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).
♦ She clearly cuts her hair (Lev. 19:27).
♦ While I can’t prove this one, it’s still worth mentioning on the merit of sheer weirdness: When (perhaps if) Paula goes camping, I hope that she designates a place outside of camp and then takes a small trowel with which she digs a hole to cover up her own shit, for this is to “obey
God” (Deut. 23:12).
Yes indeed, two can play at this game, my prooftexting sister.
She quickly goes on to add that “if you want God’s results, God says, ‘This is the way you approach me,’ this is the portal into my gates, first by a thanksgiving offering, to say, ‘God I value you and this sacrifice is validation of your worthiness.’ “
“Wow,” Jay offers, “God is so needy. I’ve had girlfriends like that.”
This idea of God is that God is a wealthy king with low self-esteem who arbitrarily makes up rules that have to be followed in order for his impoverished subjects to get anything out of him. Most of these rules involve the subjects acting sycophantically in order to boost God’s self-worth. Oh, and this particular “rule” is found in one line of a psalm, so thank goodness we have the scholarly work of Paula White to help uncover this little mystery for us.
All of a sudden I realize that it’s way too early in the morning to be feeling quite so cynical, and what if I use my cynicism all up and by hour ten or eleven then find myself agreeing with stuff that would normally make me want to convert to something less crazy, like, say, Branch Davidianism. I must pace myself.
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My efforts to back off the criticism are thwarted by Paula’s next effort to back up her preaching. Paula uses a very effective tool for pastors and does a word study on “worship.” Digging into the Greek text to look for what we might be missing in the English translation — because, despite what we’d like to think, translation is always interpretation — can really enlighten our understanding of the text. Paula, however, does a word study on the English word “worship.” Jay and Annie have the funniest
looks of disbelief on their faces. All three of us had to pass graduate-level Greek in seminary so that we can do Greek word studies while preparing for sermons. And here Paula White, millionaire preacher — with all the authority in her voice you can possibly imagine — is doing a word study on the English translation of a Greek word. She has a slide that shows that the word “worship” comes from an old Anglo-Saxon compound word, weorth (meaning value or respect) and skype (meaning to shape or build something). So together they mean to build or shape worth, value, or respect.
Paula follows this with a little pastoral care story about folks who she has counseled over the years coming to her with their relationship woes, and her suggestion is that the way for these situations to be resolved is to pray that Johnny, or whoever, “fall in love with Jesus.” Then he will value that which God values. Johnny won’t violate you because when he falls in love with Jesus he will honor you. The logical extension of this argument is that if Johnny is “violating” you and you pray in faith that he falls in love with Jesus, and he does not fall in love with Jesus, then you did not have enough faith. Ergo, you are to blame for the continuing violation. I hold an entirely different belief: there is no magic formula for “activating” God in our lives. God is a God for us, so we don’t have to do that for ourselves. Maybe this sense of dignity that comes from being a created and redeemed child of God is enough to get the hell out of the relationship if Johnny is unable to reflect that love for you.
What’s so disturbing is that TV preachers can dispense these magic formulas for health and wealth, tell people this is “God’s way,” and yet never be interrupted by the raised hand of someone who says, “I do all of the things you’re saying but I’m still depressed” —or poor, or not speaking to my sister, or feeling as though God has abandoned me. This medium allows Paula White and her fellows, to some extent, to ignore the real, lived, complicated experience of people.
The irony of Paula telling this story about counseling folks in problematic relationships while in the midst of a divorce from “Bishop” Randy White is not at all lost on us.
Paula: “We’ll be right back and I’ll teach you how to come into the presence of God.”
That’ll be awesome, but I think I’ll need some more coffee.
Advertisement:Paula’s “Life by Design” at the Manhattan Center in New York. Get your tickets now.
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Despite the fact that Paula already defined the English word “worship,” she goes for round two. “The other part of the compound word wearth and skype is ‘ship,’ and it literally means that when we worship God we are literally becoming ships or vessels submersed in his infinite worth and value.”
A few things here. One, I’m not sure the word “literally” means what she thinks it means because, Paula honey, no matter how much Pentecostal you sprinkled on your breakfast cereal this morning, I’m still sure you don’t really
