Читать книгу Salvation on the Small Screen? - Nadia Bolz-Weber - Страница 9

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).

♦ 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 believe we literally turn into seafaring vessels. Two, I can’t resist the temptation to look up this compound word in the online etymological dictionary. “Ship” is actually “the state or condition of being” and has nothing nautical about its origin. It is a synonym of skype and is not “another part of the compound word.”

Her point, I believe, is that “darkness cannot exist in light” and that when we worship, the things that are dark scatter like cockroaches when we flip on the light of worship.

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Paula begins to tell a story of how she struggled with eating disorders. While playing a Bible trivia game as a “young believer,” she fell on the kitchen floor worshiping God. (Paula, if you don’t know the answer, just pass; you don’t have to get all dramatic.) She claims that some of her bondage was lifted, but that she still had some left because “sanctification is a progressive process; you go from glory to glory to glory.”

Matthew: “And by progressive, I don’t think she means Jim Wallis.”

I know that Paul in 2 Corinthians speaks about us reflecting the glory of God, which is beautiful but I think does not change the fact that we are sinners. What I have no idea about is what these people mean on a functional level when they say we go “from glory to glory to glory.” I think I need an English-to-Evangelical dictionary. But I do know how I feel about progressive sanctification, namely, that it’s hooey. And here’s why: I believe, and my Lutheran tradition teaches, that we are all (watch me get all fancy on the Latin here) simul iustus et peccator — simultaneously saint and sinner. Back to my own sinfulness, which at this moment is taking the form of pointing out how bizarre our little Paula White is.

How does Paula wrap this message of how to come into the presence of God? By saying this: “Won’t you have an attitude of gratitude and open up the spiritual possibilities by coming into the presence of God through entering in his gates with thanksgiving with a thanks offering, a peace offering, which says, ‘God I’m bringing a sacrifice, I bring something of value to me [screen has an address and phone number with “honor God with a special thanksgiving offering”] in exchange for what is truly valuable…your presence.’ Get up and call that toll free number right now or go to the website or PO box, but you have to do it God’s way, enter his gates, his passage to the secret place of bringing God’s presence into your life. Worship him with an offering saying thank you for what you have done when you call the toll free number and you sow your seed of sacrifice this thanksgiving season with an attitude of gratitude. I believe God has great things for you.”

I just watched what could only be described as a preach-a-mercial. It’s so similar to the feeling I get when I’m flipping through cable channels and see what seems innocently enough like a talk show or an exercise program, only to feel the sting of betrayal as the 1-800 number hits the screen. What bothers me the most is this: her insistence that “you have to do it God’s way.” That’s a very insidious thing to say because the implication is that Paula White has some way of knowing what “God’s way” is and that her teaching equals “ God’s way.” Therefore not to follow what Paula says is equal to disobeying God.

I am also disturbed by the fact that we mainline progressive Protestants need to have a deeper focus on what worship means. Not that we have to adopt Paula’s idea that worship is when we tell God how great God is while we’re the middle of God’s own furnace, like some “this hurts me more than it hurts you,” or “it’s for your own good” abusive logic. And worship certainly doesn’t have to mean listening to “Jesus Is My Boyfriend” praise music in you car. But how can our vocations as the baptized be lived out in the world as a conscious act of worship? For doxological living is in the reality of us being fully creature and God Creator. God is then not something we tack on to our lives but is the source of life itself in whom we move and live and have our being.