…

          So we have two dead seeds coming to life metaphor verses. Interesting.

    2. Maybe it’s more that they have never actually studied scripture as part of their life in Christ so everything they say and do is a copy of somebody else. I’ve met people like this. They are often remarkably successful in business but even more so in church because he rest of us are so shallow ourselves we simply assume it’s normal to echo somebody else’s words. It’s only when you get serious with Jesus that you start to be able to glean wisdom from scripture, the sort of wisdom that’s uncomfortable, insightful and real. Those sorts of people are usually the ones with small congregations and small groups of friends. Not mega international ministries.

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