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02 August 2004
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Rite of Passage or The Man Who Stinks of Piss
Tim Samoff wrote recently about the joys of public transportation. It brought to mind a humourous short story I wrote some time ago while living on the other side of the pond. Enjoy.
There is is one particular gateway through which everyone must pass if they are to become a full initiate in the transport system of any country. It is a rite of passage that one can point to again and again through the years as proof of having entered -- and endured -- the public transport experience. There are various milestones in the story of one's public transit use: The embarrassing debacle over the misplaced ticket ("Honestly, driver, it was in my pocket somewhere!"); the first attempt at reading the daily newspaper aboard a crowded bus (in London, where the Times and Telegraph are printed on broadsheet, this situation can rapidly escalate to hazardous proportions); the absent-minded boarding of the wrong bus, when you think you are heading a few blocks further downtown, but after a monotonous hour your suspicions are alerted by signs saying, "Welcome to (insert name of next province or state)". But none of these is an adequate substitute for that crucial event of which we all must someday partake: That unpleasant episode of sitting next to -- indeed, being forced by circumstance to sit next to -- the man who stinks of piss.
Pardon my language, but that is the general term adopted when one later relates the incident to colleagues, friends and family: "Do you know, today on the bus I had to sit next to a man who stank of piss?" By the time the story has done the rounds of co-workers, neighbours and relatives, minor details may have been changed, embellished, even grossly exaggerated, but that little epithet remains constant: "A man who stank of piss." You see, "smell" belongs to "urine," but "stink" only really works with the corresponding "piss".
I must admit, nothing prepared me for the day I was the chosen candidate to undergo this particular ritual. When I left the house in the early morning, it seemed like quite an ordinary day. Even up to the point when I boarded the 250 to Vancouver, there was nothing noticeably amiss. What I did notice, however, was that on this particular day the Langdale ferry had docked at almost the exact same time as the Bowen ferry, which meant a mad scramble to get a seat. Had I known what terrible events awaited me, I should have gladly given up my seat for another. As it happens, I was just at that place in the queue that gave me the chance to nab the last available place.Looking around, there was the usual Bowen Island crowd, along with a few faces I did not recognize. I was almost tempted to take up my pew next to the fat lady, but being rather portly myself, I had visions of one or the other of us being asphyxiated, and newspaper headlines the next day reading, "Overweight bus passengers in freak squashing accident: Doctors estimate 1/1000 000 chance of ever happening again". So, I hedged my bets and at the last minute grabbed the only other vacant seat. Of course, by the time it dawned on me what exactly it was I'd got myself into, the aisles were full of bodies, and I was trapped.
It was just as the harbour was coming into view that I first noticed the stench. I surely went beet-red as the awareness crept up on me that this odour in my nostrils was indeed urine, or rather, to better describe the intensity, piss. It was not immediately apparent that it was the fellow next to me, whom I hadn't really had the opportunity to have a good look at, so his personal hygiene was not yet in question. (After all, my primary concern had been to find somewhere to sit; my company was only a secondary consideration.) The first thought to occur was the fleeting and horrifying possibility that the smell might be emanating from my own body. This is always the first instinct in such situations, but is quickly dismissed, as it was in my case: No matter how much of a rush I am in to get out in the morning, there is never more than an outside chance that I will be the man who stinks of piss. The second thought always takes the form of a kind of flashback to an imagined scene the night before: Some loutish twenty-something reeling out of a bar at one in the morning, totally inebriated, and suddenly finding his faculties so diminished that he cannot distinguish between a public convenience and a public transit vehicle. I glanced around my feet to see, as best I could, whether any evidence remained, but there were no visible clues.
Realizing I had rather a mystery to solve, and by this time feeling quite nauseous too, I undertook a discreet investigation to determine the likely perpetrator of this vile stench. I was able first, naturally, to rule out the gentleman in the seat opposite me, whose briefcase and smart suit told me straight away that this was not someone given to producing such foul smells. The lady in front of me looked far too prim and proper for me even to consider her a likely culprit; which left only the chap sitting on my right, the investigation of whom posed something of a problem for me. Turning my head ninety degrees suddenly to assess his culpability would be far too obvious, and would probably embarrass us both. On the other hand, a subtle cranking of the head, spaced out over about thirty seconds, can too easily look unnatural and stuff, and I did not want to draw attention to myself. I decided that if I aimed at a speed somewhere between the swift turn and the discreet crank, and made it look as if something outside the window caught my eye, I might be able to get away with it.
Luckily, a billboard provided just the occasion for the brief inspection I was hoping for. My suspicions were immediately confirmed. His alarmingly bad taste in clothes was by no means his worst crime (though the vermilion kipper tie was ghastly, even seen out of the corner of my eye): He was unshaven, dishevelled, and had a strange manner of breathing which I thought at first to be the whirring of the engine, but soon discovered was actually more of a combination of a throaty tick-tocking and a nasal snore coming from the man who stank of piss. Having identified him as such, I immediately started ruefully running through the possibilities had I not been in such a hurry to find a seat. I couldn't decide whether sitting next to the man who stank of piss would be preferable to suffocating at the bosom of the fat lady; in any case, I was sure that standing in the aisle would be far more pleasant than either, if a little tiring on the feet.
This train of thought did not last, for all of a sudden I was struck by the terrifying realization that everyone else on my part of the bus could smell it too, and what if they thought I was the source? I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that I was better-dressed than the man who stank of piss, and so would probably be written off as unlikely; but I couldn't escape the nagging feeling that people were starting to realize where the odour was coming from, and I could sense the wandering eyes peering over incredulously in my direction.
Should anyone catch my eye, I speculated, could I gesture in my neighbour's general direction, give a knowing wink and shufty sort of tip of the head, just so they knew it wasn't me? At once the prim and proper lady turned round. I managed a forced expression that was halfway between a friendly smile and a disapproving frown, and cleared my throat nervously. I couldn't quite tell whether she was looking at me or through me to someone else, but she quickly turned round again. Unfortunately, the cough was rather conspicuous, and attracted the attention of the man with the briefcase, whereupon I only managed to further arouse his suspicions by repeating the strained throat-clearing and muttering some unidentifiable attempt at a pleasantry. By then, my ill-conceived scheme to divert attention had become a minor coughing fit, prompting the man who stank of piss to reach into his pocket and produce, after a short spell of rummaging around, what looked like a very old and sticky cough drop.
I dared not look in the man's eyes, but in my embarrassment, murmured rather rapidly and unevenly, "Thankyou! I think this is my stop!" Ironically, in my rush to get to the doors, I almost did end up in the fat lady's bosom. I was relieved to find myself out on the sidewalk no less than thirty seconds later, the bus disappearing off down the road. I didn't look back until I was sure the bus was a safe distance away, but I swear all eyes were on me as I leapt out onto the street with unusual enthusiasm, barely giving the bus time to pull into the stop.
I had to walk the extra half a mile or so to my destination, but it was a small price to pay for a breath of fresh air. Looking back, I feel a certain sense of pride about having completed this strange initiation ceremony into the deeper aspects of public transportation. Of course, the fact that I bottled out before I reached my destination will always colour the episode somewhat, and perhaps cast doubt on whether I can truly be regarded as having seen it through to the finish. I comfort myself with the thought that probably not one of those fellow passengers who sneered at me has ever had to sit next to a man who stank of piss. I, on the other hand, have the benefit of an experience that will enable me to face all the other perils of travelling with a new kind of confidence. No matter whom I meet, what eccentricities I encounter, or what unfortunate events befall me on my journeying, from now on I shall be able to say resolutely: "All in a day's work; I sat next to a man who stank of piss, you know."
Dave
9:10:33 PM 
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01 August 2004
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Emerging questions for Maggi Dawn In my previous entry I asked for opinions about the so-called Emerging Church. Of the handful of responses I received, the first was overwhelmingly negative, to the effect that the Emerging Church was just the same old conservative evangelicalism dressed up in a new garb. The criticism was offered with the caveat that perhaps things were different on the British side of the Atlantic.
With that in mind, I'd like to ask Maggi Dawn a couple of questions, and Maggi, I'd be grateful for a response either here or on your own blog. I'm asking you because a) unless I misread you, you identify yourself as a theological liberal, b) you seem to be happy considering yourself, or at least being considered by others, a part of the Emerging Church, and c) you are British-based. My questions are these:
1. How do you think the Emerging movement in Britain, insofar as it can be called a movement, differs from that in the US, if at all?
2. To what extent is the Emerging Church simply a rehash of the same old conservative evangelicalism?
Dave
12:57:37 PM
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30 July 2004
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Emerging I have a question: What makes someone part of the Emerging Church?
I only heard of this about six months ago, and at first I assumed it really didn't have much to do with me personally, mainly because I perceived it as a mostly evangelical phenomenon. After a few months, I see that the Emerging Church, a formidable presence in blogdom, by the way, is wider than I imagined. If I were to pick out one defining characteristic, I would say that Emerging folk are those whose Christian faith, in the spirit of postmodernism, moves beyond the traditional liberal-conservative dividing lines.
I must confess I am a little confused, however, as to who exactly constitutes the Emerging Church. Is it enough to identify with the broad spirit of the movement, and opt in? Does some sort of formal of connection have to be made? Are there essentials? Can you be Emerging without realizing it? I guess my major question is twofold, and perhaps some Emerging lurkers can share their answers: What is the Emerging Church and how does one get on board?
Dave
5:43:57 PM
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Your faith in five words My faith in five words:
Trinitarian
Love-based
Inclusive
Down-to-earth
Open-ended
If you only had five words to sum up your faith, what would they be?
Dave
11:40:10 AM
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29 July 2004
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Born again: How fundamentalists have hijacked a term that belongs to all of us "Are you a Christian?" asked my colleague inquisitively as I took another sip of coffee.
"Yes, I am," I replied.
"A born-again Christian?" she probed.
"I don't acknowledge any other kind," I replied quickly.
I knew immediately from her enthusiasm as she announced, "Oh, good, there's quite a few of us, then," that I had given the wrong answer, and I was desperate to back myself out of what I'd just said. The problem was that while I meant that all Christians are "born again" in Jesus Christ, it was more than obvious to me that she understood me to mean that if a Christian isn't a so-called "born-again Christian", he's a mere "nominal" Christian.
It's a sad fact that a biblical metaphor has been hijacked by fundamentalists to mean something that has more to do with a particular conservative Christian subculture than it has to do with the Bible or Christianity. Perhaps saddest is that many non-fundamentalists are loathe to use the language of rebirth and regeneration because of its associations.
When I say it's been hijacked, I mean that certain fundamentalists for so long have claimed exclusive ownership of the term, it has become synonymous with a sociological grouping, a single brand of Christianity, a subculture whose distinctives have more to do with Jesus-bumper-stickers, WWJD bracelets and happy-clappy choruses than with Christ himself. A biblical metaphor that testifies to the reality of a renewed cosmos, healed lives and a redeemed world in Jesus Christ has become a label claimed by a few fundamentalists as a marker of their supposedly unique relationship to God, a stick with which to hit non-fundamentalists, an instrument of exclusion.
While I'm not a Born-Again Christian, I am a Christian and I am born again. What's more, I don't think I was born again simply when I decided to "ask Jesus into my life" -- in other words, my conversion. That's another way fundamentalists have hijacked the term. While there's something of the rebirth metaphor that belongs to that moment when we respond positively to the gospel for the first time, I think by limiting it to that we miss out on the great truth that the world was reconciled to God in Jesus, that a corrupt world became new again two thousand years ago in Christ. And I really don't have a problem extending that to nonbelievers, either. Did Jesus die for the sins of the world or not? Was the world reconciled to God or not?
"Born again" is a metaphor I want to reclaim, for me, for you, for the whole world, not for a small band of holier-than-thou evangelical Christians.
I've been meaning to blog something along these lines for a while, by the way, but credit to Adam over at PoMoMusings for providing the little inspirational kick I needed.
Dave
10:24:11 PM
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28 July 2004
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A double-bill of confessions A friend and I were talking yesterday about strange and crazy things we did when we were kids.
One time, when I was a wee lad in the Methodist Church, our minister sent his teenage son round to our house to teach me how to play chess. At the end of our little tutorial, he gave me a couple of books about the game to borrow.
A wee while later I was going through my bookshelves, and I decided I'd label all my books to make it like a library, so I wrote my name in all my books -- including the ones the minister's son had lent me. I have no idea why, because I don't remember being a particularly naughty boy or prone to stealing, but for some reason, maybe for the sake of continuity and consistency, I wrote my name in these books that belonged to someone else. The saga didn't end there, however, for some time later I felt terribly guilty about the whole business, and to destroy the evidence of this awful crime, I ripped the books apart and threw them out.
The minister's son never asked for them back, and no one ever breathed a word about it until I confessed my guilty secret yesterday.
When I was quite young, every fifth of November the family would pile round to my uncle's house for a bonfire and fireworks. One year I had a broom and was sweeping up around the yard when I noticed my cousin's balaclava sitting there a foot or two away from the blazing fire. I'm not sure what possessed me, but I decided it would be a good idea to sweep it into the fire. So I did. Ten minutes later the entire family -- uncles, aunts, cousins -- were combing the yard in the dark trying to find "our Kevvy's balaclava". And I just kinda stood there with my broom watching this mammoth search go on until eventually one of my uncles picked up the remains of the balaclava from the embers around the edge of the bonfire and announced exasperatedly, "'Ey up, our Kevvy, 'ere it is in the fire. 'Ow did that 'appen?" Cue cousin Dave standing there clinging desperately to the broom for security, glaring down at the floor until the awkward moment had passed.
Isn't it bizarre the things we'd do when we were kids?
Dave
10:16:23 AM
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Spoiled for choice? I found this post by Tom Hinkle over at Boar's Head Tavern quite thought-provoking:
Here's something I've been thinking about lately--and it's speculation, to be sure, because we're in a much different situation than the early church. But we in modern (or postmodern) America have this "privilege" of picking the church in which we choose to worship. But what if we didn't? What if there was only the one church where you lived, and that was it? What if you were in Corinth, and you knew there were major problems. Paul's letter hadn't arrived yet. But you had your brothers in Christ misusing the gifts of God, babbling in tongues without interpretation, fighting with each other, bragging about the freedom you have to the point where someone's shacking up with his mother-in-law and people are not the least bit scandalized--except for you and a small minority. And you just flat don't have anywhere else to go, unless you pack up and move to Ephesus or Phillipi [sic].
Do you really think maybe, in a sense, we are spoiled? Is it such a good thing that we can find a church fairly easily that agrees with US at least 75% of the time? Is it such a good thing that we can cut and run when things go sour, instead of being forced to hang in there, as unhealthy as we think sometimes things can get?
There's no doubt that our American culture of being able to church-shop was totally unknown in the New Testament. But how is it supposed to be? I mean, now there's no turning back, there won't be "The Church in Tulsa" (thank God because it would be run by the health-and-wealth crowd). Are we privileged, or are we spoiled?
Dave
9:58:09 AM
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27 July 2004
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Jesus and honour-reversal Apparently in the ancient Mediterranean, the table was where it all happened. It was the place to be. You see, honour was the most important value in that culture, and the table was the place more than any other where honour was sought, reasserted and attained. Who you ate with and who sat where were all part of the drama of honour and its enemy, shame.
I've just been reading an intriguing essay by the New Testament scholar S Scott Bartchy (yeah, I hadn't heard of him either) entitled "The Historical Jesus and Honor Reversal at the Table", one of a series of essays by different authors in the extremely insightful The Social Setting of Jesus and the Gospels (ed. Stegemann, Malina & Theissen). Bartchy defines honour in this context as "the claim to social worth, especially by males, based on one's birth and one's subsequent performance, that has been and continues to be publicly acknowledged." As well as being the "pivotal cultural value", he identifies four other characteristics of honour in the ancient Mediterranean:
Seeking greater honor for oneself and one's family was the fundamental life task of every adult ... Young males learned very early that they symbolized the honor of their households, and that they were obligated to defend that honor on a daily basis ...
Among strangers and men from other families, honor could be acquired only at the expense of someone else's honor, since honor was a good in limited supply ...
Correspondingly, retaliation was the only honorable response to any challenge to one's personal honor ... To lose honor was to be shamed, resulting in diminished worth and reputation in the eyes of one's peers ...
Meals were an especially prominent venue for the reassertion of one's honor and for seeking to acquire more.
It is probably becoming obvious already how Jesus turned the tables -- pardon the pun -- on the cultural value of honour. But let me summarize some of Bartchy's conclusions, in his own words:
Honor is still a pivotal cultural value, but now both birth honor and acquired honor have been made irrelevant. For in the nam of Israel's God, Jesus gave honor to everyone, without regard for social status, personal accomplishment, purity or health. Jesus' behaviour provided the experiential base for the later Jesus-group [see, he does know how to use hyphens sometimes!] teaching about the "grace of God."
Instead of seeking honor for himself, Jesus was prepared to be humiliated rather than to play the traditional male game of one-upmanship. He announced that, in his fellowship, honor is given to the merciful, the peacemakers ...
In contrast to the prevailing assumptions about life, honor was not in limited supply for the historical Jesus. His God offered an unlimited supply of honor; in turn, those honored by God had the social resources to give honor to others without fear of diminishing their own. Jesus apparently envisioned a world of human relationships in which competition would be expressed paradoxically by seeking to excel in giving honor to each other ...
Nonretaliation thus became the only honorable response to a challenge to one's personal honor ... Attempts to undermine one's honor were to be ignored or trumped by returning honor for dishonor, even by blessing and praying for those who had abused and cursed you (Luke 6:28) ...
Meals became an especially prominent venue for this outrageous giving of honor to all, around a radically inclusive table.
He then quotes Bruce Chilton:
Meals in Jesus' fellowship became practical parables whose meaning was as evocative as his verbal parables (which have consumed much more scholarly attention). To join in his meals consciously was, in effect, to ancipate the kingdom as it had been delineated by Jesus' teaching. Each meal was a proleptic celebration of God's kingdom.
It's common to think of Jesus as first and foremost a teacher, as if it were his words that were the most important part of his ministry, but we often fail to realize just how significant his actions were. Could it be that it was at the table where Jesus was at his most radical, his most subversive, where he made his most dramatic statement?
Dave
10:38:55 AM
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25 July 2004
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Slain in the Spirit: What was really happening? The first time I was "slain in the Spirit" was a definitive point in my career as a charismatic. Being slain was not essential in the same way tongues was, but you did feel a bit of an outsider as long as these sorts of things didn't happen to you. Typically you were seen as resistant or a bit stubborn if nothing tangible happened when you responded to the altar call and were given the laying-on of hands.
Being slain in the Spirit was something I had almost given up on. It never seemed to be happening for me. The first time I was actually slain was during that period of renewal I talked about known as the Toronto Blessing. I honestly didn't expect to fall. I was convinced I would be resistant as I always was. People around me were falling like dominoes, and the prayer team were gradually working their way over to where I was standing. I was already trying to think up excuses why I wasn't reacting the way I should. But you know when some joker comes up behind you and pokes you in the legs, right behind your knees, and you hardly feel a thing, but your legs just give way automatically? That's exactly how it felt when, either before or just as the preacher's hand touched my head, I swooned backwards onto the floor. And I just lay there, wondering how on earth I had ended up in this position, but basking in a kind of warm glow, not least because I could now get the badge and the t-shirt and announce to the world that I had been slain in the Spirit.
Throughout the course of that day I was slain about three or four times. It happened regularly, almost every time I was prayed for, over the ensuing few months. I became a dab-hand at being slain. I was one of God's best slainees. I crumpled to the floor more than once with no one even touching me or praying for me. (One of these times is on tape somewhere, because the cameraman had to swoop his video-camera out of the way lickety-split to prevent me crashing into it.) On one occasion I fell directly forward. I can't remember if anyone caught me, or if I just landed myself.
On none of those occasions did I hurt myself, and I weigh in excess of 300lbs. Usually my legs wouldn't even bend. I'd just fall straight back like a dummy. I saw my brother-in-law get slain onto a wooden floor, landing on his elbows with a piercing crack and not batting an eyelid, later saying he didn't even remember, although everyone else certainly did. (*Ouch!*)
Things weren't always that way, however. After a while, I lost the knack. I really didn't know what happened, but it worried me. I'd stand there thinking, Am I falling or not? Am I resisting? And I'd end up falling, but it wasn't the same. One time I fell, and there was no one to catch me, and I just kind of staggered backwards about ten feet and fell on top of the overhead projector. (I'm about pissing myself laughing as I remember this.) I remember hearing a few gasps from concerned spectators, but I'd started the ball rolling, and I knew I couldn't just drop the act there and then, so I lay there half on the projector, half sprawled across the front row of seats (luckily the row was empty, otherwise there'd have been casualties that night), and my body heaving occasionally as I tried to stifle my embarrassed laughter.
So what was really going on? Well, the first few times it was definitely more than simply faking it. As far as I was consciously aware it was involuntary and unexpected (on that first occasion, at least). Something out of the ordinary had to be happening that I would fall straight back, with unbent legs, and not be aware of any discomfort or injury. But that doesn't equate to supernatural. I think it was simply psychological. Like many charismatic apologists, I would fight tooth-and-nail at one time against the possibility that it was the power of suggestion, some sort of hypnosis or a psychological reaction. The realization that it was all in the mind when I watched this guy, the mental magician Derren Brown. Have a look how he manipulates an entire shopping mall full of unsuspecting people through the power of suggestion [RAM file], or better still, watch any of his television shows, and tell me how what's going on in a charismatic meeting is fundamentally all that different. The mind is a crazy thing with far greater depths than we generally give it credit for.
The remaining question, then, is whether God was doing anything in all that time I spent on the carpet. And my honest answer would be that of course God wasn't absent from my life just because I was a charismatic, but certainly I think that whatever good things God did, he did despite rather than because of all the charismatic high-jinx. Being slain in itself was not helpful in the long-term; in fact, for all the great feelings it gave me at the time, it only fuelled my need to keep on getting more comparably intense experiences to sustain my spiritual walk, and that kind of thinking only led to a constant cycle of euphoria, anti-climax and guilt.
I'm not saying God could never knock a person down, but I'd be dishonest if I said I didn't think the charismatic thing was, on the whole, in the mind.
Dave
4:39:02 PM
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A retrospective glance at my career as a tongues-talker Not a few people have asked, having read the account of my journey through the charismatic movement, how I now interpret everything that happened to me back then. I spoke in tongues. I fell over, "slain in the Spirit". I prophesied. Was it all just hype?
Let me start with the phenomenon that at least at one time was the most distinctive feature of the Pentecostal and charismatic movement: Tongues. It is perhaps odd that tongues didn't get more of a mention in my story, but I suppose the reason for that is that being "slain in the Spirit" was a far greater defining moment for me, spiritually, and speaking in tongues was something I gradually got into. Or at least I can't remember a specific moment when I first spoke in tongues. I tried for a hell of a long time to speak in tongues, and felt awfully inadequate that I couldn't. It just seemed fake to me when I tried to do it. There was a lot of pressure on me, however. On several occasions, my pastor would lay his hands on me and encourage me to speak in tongues: "Just let it come... Don't resist... Just speak out." I just couldn't do it. I tried it laying awake on my bed at night, and managed to utter a few syllables, but I couldn't convince myself it was real. I think I just decided that this was the best it was going to get, and I may as well just go with it, and that way the pressure would be off -- I'd be over the hurdle, and I wouldn't feel awkward when someone asked me whether I was baptized in the Spirit and how I knew. So I became a tongues-speaker.
To be devastatingly frank, I think for the most part I was kidding myself. As is usually the case with tongues, it was exactly the same phrases every time, and there was nothing about it that required some sort of supernatural anointing, for I had the whole thing memorized to be repeated whenever I was praying. I could have recited my pastor's tongue if I wanted to. In fact, I could probably have recited the tongue of just about anyone in the congregation who prayed in tongues regularly enough, because they all said the same phrases week after week.
Were I to pluck for an explanation, I would say I was pressured into speaking in tongues by a subculture where you were a bit of a freak if tongues wasn't a sustained feature of your prayer-life, I did what I was told to do -- spoke out whatever first came into my mind -- and then after the first few times it just became a routine that I could rattle my way through with or without God's help. I knew what it was supposed to sound like, because I had heard everyone else doing it. So I'd put it down pretty much to a learned behaviour.
There were a handful of occasions when it was different. One was when I was away at college and my home church was going through a particularly rough patch. I began praying for the situation, and all of a sudden I was singing loudly and boisterously in a tongue I had never spoken before, and my emotions were changing as if deep down I understood the words I was singing. That obviously belongs in a different category to the week-in-week-out tongues. Purely psychological? The Spirit genuinely doing something? It was the one time I thought Paul's words about "the Spirit interceding in groans that cannot be uttered" might be of relevance. I don't know, but I am less inclined to be skeptical of that occasion. The other few times were moments of wild abandon, and all took place in the shower, funnily enough.
Next I'll talk about being "slain in the Spirit". Boy, that was fun.
Dave
2:05:49 PM
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22 July 2004
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Epilogue: Pre-empting objections to "My story" Having made public a lengthy account of my journey through the charismatic movement, I know some will find cause for complaint.
I've chosen to do this blog anonymously because if I'm going to be honest about where I've come from, what I've experienced, and what I really think of it, it's only wise to protect my own identity and the identity of the myriad nameless faces who pop up from time to time in stories and tales I share. I already made the mistake one time of publishing some recollections online under my own name, and they were thoughts that were better kept anonymous.
Of the very small handful of people reading this blog who know my identity, a potential objection I foresee is that some of the things I recall are not as they remember them. And to that, I say it's fair enough that they interpreted things differently. It is inevitable -- and I mean literally unavoidable -- that any account of events be filtered and relayed through a particular lens of interpretation, so I make no apologies for having a bias. And by that I mean not that I have some raging anti-charismatic bias, or some radical liberal bias or some cut-and-dry religio-political bias, but simply an I'm-Dave-and-I-inhabit-Dave's-thought-world kind of bias. I recount things the way I saw them, and I've done so to the best of my ability with honesty and integrity.
Secondly, it is inevitable that some will interpret the account as the result of bitterness, anger, unforgiveness or all manner of negative emotions supposedly eating away at me like a cancer. Some will not be able to help seeing my every word dripping with sarcasm, mockery, spitefulness or anger. This, in my experience, is the response of the uncritical insiders, the defensive and the insecure. My response is that, frankly, such things are in the eye of the beholder.
Thirdly, some will feel I have unfairly broadbrushed charismatics. I have sympathy with this, honestly I do. It is so hard to write an account like this without at times unwittingly lumping together the good with the bad. So I do want to add something of a disclaimer. Not all charismatics are simply miniature copies of the portrait I painted of the charismatic movement as a whole. I know not all charismatics are health-and-wealth, and many baulk at that crap just as I do. I know not every charismatic accepted or accepts the Toronto Blessing and the whole network of craziness that comes with it. I know lots of folk identify themselves as charismatic, and yet can be as critical of the movement as I am. The reason I decided to stop calling myself a charismatic was not because I no longer believed in the Holy Spirit or because I thought we should disregard things like tongues and prophecy, but because of the direction and ethos of the movement as a whole. It was a world that, despite the presence of good individuals, had as a whole become a circus, and it had become increasingly difficult to remain inside without jumping into the ring and joining in the games. Relating those thoughts unavoidably means talking about "the charismatic movement" in somewhat more monolithic terms than the real-life complexities perhaps deserve. Call that a limitation of the medium of writing, a sad commentary on the limitations of my own writing talents or what you will.
Lastly, bear in mind this account was written over eighteen months ago, if not two years. I edited a few things for the blog, but it remains essentially unchanged. Much of the way I expressed my feelings was unique to that particular period in my life, and I'm sure if I put pen to paper to write the story all over again, things might be expressed a lot differently. For example, my journey out of the charismatic movement, the overarching story of my faith-journey at that time, is now just one subplot of a wider narrative that involves a journey away from fundamentalism, from conservatism, from evangelicalism. Someday I'll let you have the whole story.
And one more disclaimer: The story is never finished.
Dave
11:49:14 AM
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21 July 2004
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My story (Part IV): Into the real world... and out of the charismatic movement
Despite my disenchantment with charismaticism, I nevertheless left college to minister as associate pastor of a smalltown Pentecostal Church in Western Canada. The senior pastor’s version of Pentecostalism seemed to be fairly low-key. He didn’t appear to be given to many of the worst charismatic extremes. I was however to find myself in conflict with the rest of the church at various points.
One of the earliest of these occasions was when a lady in the church came across a book by Paul Yonggi Cho entitled The Fourth Dimension. I was familiar with the book, a classic by charismatic standards, and was appalled by its contents. In the book, Cho claims that God will not answer unspecific prayer. Rather, we must give as much attention to detail as possible when we make our requests to God. He recounts the tale of a lady who came to him asking for a husband, whom he castigated for not being specific enough. After she told God exactly what she wanted, however, right down to the height, hair-colour and career, among other things, God answered her. He also says we must visualize our prayers, and "incubate" the vision before giving birth to whatever it is we want. His claim, similar to that of the Faith teachers, is that whatever we see, we get, and what we confess, we possess.
Within a couple of weeks, a substantial number in our small congregation were talking about the book. Copies were being passed from person to person, new copies were being bought and read, and it was being credited with revolutionizing prayer-lives. But at what cost? I felt powerless to do or say anything, because the pastor’s wife was part of the enthusiastic throng!
This was a pattern that repeated itself again and again. I found I could not challenge one doctrine without upsetting the whole worldview of my congregants. It wasn’t a case of saying, "Keep this teaching, but throw out that one," for everything was interlinked and bound up with a whole scheme of looking at and interpreting the world. I identified the following elements to this worldview: The Christian journey is an ascent towards God, and therefore any keys or principles that might unlock new ways of getting closer to God were sought after and welcomed; the world is a battleground between God and Satan, light and darkness, and the believer’s job is to join in that battle on every level, over and against unbelievers, who are unwittingly on Satan’s side; God is going to bring a worldwide revival and, moreover, he intends to make the western world "Christian" again. Thus, any suggestion that fell outside the parameters of this narrative would hardly be worth weighing up, for it belonged to a wholly different way of looking at things. During my year and a half at that church, I often felt like a stranger in a foreign land. Every discussion and conversation would betray this worldview, and thus I was forced to shut up altogether or to speak out and rock the boat. I reasoned I was the outsider here, and also subordinate to a senior pastor who, despite his rejection of its most extreme manifestations, nevertheless held to the same basic worldview, or at least never challenged it. So, I went for the former option, and it bred much frustration.
My thinking at that time had been provoked by a book I had come across some years earlier and rejected, but which I had recently rediscovered and which resonated with me. Its title was In the Face of God: The Dangers and Delights of Spiritual Intimacy by Michael Horton, a Reformed pastor and theologian from California. It was this book that helped me understand that the charismatic movement had a whole philosophy underlying it, and this philosophy was a mystical view of the Christian life as an ascent to God. Such a view, Horton argued, was at odds with the gospel of God’s descent to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Modern charismatics and many evangelicals had come to see the Christian life as an ongoing climb nearer and nearer to God’s glory; the gospel, however, declared that we could never hope to ascend to God, but that God would descend and had descended to us in the Incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus. Though in retrospect there are many things Horton says that I would reject, the main thrust of his book rang immediately true to my experience as a charismatic: It had become a new, albeit very subtle form of legalism. All the talk about getting deeper into the river and climbing in higher heights resulted in people taking their eyes off Jesus, the author and perfector of their faith, and inwards to their own performance, their own attempts to get nearer to God, a God they didn’t realize was already brought near to them in Jesus: Was I praying enough? Did I speak in tongues often enough? Did I have the right keys to a victorious Christian life? Was I at the right level of self-denial necessary for the Spirit to be able to work in me? Was I "in the right place" with God? These were the questions that obsessed charismatics.
One evening, sitting at the church computer writing a letter, I decided I no longer wanted to be called charismatic. I could no longer share my fellow charismatics’ enthusiasm and excitement each time a new book or "move of the Spirit" came along. I was loathe to remain indefinitely among such believers, where my presence could only ever appear to be that of a party-pooper, determined to destroy the work of God’s Spirit.
Despite that, I remained in that church for over a year, and it was a frustrating time. When confronted directly with charismatic practices and teachings I now abhorred, I could only ever remain silent and bear with it. My discomfort reached its peak when a few others and I were ministering to a young man who, though professing faith, continually battled with drugs and alcohol. A number (again including the pastor’s wife) had concluded that the answer was to arrange daily meetings for the purpose of laying hands on the young man and praying for deliverance from demons. Though some years earlier this might have struck me as a sensible suggestion, it was poles apart from any approach I might nowadays consider. I undertook a search of the Scriptures once again, but was at a loss to find even a hint that anything like a sustained campaign to seek deliverance from evil spirits might be the solution to a believer’s problems. Everything I read suggested otherwise: For Paul (especially in Romans), the key to sanctification was the realization that in Christ we were set free from the law of sin and death; God had already worked to accomplish our deliverance, and we were simply required to walk in its light. In this case, however, the search was on for "generational spirits", supposedly demons passed on from one generation to the next. Some of these were (unconvincingly) identified, and the appropriate prayers and commands were offered. Then it was decided that the young man needed to speak in tongues, and so he was surrounded by three of us, one of whom would pray in tongues herself, and who for about ten straight minutes encouraged the obviously embarrassed young man to open his mouth and speak in tongues. He was not the only embarrassed one.
What had happened to the gospel in all of this? Where was Jesus? These complicated deliverance sessions were only detracting from the simplicity of the gospel, and ultimately from Jesus. By that time, of course, I had firmly decided: I wanted only to get back to simplicity. The charismatic movement had placed a heavy load on me, and I was always under that pressure to ascend to higher levels in the spiritual life. I was watching others being placed under that same kind of legalism. It was not a burden I wanted any longer to handle. Moreover, I was totally unconvinced it was a burden God had ever asked me to handle.
It seemed to me that the charismatic movement had started off with its heart in the right place, with a simple desire to be open to the more extraordinary gifts, to let God speak and encourage the Church through the ministry of the Spirit. But it had wandered far from its roots. The demands of this relentless pursuit of greater experiences of God’s glory were obscuring the wonderful, liberating truth that in Jesus we were already brought near to God. And when I finally cut off all ties with charismatic Christianity, leaving that pastorate, and walking away for the last time from a Pentecostal Church I would call home, I was glad to be free.
Dave
10:52:29 PM
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My story (Part III): Deeper into charismania, and then... Bible College
I was genuinely surprised by the message of the prosperity preachers when I heard for the first time that God wanted us to be rich. Europe’s first ever Christian TV channel had recently started broadcasting, and I was ripe for its teachings. A lady from church kindly kept my mother and I up-to-date with videotaped recordings of the daily programming. The exciting preaching I was hearing was like nothing I had been exposed to before: Kenneth Copeland and Fred Price would encourage believers to "name it and claim it" with infectious enthusiasm; John Avanzini would open up the teachings of Jesus and provide keys to getting rich; Rodney Howard-Browne’s powerful anointing would cause an entire theatre-full of believers to erupt into hysterical laughing, while causing others to freeze like statues in the middle of giving their testimonies. I soon learned to my amazement that God wanted us to be wealthy and that sickness comes directly from the Devil himself. The new preachers I listened to would talk straight to Satan saying things like, "Get your hands off my property in the name of Jesus!" Whenever financial trouble reared its head, they would simply "stand on the Word", confessing boldly that Jesus died to make them rich, and claiming by faith the results there and then. If signs of sickness appeared, they would proclaim aloud on the spot, "By his stripes I am healed. Hallelujah!" and Satan would be obliged to get out of the way, and God, to step in. Christianity was one long line of victories, all available by quoting the promises of Scripture back to God, to oneself or even to Satan. I liked it.
I remember hearing John Avanzini speak one time. He began by saying something like, "Now this is one of Jesus’ greatest parables on the subject of money and how to become wealthy" (put almost as crudely as that). He then took his viewers through the Parable of the Sower (Mark 3:4-8), explaining that Jesus was teaching his followers that if you sow your money in fertile soil, you’ll reap a hundredfold in kind. He also added that one of Satan’s greatest schemes had been to keep the church ignorant of the important meaning of this parable for centuries. I was bowled over - not because Avanzini had twisted and contorted the text to suit his own ends, but that Satan had apparently been able for so long to blind the minds of believers to Jesus’ greatest parable on the subject of how to get money!
Unfortunately, I did not have the wisdom to check things for myself and see if what he was saying was true. It was quite some time later that I was combing through the gospels one day trying to find the parable John had referred to, and was puzzled to discover that nothing he said even remotely matched anything I found on the lips of Jesus. Eventually I figured out that the reference could only be Mark 4, and I was finally awakened to the fact that Avanzini had in fact grossly misled his viewers. No one approaching the Parable of the Sower for the first time could possibly construe its meaning in the blatantly deceptive way he had. Mark even tells us in the following passage (4:13-20) that Jesus was talking about the word of God, a far cry from what I had been led to believe. Avanzini had of course conveniently forgotten to mention this part of the text. How many other Christians, I wondered, had taken John and his fellow charismatic preachers at their word and not had the wherewithal to compare it with the words of Jesus for themselves?
In 1997, as I was preparing to go to Bible College, I began to study the Scriptures for myself, and cracks began to appear in some of the teachings and practices I had been introduced to. I had long been interested in studying charismatic issues for myself, especially since a disturbing encounter with a member of a pseudo-Pentecostal cult who told me I wasn’t going to heaven unless I spoke in tongues. The chance meeting, which had taken place during a weeklong evangelism campaign in downtown Liverpool, provoked me to digest all the material I could find to bolster my charismatic beliefs. Some of my conclusions from this most recent period had been bothering me, however. For instance, I couldn’t help but notice the glaring discrepancy between what Paul told the Corinthians about the gift of tongues and what all the charismatics I knew actually practised. Paul said tongues were directed towards God; I had always been taught that the gift of tongues was just another way of prophesying directly to believers. Paul said not everyone had the gift of tongues; I had been led to believe everyone should speak in tongues. Paul said either speak in tongues and interpret for the rest of the church or shut up altogether; at almost every charismatic gathering I had attended, people were encouraged to and did speak and sing in tongues as if no one but God were listening.
It was also during this year that I came across a popular book debunking the extremes of the prosperity preachers. It was an eye-opener for me. The author documented some of the dangerous doctrines being advanced by leaders in the Faith movement, as it was called. Most of the names I recognized immediately from the Christian Channel: Kenneth Copeland; Fred Price; Benny Hinn; Marilyn Hickey. In retrospect, this expose of the faith teachers was inaccurate in some respects, but the overall point was clearly true: These new doctrines were hazardous to Christian faith. They turned Jesus into a twentieth-century success guru who came to make us rich, a Jesus far removed from the one portrayed in the gospels who constantly warns us of the dangers of being drawn away from God by the pursuit of worldly wealth.
By September of 1998, I was already questioning much of what my charismatic background had led me to take for granted. The rest of my journey out of the trappings of the modern charismatic movement was to take place not in my home church, but in a different setting: Bible college.
Bible College
My three years in Bible college brought me into contact with charismatic Christians of every description. Some were zealous followers of the Word-Faith teachings. Some were "classical" Pentecostals for whom the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, accompanied by the only sure evidence of tongues, was the definitive doctrine of their type of Christianity. At least one refused to call himself charismatic or Pentecostal, though he believed in the supernatural gifts of the Spirit. Many were enthusiastic about the Toronto Blessing, which by then had come to be seen as a distinct worldwide renewal of the church, rarely viewed in terms of its Canadian origins. (The phrase "Toronto Blessing" had by then become a rather hackneyed expression.) A few were skeptical about the validity of some of the more exotic manifestations being witnessed at the time, such as uncontrollable laughter, spiritual drunkenness and animal sounds.
By this time, charismatic Christianity was becoming a much more integrated phenomenon. The impact of the Toronto Blessing was universal in scope, and before long connections had been made that allowed a lot of interlinking of different streams of the charismatic movement. In the United States, Rodney Howard-Browne was a kind of middle-man between the so-called Third Wave and the Faith movement. His theology seemed to be a mix of classical Pentecostal, mainline charismatic (Vineyard etc.) and Word-Faith. Falling clearly into no particular camp, yet finding favour in all of them, he was a bridge that enabled a new kind of charismatic ecumenism.
It was now more common to hear Word-Faith terminology and thinking creeping into the language of mainline charismatics, especially preachers and leaders. The "health and wealth" doctrine seemed to be making inroads into the traditionally more conservative churches. Prophecies were often now an eclectic mixture of prosperity doctrine and the older, standard charismatic fare.
It was amid such a milieu that I found myself in Bible college. It was a challenging time for me, for many of the doctrines I was starting to call into serious question were rapidly increasing in popularity in the wake of Toronto. In particular, I had grave reservations about the triumphalistic nature of most charismatics’ worldview of the Christian life and the endtimes. The notion that we were to expect an endtimes revival was rarely challenged, and the events of the previous few years only seemed to have confirmed that the Spirit was about to launch a massive revival without precedent in history. This expectation was becoming increasingly bound up with more detailed predictions of a Christian takeover of the world, a time when Christians would take their rightful place as rulers and governors and businessmen, when the wealth of the wicked would be at the disposal of godly Christians. It was a combination of dominion theology, which claimed that God’s rule on earth would come through the church prior to Christ’s return, and the faith teaching that the world’s wealth would be transferred into the hands of the righteous in the last days. It appeared that Christians who might otherwise have rejected the faith teachings outright were seduced into it by these new variations which came from a source closer to home.
In my first year I continued my pilgrimage of abandoning many of the old teachings and refining charismatic ideas in the light of new understandings of Scripture. Some of the far-fetched dogmas about demons and spiritual warfare were the first to be rejected. I combed the Bible for any instruction for believers to walk about their cities claiming them for God, binding territorial spirits and taking authority over regions, countries and even governments, but my search was in vain.
My second year in college was a turning-point. During that year I became fatally disillusioned with charismatic Christianity, and the seeds were sown for my eventual decision to give up calling myself a charismatic altogether. I can probably isolate three distinct strands in my journey out of the charismatic world in which I had spent most of my Christian life: My experience as leader of the student-initiated monthly renewal meetings on campus; my growing dissatisfaction with the form and content of charismatic worship; and the increasing popularity of a visiting prophetess and her expanding association with and influence upon the life of the college.
A fellow student had graduated the previous year, and had appointed me his successor in leading and organizing the monthly student renewal meetings. He was sold out on the new wave of charismaticism, having come straight to college from Kensington Temple, a London megachurch at the forefront of the current renewal. The meetings he began and organized followed the routine charismatic format: A time of worship; preaching from a guest speaker; and finally a time of "ministry". Some of the gatherings from the previous year had stuck in my memory. One time a travelling evangelist from Finland, already known to both of us, came and offered the students a severe reprimand for the lack of signs and wonders in our daily lives and ministries. The thrust of his message was that Christians ought to see miracles and healings every day, and the blame was placed squarely on our shoulders if they simply weren’t materializing. There followed the usual pattern of people crumpling to the floor, shouting and wailing, crying and laughing. A few students left, later confessing they had found it all an embarrassing spectacle, a scene of utter chaos.
I had a lot to live up to, then, when I took upon myself the responsibility for coordinating the meetings. For me, however, a renewal meeting was precisely that – an opportunity for renewal. I had little interest in the kind of manifestations that had previously characterized the meetings. This put me at odds, however, with some of the others on the leadership team. Though it was never directly stated, the implicit assumption was always there that we were aiming for an outpouring of the Spirit along the accustomed lines. I was burdened by the expectation placed upon me: That I would, to put it rather crudely, do my best to ensure that the conditions were ripe for an intense outburst of emotion, a visible, tangible outbreak of sings and wonders and all the anticipated charismatic phenomena. And, regardless of claims to the contrary, I was convinced that much, perhaps most, of what we had seen over the past few years was indeed the result of precisely this kind of attempt on the part of leaders to generate a hyped-up atmosphere conducive to such outbreaks. I had no desire to follow suit.
This made my position rather uncomfortable. I was clearly not the kind of man that ought to be leading such an enterprise, and thus I stumbled through the year feeling quite isolated from the aims of the rest of the group. I was glad, at the end of that year, to give up the position and put it all behind me.
The second point of contention was charismatic worship. The shallow sentimentalism and questionable ideals reflected in contemporary charismatic choruses were beginning to frustrate me. On my first day back for my second year, I was immediately halted in my desire to worship God by a particular song were were singing in a chapel service that day. The words were something like, "I just wanna be close to you… I just wanna feel your touch… Yes, I love you… Oh yes, I just wanna feel you near." As if the crassness of "wanna" weren’t enough, the song gave little clue who we were singing to or why. I wondered if anyone coming in from the outside would be able to tell we were worshipping, or whether it would sound just like another pop song. This was not a rare event. Many of the songs we sang revealed a similar lack of depth, all about feelings, but not often tied to anything substantial.
The impression I was getting was that these songs were manufactured to create feelings for their own sake, and this was not far removed from the kind of emotional and psychological manipulation that was the standard in charismatic worship: Worship leaders knew just the right harmonies to provoke an emotional response, when to crescendo and decrescendo to create a sensational effect, and how to stir up the congregation into a euphoric state accompanied by tongues, shouting and "spontaneous" praise. (For sure, post-Toronto charismatic worship was noticeably rowdier!)
This in turn highlighted another concern with worship: Individualism. There was little sense of the corporate, the whole. The words of the songs only ever encouraged introspection and self-absorption. They were all about intimacy, "just me and Jesus". This was mirrored by the approach from the platform: "Just do whatever you feel like… Don’t worry about the person sitting next to you… If you want to dance or shout or sing in tongues, go ahead… Forget everyone else." This was in stark contrast to Paul, who rebuked the Corinthians for worshipping in precisely that way, without regard for each other, concerned for their own edification but not their neighbours’. There was little evidence of the realization that we had come to worship the Lord together.
I was also finding that many of the songs I simply couldn’t sing in good faith. "These are the days of Elijah," we would sing, going on to describe a dramatic endtimes restoration, but such a scenario was just part-and-parcel of the dominionistic, triumphalistic teaching I was starting to reject. "All the weaknesses I see in me will be stripped away" was another one, but it dawned on me that God might choose never to remove some of these weaknesses this side of eternity. But charismatics and Pentecostals had seemingly little room for weakness and suffering in their thoughts. Many of the songs would be of a quasi-mystical nature, exhorting us to climb to higher heights and plumb deeper depths, but I was beginning to question whether I wanted to keep carrying this relentless burden always to be trying to progress towards God, to become better spiritually, to become somehow more acceptable to God.
Weekly chapel meetings were rapidly becoming a chore. I would prepare myself to praise the Lord, to sing about what he had done for us in Christ, to join with other believers in celebrating the grace of God, but every time I would feel thwarted in my attempts by a barrage of inane choruses whose main purpose seem to be to get me to stop thinking about the gospel, to forget about everyone else in the room, and just to wallow privately in some vague feeling of closeness to God.
Finally, there came the prophetess. This was the final straw for me, and sealed my fate as far as my continuance in the charismatic life of the college to any degree of enthusiasm was concerned. The prophetess had visited a number of churches and conferences within our denomination, and I had heard many wonderful things about her. She was said to pick people out of the audience at random and prophesy about them on the spot, relaying many fantastic and apparently accurate details about them, and making predictions about their future ministry. When she was booked to come and host a conference for the students, she was greeted with rapturous excitement.
I was so disillusioned with college life that I did not attend her first meeting, an evening workshop designed to coach students in how to prophesy. When it was over, however, my roommate returned to the apartment feeling elated. "Prophesying is so easy, you know," he told me. "I think I could go up to anyone I didn’t know on a bus and just start prophesying to them." Naturally, I was a little taken aback by such a bold declaration from a student who had never made such claims before.
He gave me an account of how that evening’s session had gone. The prophetess announced that they would be dividing into groups of, say, five persons. Four of them would surround the remaining person in a circle. The one in the middle would be prophesied over. Three of the four would speak out whatever images or pictures came into their head ("Doesn’t matter how silly or ridiculous it sounds," she said, "Just speak out"). The last remaining person would put all the pictures together and deliver an interpretation for the person in the middle. The prophetess pre-empted the question of how the participants could be certain it was really God speaking by referring to Matthew 7:11 "Which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? … How much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!" Thus, if they prayed and asked God for a prophecy, they were guaranteed that no matter what strange pictures might pop into their heads, its source was God.
The experience of my friend’s group had gone something like this: One person saw a tree; the second person saw a candle; the third saw the sun; the interpretation was figured to be that the person being prophesied over was like a tree, and when the sun came up she would grow, and would become like a light to people. I got the general idea. This way of doing "prophecy" was not a new concept to me. A few years earlier I had waited in line by a platform at Bible camp ready to take the microphone and announce to an audience of five hundred young people what I had seen when I closed my eyes (in reality the back of my eyelids, a very hazy mixture of light and shadow I decided looked like a ribcage!). Back then, I had been given exactly the same advice: No matter how silly it sounds, say it. Luckily the meeting had ended before it came to my turn!
I was incensed that my friend had been duped into taking his own imaginations for the voice of God, and that as a result of this seminar he had the confidence to want to go out immediately and dupe the rest of the unsuspecting world. I could not think of a better way of leading people into self-deception than encouraging them to elevate their own imaginations to the level of God. I decided to check out the prophetess for myself the next morning when she was scheduled to speak at chapel.
Needless to say, I was unimpressed. She gave a few prophetic words about various countries of the world, and then proceeded to relate a series of visions and revelations she and her daughter had had on the subject of the wealth of the wicked. Just as I had heard John Avanzini, Creflo Dollar and Benny Hinn tell me a few year earlier during my passing infatuation with the Faith movement, this lady told us that the world’s wealth was ready to be passed into the hands of believers. Pretty soon, she predicted, all the businesses, financial institutions and governments would be dominated by Christians. Every bank manager would be a born-again believer. The biggest companies would be owned and controlled by Christians. In other words, the world economy would be in the hands of the Church. At one time this notion was merely a "teaching" which could be refuted by a quick examination of the Scriptures being cited in its support. Now it was "endtimes prophecy", and God’s prophets all over the world were getting the same message, apparently.
It was more than I could stomach. Mainly on the basis of her accurate "words of knowledge", the majority of the students and faculty were swept up in enthusiasm for the prophetess. Everyone was talking about it. She was booked for further seminars and meetings, and plans were being made for her to return the following year to teach an entire module on prophecy.
I was not the only dissenter. A few other students had alerted me to their alarm over what was happening, and where the college seemed to be heading as a result. Others had been on a similar journey to me, gradually losing their passion for charismatic Christianity.
The individualism, sentimentalism and subtle legalism of charismatic Christianity was becoming apparent. By the end of that second year of Bible college, I was on my way out of things charismatic. I felt foreign to the spiritual talk of my charismatic friends who seemed to be inhabiting a different world from me, a world where revival was just around the corner, where new waves and moves of God were coming along all the time and our obligation was just to go with the flow, getting deeper and deeper into the river of God (by now a favourite charismatic metaphor for this strange "new thing" God was apparently doing). It seemed to me that the new fads that came around regularly – first spiritual warfare, then Toronto, and then a few years later Tommy Tenney’s mystical "God-chasing" – were increasingly defining what it meant to be a charismatic. It was no longer enough simply to be interested in following Jesus and being led by the Spirit day by day. You had to jump on whatever the latest bandwagon was to come along. Apostles and prophets, endtimes rtevival, wealth transfer – if it was in vogue, you had to get with the programme. That was the legalism of it.
In my third and final year I declined to worship regularly at a Pentecostal church. Instead, I sought solace in the local Anglican church. It was a breath of fresh air for me. The liturgy was rich and meaningful, centred around the proclamation of what God had done in Christ, and designed as a corporate response to the gospel, an act of worship the congregation could partake of together. When I took the bread and wine, I felt I had been truly fed, that Christ had truly met us in the Eucharist. It did not matter to me that the same words were repeated week upon week, for it was full of significance for me, and provided exactly what I needed: A regular reminder of the love of Christ, a fresh proclamation of the simplicity of the gospel. It was the perfect antidote for a young man who had grown tired and exasperated by years of sitting, standing, waving, wailing, performing in charismatic services. It sustained me through that difficult final year of Bible college.
10:10:53 PM
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My story (Part II): The Toronto Blessing
1994 was a crucial year for charismatics and evangelicals worldwide. It was the year that the strange phenomenon known as the Toronto Blessing first began to appear on the scene. At the close of one of our morning services sometime in spring of that year, our pastor brought to our attention a newspaper article from the previous week. It concerned a church in Loughborough, England, where at the conclusion of a Sunday meeting an unprecedented move of the supernatural had occurred, comparable to the events of the day of Pentecost. Congregants were overcome with laughter, many were apparently prostrate under the influence of the Holy Spirit, and the power of God was so strong that the service continued some hours past its usual finishing time.
Over the course of the next few weeks, reports began flooding in of this new "move of God". Within a couple of months, churches had sprung up everywhere advocating the life-changing effects of this revival/renewal (charismatic commentators were soon engaged in discussions as to which of the two terms was more appropriate). "Hotspots" of the current move appeared, churches noted in particular for the abundance of manifestations and late-night meetings, often on most nights of the week. Speakers and evangelists were travelling from church to church to impart the blessing; teams of people were sent out from revived churches to pass on the experience to other churches; ministers and prophets from the Toronto Vineyard Church, where the Toronto Blessing had first erupted, were travelling worldwide to explain the revival, connecting it for their hearers with various prophecies and predictions, some of which were reputed to go back several decades, and of course to bring others into this intense experience for themselves.
Our little church, which, for the six or so years I was there, oscillated between about 20 and 60 members, was no exception. We had visiting prophets, teachers and evangelists from every corner of the country. The first of these was a minister from that first church we had heard about in Loughborough. His sermon was replete with testimonies of strange, but fruitful, happenings at his own church, and he offered something of a primer on what sort of unusual manifestations we should expect when the Holy Spirit comes. His rather superficial exposition of Acts two emphasized two factors: On the day of Pentecost, the disciples saw something and they heard something. All of this, of course, was merely a preamble to what everyone was anxious to see and participate in: The outpouring of the Spirit itself.
In general, people were not disappointed. The preacher personally laid hands on most of the congregation that night, and as we had hoped, people fell over by the dozen. When he reached me, however, I simply did not respond as I was expected to. After much earnest pleading with God to come and touch me, still nothing had happened, and the preacher eventually left me with an anecdote about a man who mined for days and days and before finding the treasure he was searching for. In part it was an apologetic defense designed to assure me that something would happen in the end, even if nothing dramatic seemed to be happening there and then. I couldn't escape the uneasy feeling, however, that the preacher himself was rather embarrassed, though he went to great lengths to assure me otherwise.
Nevertheless, I was soon to enter the revival full-swing. Early in the summer of 1994, our church organized a bus trip to a large charismatic church in Leicester, one of the hotspots of the Blessing. We arrived about half an hour late for the all-day session, and consequently missed most of the short message that was preached. I was subsequently told that we had missed an impressive demonstration of the Blessing: The leader had announced that as he handed his Bible to another man on the platform, this man would fall to the ground under the power of God, a promise that was duly fulfilled. We were there just in time for the worship, which consisted of several slow, intimate choruses. It was announced that anyone wishing to be touched by the Lord should come forward and be prayed for.
I could not refuse, and stood at the front (actually, almost half the entire hall had been cleared for "ministry") as I watched people succumb one by one to an almost irresistible power. I was beginning to worry how I would later explain myself when I didn't follow suit, but I need not have fretted: The leader's hand had barely touched the top of my head when I instantaneously felt as if my legs had been kicked away from under me, and was lying on the carpet in a state of euphoria. So this is what it's like, I thought. This was pretty exciting stuff! I swore to myself I wasn't even expecting to fall, but my legs literally gave way, seemingly without my consent.
The day's schedule continued until about four o'clock in the afternoon, a good six hours in all, including one hour for lunch. Only brief snatches of teaching were given. Mostly, the day's events comprised much gentle worship and repeated altar calls to receive more of the Blessing. I responded perhaps four or five times, and each time the result was the same: "Carpet time," as it became popularly known. On one occasion a minister simply blew on me with the words, "Receive it," an echo of Jesus' words and actions in the upper room (John 20:22), and also a familiar technique with healing evangelists such as, most famously, Benny Hinn.
Other reactions, though not from me, included uncontrollable laughter, one of the distinctive hallmarks of the Toronto Blessing. In particular, I recall a young lady in a wheelchair cackling away in a manner resembling that of Woody Woodpecker! Some of our own group caught the laughter as well, much to the amusement of the staff and customers of a service station we stopped at on the way home, where they simply could not contain their hysteria.
The day provided a much-needed boost to my now waning spiritual life. My zeal and passion were restored, and I had a new experience of God which I longed to be repeated. And it certainly was, time and again over the ensuing couple of years. Any opportunity I had to receive "more" (a watchword of the movement, often repeated like a mantra over people during prayer) was welcomed. Sometimes I would fall backwards, sometimes forwards, sometimes straight down; sometimes I would have to have someone there to catch me, occasionally not; sometimes it happened as the result of praying over me, sometimes before they even got to me, or during ordinary worship. A pattern began to emerge: I would get blessed, run off on a path of spiritual euphoria, then would sooner or later begin to lose momentum, at which point I would feel I was becoming spiritually stagnant, backsliding even; but within time I would have another experience and be set in motion again. The "dry" times were periods of guilt when I was convinced I was at fault; the refillings were occasions to thank the Lord and promise not to let the fire grow cold this time. It always did eventually.
The Toronto Blessing was a source of immediate controversy within evangelical and charismatic circles. Many charismatics could not understand how any true Christian could fail to see that it as a clear sign of God's blessing; others thought it was just another example of charismaniac lunacy; still others labelled the whole thing the result of psychological manipulation or, worse, demonic deception. Within months, churches had split, reputations had been made and destroyed, and the Toronto Blessing and all its associated phenomena (whether for or against) had become the defining issue for evangelicals.
I had experienced its power firsthand, of course, and was eager to defend its legitimacy. I wrote an article for our church newsletter in favour of the Blessing, mockingly deriding anyone who dared question whether it was really God at work. Even within our small church there was divided opinion, though most were happy to embrace it. Throughout that year, we continued to receive visits from leaders and speakers associated with the Blessing. On one occasion, a "prophet" came and delivered words of prediction to various members of the church (some of which later appeared to be stunningly accurate), before going on to dispense the Blessing. I will never forget the sight of one of our elders reeling around supposedly "drunk in the Spirit". Clinging to a pillar to support himself, and giggling away childishly, he was watched by an amused and entertained congregation. Later, the same "prophet" tried to provoke the elder's daughter to the same reaction, even forcibly pushing her down in an attempt to make her stagger or drop, I am not sure which. Her stifled laughter only reflected an obvious embarrassment, which I shared.
I never expressed these reservations, and continued to pursue more of these experiences. A large Pentecostal church in the town next to us had enthusiastically greeted the Blessing, and had become something of a hive of charismatic activity itself. They hosted a number of conferences featuring many of the prominent names in the revival, such as Marc Dupont (the Toronto church's resident prophet, who lays claim to having predicted this strange outpouring) and RT Kendall, one of the Blessing's most vigorous advocates on the British side of the Atlantic. I attended as many of these conferences and seminars as I could, hungry for God, and desperate to keep the spiritual momentum alive.
The format of most of these gatherings was predictable but exciting: A session of testimony, preaching and prophecy would be followed by "ministry". Chairs would be cleared from the front of the auditorium, and people would be invited to step forward to receive prayer. As the band led people in a time of worship (in popular charismatic parlance, "praise" is fast and lively, where "worship" is slow and intimate), the "ministry team" would make their way around the crowd, usually two to a person, and the laying on of hands would swiftly be followed by the person falling to the floor, "slain in the Spirit," or being overcome with hysterical laughter, tears or a state of spiritual intoxication. Certain catchphrases became a part of the routine: "Touch her, Lord, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes," was one such stock phrase; "More, Lord, more," was another.
In my case, such "slayings" were becoming less frequent, and this absence of dramatic phenomena was becoming an anxiety for me. Often someone would pray for five minutes or so before subtly gesturing for another member to come and join (the clear implication, though always unspoken, was "I need help here: This one's not budging!"). When it became evident that nothing was happening, I would be entreated: "Don't resist... Don't resist... Just let it come." This, of course, only ever had the effect of making me even more embarrassed and anxious for something to happen. Soon would come the assurances not to worry if there were no visible manifestations; but the ever-lengthening and increasingly intense petitions for the Holy Spirit to do something seemed to contradict this notion that "the manifestations aren't what's important." Often, a change of technique was called for on the part of the person doing the praying. The pray-er would suddenly bellow out, "Touch!" (another buzzword) after a prolonged silence, which would naturally tend to arouse some startled reaction! Or the hands would switch from the top of the head to the back or the side, occasionally the belly (the source of the anticipated laughter) or, in extreme cases, the forehead, which had the effect of causing one to lose one's balance, especially if the eyes were shut. Eventually, if all else failed, I would receive the customary promise that the inner work was the really important thing, regardless of any impressive outward signs. Such a blithe assurance seemed at odds with the frantic attempts to make something significant happen, however.
So I would return to my seat trying unconvincingly to talk myself into believing that the Spirit was at work in me despite how things looked on the outside. It was often enough just to watch everyone else being blessed. The scene often reminded me of that famous image from Gone with the Wind when Scarlett O’Hara walks through streets strewn with the ailing bodies of hundreds of wounded soldiers. I would have to step over a number of prostrate bodies to get back to my seat.
Back at my own church, the renewal had failed to take off in quite the way my pastor had hoped. When visiting preachers came, the Holy Spirit apparently came with them. Other weeks it appeared to me an embarrassing, uphill struggle for the pastor to duplicate the same heady, charged atmosphere.
[To be continued]
8:33:58 PM
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My story (Part I): Into the charismatic movement This is the story of my journey into -- and back out of -- the charismatic movement. It will appear in several parts, mainly to make it more easily digestible for you, the reader. The bulk of it was written about eighteen months ago. When I began writing, I don't think I was entirely aware just how far I was going to journey away not just from the charismatic movement, but from conservatism and evangelicalism as a whole: There is much more to tell. This inadequate and incomplete account, however, will give you a glimpse into the world I was part of, and where my faith-journey has taken me.
At the age of about eleven I had my first taste of the charismatic movement. As I watched TV one Sunday evening, a TV host, who regularly entertained his audience with clips of bizarre and outlandish footage from television shows around the globe, played a few minutes of a typical large-scale charismatic healing meeting. The evangelist laid his hands on people who instantaneously, and seemingly miraculously, reacted by falling to the ground. Avuncular, white-gloved gentlemen in red evening jackets caught the swooning participants and laid them carefully on the floor. It was quite unlike anything I had witnessed before, and I had no idea at t | | |
