Word of Faith as the Psychogenesis of Anguish

It is no secret that I abhor Word of Faith theology. As a Roman Catholic I find it to be a deeply heretical perversion of the Gospel command to take up one's Cross, and a bastardization of the Gospel in general. The distinctive aspect of Word of Faith theology is its belief that those who faithfully follow Christ are promised and will receive emotional, physical and financial well-being. It is a less cloddish version of the prosperity gospel; or, it more precise to say that prosperity theology is a more boorish moment of the umbrella Word of Faith theological category. For definitions, I am using the sixth tenet of Word of Faith from the Statement of Faith at the Christian Forums:

6. We believe prosperity is always God's will for all believers; for the whole person, spirit, soul, and body. The Lord has pleasure in the prosperity of those who serve Him.

I do not want to write a treatise critiquing all the horrible aspects of this theological vantagepoint: how it is exclusivist and does violence to the Other; how it interprets the Gospel from an unenlightened, materialist perspective; how it acts as the Opiate of the Masses; how it reduces God to an idol.

So what I want to discuss, then, is what happens when hard times come and prosperity runs out. Reasonable people, who are not sipping the cool-aid — an ego defense mechanism knowns as denial (of external reality) —, understand that the good suffer and the wicked prosper. The idea that the good will suffer is central to Christian history, as the first Christians were persecuted, tortured and executed.

My hypothesis is that Word of Faith theology acts as the genesis of exorbitant and unnecessary psychological anguish when bad times come upon us. In other words, it is an unhealthy defense mechanism for coping with the anxiety produced by external reality that carries with it the grave potential to engender even greater anguish than the defense mechanism was created to guard against. I envision two common events emerge when those who believe God is there to secure our prosperity face prolonged periods of dissatisfaction:

(i.) The individual experiences a flood of guilt. Since the framework ensures us that God will bless the faithful with prosperity, s/he comes to believe that s/he is the reason for the ill fate. S/he was not faithful enough, she has not been praying enough, and God is not blessing him/her, because s/he has been bad. 

(ii.) The individual experiences godforsaken-ness. S/he comes to believe that s/he has been utterly abandoned by God. The result can be a profound dearth of beauty in the World, and a loss of existential meaning. For our psychological well-being, it is vital to believe in the sacredness of the World whether we are theistic or atheistic.

Therefore, I think Word of Faith theology is a very treacherous defense mechanism/opiate of the masses. It may offer comfort for a limited period, or if your life is already fulfilled it will appear a self-fulfilling prophecy. Word of Faith theology is akin to that foolish man who builds his house upon sand in Matthew 7. The house built on the sand naturally falls apart in the face of hardship. It cannot stand up to the monstrosity of evil, because such evil exists outside its closed-system. Prolonged monstrosity exists as a profound contradiction to the very core of Word of Faith theology; therefore, "[T]he rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it."