Steven Furtick Thinks You Can Control The Rain

As I’ve been mucking out my life–doing all the laundry, washing piles of dishes by hand, searching around in boxes for a lost math book, for pencils and hope–I’ve had my headphones plugged in pretty consistently with nary a break to speak to any other person. Political Podcasting, Bleak House, more awesome Bertie from Andrew McCall Smith, and, accidentally, some Steven Furtick aptly fisked by Chris Rosebrough. I could stop and link them all but I’m not going to because none of you are the Facebook Prince. Google, like God, does exist.

It’s really discouraging to go from witty interesting political commentary, through the gentle delights of perfectly written books, and somehow wind up with the loud bombast of a mega church person, gimmicking his way through the bible and reality, belittling other kinds of Christians and thinkers. Discouraging, but also interesting in a comparative sort of way. The quiet tones of a longer thought spoken out loud, so that you have to attend with your mind, so that you have to keep various pieces of particular information or characters in your mind as the narrative shifts and moves–contrast that against someone who is essentially trying to block out the rationality of the text itself.

So Mr. Furtick (Pastor seems kind of a mile too far this morning) is hosting some sort of revival. Mr. Rosebrough is billing it as the Heresy Olympics, a cesspool of every bad thing. They should have had it in Brazil but I guess they’re not. Every night someone else is going to stand up and just say whatever. As long as more people will give money it probably doesn’t matter. Except that the text Mr. Furtick decided to fix upon is one of my favorite in the whole bible, both for what it says about God, and also for its beauty and cadence in the English language. It’s so lingering and rhythmic that the children and I tried to memorize it in the King James last year, to rather mediocre results.

Funnily enough, Mr. Furtick picked up the rhythm element of the text and fashioned it into the hinging point of his whole whatchamacallit, sermon or whatever. He tried to create some sort of rap. He would say one word and the drummer would smack on a drum and then he would say another word and the drummer would smack again. I found just even listening to this display in the privacy of my own bedroom to be really embarrassing. I can’t imagine sitting in a room full of other people being screamed at about my life and also having to endure a faux rap. I would have to creep out and pretend to go to the loo and never come back.

Even more funny not funny was how Mr. Furtick used the text to say exactly the opposite of what the text was saying. “As rain and snow fall from the heavens and return not again but water the earth,” says God, (that’s not the version Mr. Furtick had on him but that’s what embedded itself in the recesses of my mind), to which Mr. Furtick, by way of mucking it up, says, you need to be ready to receive something or other blessing, because God wants to water you with his blessing but he can’t if you’re not ready to receive it. Actually, that’s not exactly what he said. But if he’s not going to be careful to understand God, I don’t see why I should be careful to quote him. I am right in essentials. He took an unequivocal action of God, that is not tied to nor dependent on human action or will, and guilted the entire room into thinking they had to do something in order for God’s action to have any impact on them.

Rain and snow? They fall. Onto the ground. And they water the earth. That’s like God’s Word. You can’t keep it from falling or keep it from having the result it’s going to have, just like rain and snow. That’s the point. You can’t control it. Like weather.

Oh no no, says Mr. Furtick. Not only can you but you better. You better. If you don’t want to be stuck in your dumb life, you better control something as uncontrollable as the rain.

And really, this is probably why we have to have Trump, and why we can’t have nice things. And now I’m going to go cleanse the palate with some more Bleak House.