Faith & Spirit Quote by Susan Powter

Powter’s genius here is the way she turns spiritual language into a demolition tool. “We can’t be guided” lands like a confession, but it’s really an accusation: guidance isn’t unavailable because God went silent; it’s unavailable because we’ve trashed the very conditions that make guidance believable. The repetition - “so far,” “so destroyed,” “so far” - mimics a spiraling rant, the kind you hear from someone watching a culture sell its own moral vocabulary back to itself as a product.

Then she drops the punchline: “Jim Bakker heard from God. What a good job he did!” It’s not a joke for joke’s sake. It’s a case study, a shorthand for televangelist-era fraud and the way “God told me” functions as a rhetorical cheat code: instant authority, no receipts. Bakker becomes the emblem of a broader American glitch Powter is targeting - our appetite for certainty packaged as revelation, especially when it’s delivered through charismatic media figures.

The subtext is less anti-faith than anti-suckers-and-salesmen. Powter is railing against a culture that confuses loud conviction with truth, and treats moral direction like a hotline you can call when you’re anxious, guilty, or shopping for permission. The bite comes from her collision of yearning and contempt: people want to be guided, but the marketplace of guidance has been so thoroughly corrupted that the very idea feels unusable. Bakker isn’t just a villain in the story; he’s the punchy proof that the system rewards performance over integrity.