I’ve never heard her voice. I’ve never read any of her books. But I bet I could pick her famous face out of a lineup. I think she needs to be in a lineup (and no, I didn’t privately email her to tell her so before expressing that opinion).
Joyce Meyer has sheep fleecing down not to an art, but to a brazen display of chutzpah, telling her followers—who certainly resemble those wooly-headed creatures by their willingness to not only sit back and take it but to give what she demands—to fork it over or they are in sin:
“Some of you need to sow a special seed this weekend,” Meyer told her Detroit audience. “Don’t be a $10 man all your life. Don’t even be a $100 man all your life. . . . You have to give sometimes until it hurts. It needs to cost you something.”
Sometimes, she’s more demanding.
“I don’t have to stand here and beg,” she told the crowd in Buffalo. “What God wants you to do here tonight is to pay for somebody else to watch my show.”
Meyer told her Detroit audience about those who are unhappy with the way she pleads for money.
“People say, ‘I don’t want to hear about the money, the money, the money, the money. I came to hear Joyce. I didn’t come to hear about the money,’” Meyer said. “Giving will change your life. When God gives you an increase, you give more.”
That actually makes people dig deeper into their pockets to fund her lavish lifestyle? I think they need to spend some time improving their intelligence quotients with some quick-thinking reaction tests. Here’s the plan: try shooting tranquilizers at these wayward sheep. Then drink a sugar-free mocha and try to beat your time. Then pretend each sheep is Joyce Meyer dashing off to a speaking engagement after one of her expensive visits to the hairdresser (remember, we are only talking about tranquilizing her, nothing lethal, and from the description of her motor mouth, she could use some calming down).
If you get really good at the sheep dash game, then you are ready to graduate to the next step. Remember, while fleecing the sheep is unethical, being a sheep farmer is “quite ethical.” A “reformed” vegetarian says so, so it must be so, heh, heh:
Sheep farming is, by its nature, quite ethical. They tend to be free range as that’s the cheapest way to raise them. They just roam over the fields. The land must be well drained, but it’s not like you have to soak the soil with chemicals to make grass grow. Sheep have a pretty organic life.
Lots to mull over while you munch on your organic lamb chops: hanging onto your pocketbook, flashy and greedy women preachers (or whether women should be preaching at all), how caffeine affects your response time, and improving your intelligence (more on both of those topics here and here).
I have a theory: those sheeple who are so easily fleeced are probably the same people who bought Zunes for Christmas, if they had any money left over after they quit procrastinating and ponied up for Ms. Meyer’s $1500 hotel stays. I think I will keep my credulity force field intact by drinking a double dose of my morning mocha tomorrow and downloading a sermon by my favorite preacher onto my iPod. This one about the sheep and the goats looks especially good.
If you get itchy donor fingers and just have to give some money to quell your doubts about your tendency to procrastinate, give to Persecution Project, which is linked at the top of the sidebar. The persecuted people in the Sudan could use your dollars more than the mouthy Ms. Meyer. And to give credit where credit’s due, every single link in this post (except the sermon link) was sent to me by Steve, sitting in companionable computer silence next to me, sending me messages via IM all evening. Isn’t he sweet?
