Paula White

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In late August of 2007, Paula White and Randy White announced to their church congregation (Without Walls International Church) that they were seeking a divorce. This would be the second divorce for each of the Whites. The uproar concerning this scandal has shown a surprising lack of uproariousness or scandalousness.

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Neoredemptive Reflections

The death of a Christian marriage is, from a gospel perspective, an utter catastrophe -- it is a picture of Christ and His Church parting ways, which is anathema. For it to happen between Christians in a position of not only local leadership but national attention makes it all the more heartbreaking -- not so much for the divorcees (a private and anonymous divorce is, for a healthy person with a Biblical perspective on marriage anyway, already completely devastating) as for the thousands of people who will be exposed to this fractured portrait.

In this case, we cannot help but be even more concerned for all of those viewers as they watch the public face of this particular divorce, which demonstrates none of the marks of a Christian failure -- confession, repentance, transparency, and a cross-centered redemption -- and instead demonstrates a blasé attitude toward Scriptural proclamations concerning divorce, restrictions on church eldership, and a preference for (in Paula White's words) "inner fortitude" to "face" becoming a double-divorcee.

It should not go unnoticed that the Whites' very public treatment of their divorce bears an eerie resemblance to a peculiar liturgical innovation, the "divorce ceremony", which has gained traction in the Episcopal church and is starting to appear in the protestant mainline. We are very deeply troubled that a church would publicly abdicate its Christ-given responsibility to say "don't do that!" and would instead bend over and bless whatever instrument of sin and death the zeitgeist has most recently proclaimed to be "better" than the Biblical alternative. Divorce is an occasion for serious reflection and deep penitence; the church's duty is to call to account any divorcees who fail to recognize it as such, a church leader's duty is to call a church to account when it fails to recognize it as such, and a divorcee should chastise any church leader who fails to recognize it as such, but in an alarming alignment with the behavior of the most liberalized and Christ-free congregations, none of these seem to be happening at Without Walls.

There are scripturally valid (although not preferable) grounds for divorce, and if nothing else, pastoral wisdom would suggest this as a good time for the leadership of Without Walls to talk about those. This has been completely absent from the public face of the Whites' ministries; if anything, there is an appearance of tacet defiance of the biblical teachings on this matter.

Perhaps most troubling of all, the only arguably legitimate causes for a divorce of two Christians are instances of sin against one another (adultery/porneia, abuse, neglect); the appropriate Christian response to these is not to sweep them under the carpet and put on a happy face, but rather to insist upon appropriate public repentance and restoration or, failing that, church discipline. Since there is no public evidence of repentance or a pursuit of reconciliation, either the Whites need to be disciplined and called to account by the church for their sins against one another, or they need to be disciplined and called to account by the church for their sin of divorcing in defiance of the rule of Scripture. Failing those options, it is incumbent upon them to publicly explain the grounds for their divorce and how their divorce fits within an appropriate Biblical pattern, but we are at a loss as to what such an explanation could be.

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