LITMIR.BIZ

       Paula White Today

      (Boosting God’s self-esteem) 5:30 a.m.

      My guest Jay McDivitt is a Lutheran pastor in Denver, Colorado. After years of bouncing around Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, UCC, and Unitarian-Universalist communities, he now finds himself as a proud Lutheran, somewhere between a generous orthodoxy and a boundaried progressivism. He also loves to play poker, cook with garlic, and drink cheap wine with his lovely spouse.

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      My guest Ann E. Williams grew up in Wisconsin, where she spent every Sunday in the Presbyterian Church USA. Her undergraduate experience at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, converted her to the ELCA and a deep love of liturgy. A graduate of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, Ann now spends her time as the ecumenical minister at a Jesuit university and also enjoys studying narrative theories of counseling.

      (All guest biographies were written by the guest in question.)

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      Much to my delight, Paula White is next. The last time I watched her show, her talk was entitled, “Why God Wants You Wealthy.” White is a mega-church “pastor” along with her (soon to be second ex-) husband “Bishop” Randy White.

      After years of seminary, I find myself getting a tad indignant about people taking the title “pastor” much less “bishop” with all the consideration and credentialing one might use choosing a chat room screen name.

      With the litany of multi-million-dollar corporate jets and mansions owned by the likes of White and Creflo Dollar, the Crouches (TBN founders), and many other prosperity preachers, I’m beginning to become convinced that the income earned by preachers on TBN is inversely proportional to the amount of theological education completed. Perhaps something in the range of the following: for every year of college and graduate education earned past an associate’s degree from a correspondence course one can expect to earn from $10,000 to $50,000 less a year.

      My good friends Jay and Annie have groggily emerged from the basement. Between the three of us we have twelve years of postgraduate theological training and the combined yearly income of far less than $100,000 (not quite proving my point, but coming pretty close to it). I love these two for many things, not the least of which is the fact that they agreed to watch TBN at 5:30 a.m. and that after a particularly late clergy poker game last night.

      Paula Today is nothing more than Paula White talking into the camera, and let me tell you, this girl can talk. She’s a gifted orator, speaking into the camera in such a relaxed, charming, confident manner that I find myself unable to look away. She’s absolutely mesmerizing — perfectly styled dyed-blond hair, fake French manicured nails, capped teeth, and enough botox in her face to taint the food supply of a small farm town. She’s what fancy French postmodernist Baudrillard would call a simulacrum of a woman (an imitation for which there is no actual original). She’s excited this morning to be bringing us a message on an “attitude of gratitude.” As she talks I realize that she gestures not with her hands so much as with her fingernails. It’s as if with every movement she is underscoring not only the meaning of her words but also the supremacy of her manicure. Here’s her argument:

      1. I desire God’s presence (Psalm 27).

      2. God sets up clearly how to approach him (Psalm 100:5).

      3. We must “do it God’s way.”

      This “order” that she claims God has given us to enter into God’s presence is that we must give a “thanks offering, an offering for fellowship or communion with God.” The “thanks offering” thing is added onto the text in the Amplified Bible, which is, much like the name implies, a version of the Bible where the translators decided to add a little “umph,” and so, like the Ted Turners of biblical publishing, have “colorized” the classic. So the psalm she’s using says, “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise,” but Paula then takes the “thank offering” addition of the Amplified version, and she runs with it — all the way to the bank.

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      Paula offers this thought, “When you worship you are prostrating yourself before God, and you are submitting your sense of superiority to God.” This is interesting to me. I have to give it to the evangelicals here; they seem to focus on worshiping God more than the dry liturgical types I run with. We tend to mistakenly conflate worship and liturgical precision, as though worshiping God is possible only when all the magical elements of confession, absolution, creed, Lord’s Prayer, and the words of institution are done correctly and in the appropriate order. What is our doctrine of worship really?

      Back to Paula: She’s claiming that to be satisfied, fulfilled, peaceful, and joyful, “You have to do it God’s way. God never asks that you understand him, just that you obey him.” And this is going to be where White begins to make me crazy. I’m wondering: How do we determine what “God asks” of us? One biblical account says that all that God requires is to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. What does it mean to “obey” God? Are we, like the Hebrew people, to abide by the law of Moses and the Deuteronomic code? Really, Paula? I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that Paula would say that following the “rules” in the Bible is the same thing as obeying God. The problem with that line of reasoning is that the Bible is a huge book (really more like a library than a single book), and there are hundreds of rules or guidelines. Some rules we think of as God’s will and others we ignore.

      This is admittedly an easy target, but here are a few ways in which I am certain that Paula does not “obey God”:

      ♦ Her outfit is made of more than one fabric (Lev. 19:19).

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