Does God love us because we are valuable to Him? According to NAR life coach Todd White, the answer is yes. “Todd wants you to think that God loves us because we are valuable to him,” writes Jeff Maples of Pulpit & Pen. “In a secular, self-loving man-centered society, this is a much more palatable version of God. ‘God loves me for me.’ This makes people less inclined to seek conformity to Christ since they believe they are already ‘valuable’ to God.” Maples addresses the ways in which Todd White is leading his followers down a very slippery slope. He writes:
One of the greatest dangers in our churches today is the narcissism that runs rampant among the vast majority of the seeker-friendly, emergent, and Word of Faith circles. This “the Bible is all about me” theology is prevalent among false teachers like Steven Furtick, Paula White, Joyce Meyer, and Joel Osteen, just to name a few. But the influence has crept in even in many sound churches. The temptation to take a passage of Scripture that is descriptive of a historical biblical event that points to Jesus and apply it to ourselves has become commonplace. For example, we see descriptive texts in Scripture that give a historical account of the sign gifts, which were given to the Apostles and the early church for the purpose of establishing the authority to speak new revelations from God, being twisted and improperly applied to the church today to create a chaotic charismatic anarchy that distracts from the kerygma, the proclamation of Jesus Christ.