Daniel Silliman, of the eponymously named blog, captures so much of the wackiness that was my childhood religion. This is what every Sunday and Wednesday were like in a Word-of-Faith church:
"We prayer there, rocking back and forth in our fold-out chairs . . . like mental patients confined to wheel chairs, rocking back and forth and praying.My dad said we would’ve swung on the chandeliers, but we didn’t have any. So we danced in our seats and on our seats and ran through the aisles around the building in a procession going nowhere. . .
We’d pray like that to exhaustion, until we’d slow down, calm down, still out into a mumble, tired by the fervor fever, worn out on the excess and you’d hear some sister sobbing and the usher at the door hissing by threes the One Name of Jezzusss, Jezzusss, Jezzusss. . .
Aaaaaa-men, and we’d rise to it, shouting Jesus Lord God Yahweh Jesus Amen Hallelujah Amen Hellelujah Jesus Jesus raising prayers to the decibel we called zealous."
I've never been able to take the Wicca-types seriously. Don't look for true paganism among a handful of patchouli-reeking LARPers gathered in a darkened city graveyard. . . REAL paganism is best found on the outer fringes of the Charismatic movement. Nothing else so captures the orgiastic loss of reason, the fetishism, the sensualism or the giving over to the Dionysian aspect of our nature than a typical Word of Faith miracle service.
Sadly, the largest Protestant church in Kiev is WoF. Imagine the cruelty of telling people making $60 a month that the only reason they aren't rich is because they don't give enough money and don't have enough faith.
Posted by Discoshaman at décembre 13, 2004 12:38 AM | TrackBack
nice use of "chthonian"
Posted by: Paul Baxter at décembre 13, 2004 04:16 AMPaul-
Thanks!
It's funny you should say that though, I was just about to change it to "Dionysian" when I saw your comment. :-) But they both fit the weird fringe of the Charismatics. . .
Posted by: Discoshaman at décembre 13, 2004 04:34 AM"the orgiastic loss of reason"
...isn’t confined to the Charismatic fringe, unfortunately. It’s rife across much of the apostate church. But none so perverse as atheist adherents, who in religious parody, embrace the tenets of the figure at the bottom of the political spectrum - in true bacchanalian fashion.
I thoroughly enjoyed your point on cruelty - the club of faith-questioned weighed on the scale of monetary contribution. That sits right next to the crime of Judas - as it is equally a great betrayal.
Posted by: Ron C at décembre 13, 2004 08:03 AMIt was a funeral at a WoF church that pushed me over the edge and in to Calvinism. Some of my friends' grandmother had died of stomach cancer, and at the funeral, the pastor said "Did V. die because she didn't have enough faith? I don't know." It was the most depressingly hopeless funeral I have ever been to. All of this woman's family and friends had this immense guilt because they thought that if they had just fasted a little more, had just prayed a little more, and just had a little more faith, she wouldn't have died.
Posted by: kathryn at décembre 13, 2004 08:23 AMThat is a very close description of the Pentecostal church of my youth whenever the "Holy Ghost moved". Every Sunday morning/Sunday evening/Wednesday night/revival service I fervently hoped that the Holy Ghost would "take over" the service because in these instances the 90 minute sermon was suspended and a prolonged free-for-all ensued. During the chaos of the "Spirit-directed service" my buddy and I snuck out the back.
Posted by: Sciolist at décembre 13, 2004 02:04 PMkathryn-
I had a friend who died of AIDS at our church, fully convinced he'd have been healed if only he'd had enough faith. Creepy. . . It's interesting that you and I started and ended so similarly. For me it was the pastoral abuse that finally led me out, and ultimately over to Calvinism.
Sciolist-
We all need to start a "recovering Pentecostal" support group or something. ;-) I know what you mean though -- whenever our pastor hadn't prepared, he simply "got a word" from the Spirit and dispensed with preaching in favor of miracles. . .
Ron C-
I think its symptomatic of our entire culture's drift toward postmodern ways of "thought". Many Charismatics can be viewed as the first postmodern Christian religion.
ALL and sundry -
Please note this isn't a blanket critique of all Charismatics and Pentecostals. Just a whole, whole, whole lot of them.
Posted by: Discoshaman at décembre 13, 2004 07:52 PMSometime, Disco, if you could find the time to do us the favor, here's something I'd really appreciate:
would you be able to blog something about a charitable and appropriate Calvinist attitude toward Charismatics? I figure having been on both sides, you can perhaps give a good, balanced view of what "they" have that "we" need, how it ought to fit with what we already believe, and what about them we *should* appreciate, even while validly critiquing what deserves it?
Obviously the WOF wackos probably don't have much that deserves appreciation, but if you've had some experience with healthier manifestations of the charismatic movement, I'd love the benefit of your wisdom on what about it we *shouldn't* be writing off or bashing, and how to communicate with charismatics in genuinely Christian fashion on the points on which we disagree.
Posted by: pentamom at décembre 13, 2004 08:28 PMpentamom-
That has to be one of the sweetest and most diplomatic rebukes I've ever received. . . ;-)
I'm happy to do such a post. Though honestly, there haven't been enough years gone by for me to write with perfect charity and dispassion about that section of Christianity. But it is something I've thought about lately, and I'm happy to give it a shot.
I had some good experiences with both Calvary Chapel and Sovereign Grace churches, so there ARE some positive things to be said.
Posted by: Discoshaman at décembre 13, 2004 08:45 PMDisco--
I never really moved beyond the fringes of the Charismatic movement--the church I grew up in was Southern Baptist with a pentacostal bent, and my family spent 3 1/2 years in a Charismatic church when I was little, but I think because my parents both came from a more fundamentalist background and because my dad had been to seminary, we never fully went along with the more wacky stuff. Though, on second thought things like singing "I want that golf course" because the pastor has some sort of idea building and expanding the church across the road onto land occupied by a golf course is pretty wacky. Looking back, I wonder if there's a correlation that the church was at it's wackiest right around the time that the pastor was refusing to deal with some sin issues in the church and was starting to attack people from the pulpit.
In the months leading up to those friends' grandmother's funeral (if you're from Sarasota you've probably heard of Victory Christian where it was at), I had been hearing a lot about Calvinism from reformed baptists at the church I had been attending at that time, and I wasn't particularly receptive to it. It hit me like a load of bricks "if I'm going to take what I say I believe to it's logical conclusion, this is where it ends up," and the only other option I saw was Calvinism.
Posted by: kathryn at décembre 14, 2004 03:11 AMIt seems to me that there are an inordinate number of former pentecostal types that have now asked Calvin into their hearts (borrowed from Sproul). In fact they appear to be the most fervent and effective apologists for Calvinism. It seems to me that if you want your kids to be reformed when they grow up you should find a good pentecostal or charismatic church to raise them in. ;-)
Posted by: Inkling at décembre 14, 2004 06:43 AMInkling-
That's so true. . . Even my old WOF youth pastor ended up becoming a Calvinist. While not universal, anti-intellectualism is endemic in Pentecostal circles. A lot of people end up thirsting for an expression of Christianity that is both Evengelical AND historical, and which loves God with the mind as well as the heart. . .
Posted by: Discoshaman at décembre 14, 2004 07:34 PMkathryn-
Summit Ministries in Colorado was a bit first step for me -- I argued against predestination with this nice Presbyterian homeschooler girl and she cleaned my clock.
As for Victory -- good old Pastor Sherman, a pastor with a bodyguard. Why? He says the Bible calls for it -- "touch not the Lord's anointed."
The golf course is a little wacky, but not as weird as trying to cast out demons from the fire alarm because it kept going off while we were praying at home group. Later in life I realized it wasn't the devil, but probably just a weak battery. . .
Posted by: Discoshaman at décembre 14, 2004 07:38 PMYour fire alarm story reminds me of the time when some of my friend's moms were having a prayer meeting at one of their houses and all of a sudden their eyes started burning and they thought it was an attack of satan and started praying against it and binding satan, when it was really their teenage sons playing with pepper spray in the next room because they wanted to see if it hurt.
I just realized, if Hollywood were to portray Christians in a movie doing the stuff we're talking about, most of the Christian right in America would be up in arms talking about how the movie was full of anti-Christian bigotry.
Posted by: kathryn at décembre 15, 2004 10:03 AMPlease don't leave out the Catholic church as another good source for Calvin Conversionists. A good number of my friends at church, including myself, were raised in the big C. church and like you we have very similar reasons for coming over to the reformed faith.
Posted by: Rong at décembre 16, 2004 03:10 PMThe problem is not just with those in the WOF camp. WOFers may blame their circumstances on what they have or have not done - confessing, rebuking, FAITHing, etc. But other evangelicals, when something bad happens, tend to ask "What did I do wrong?". They think that perhaps they didn't pray enough, didn't try hard enough, weren't good enough. And now God is either punishing them or removing his protection from them.
I wrote about this in a recent post, which is why Rong pointed me to this one. Thanks Rong!
Posted by: sozo at décembre 16, 2004 05:07 PMDisco,
Thanks for the link and the kind words.
Posted by: daniel silliman at janvier 8, 2005 07:10 PMHope this helps....read on
CHRISTIANITY MADE SIMPLE
By
Matthew D. Johnson
I am writing this to those who are already Christians and to those who may yet become Christians. For the Christian, this will make your life as a Christian as joyful as it ought to be as long as you allow yourself to have the freedom that Christ has intended for you to have. For the non Christian, this will help you to understand that being a Christian is a wonderful thing and not the loathsome burden that many (including some Christians) would have us believe it is.
What is a Christian? There is a short list of things that all Christians must believe. If you don’t believe one or more of these very basic points, you really have no business calling yourself a Christian. This excerpt from www.equip.org sums it up.
“First, we believe in the authority of Scripture, which is another way of saying that the Bible is God's inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word. It's the ultimate source for knowledge about God, as well as the definitive guide for our daily lives.Next we affirm the existence of a triune God or one God in three distinct persons - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This God is self-existent, eternal, unchanging, omnipotent, omnipresent, holy, righteous, and loving. God created the universe from nothing and He rules over His creation sovereignly including both human and angelic beings.We also hold that man is a physical and spiritual being who is created in God's image. But because of his sin or transgression, man has lost his fellowship with God. The extent of sin is so great that its effects continue to this very day in the form of cruelty, suffering, and death.By God's grace, Jesus Christ - Who is fully God and fully man - was sent to save us from our bondage to sin. We believe that Christ was born of a virgin, died for our sins, physically rose from the dead, and will one day return to judge the world and deliver His people. Faith in Christ is the only means by which mankind can escape eternal damnation and judgment.Finally, we recognize the church as God's ordained institution headed by Christ. The church is composed of all believers, and is organized for worship, for fellowship, for the administration of the sacraments, for spiritual growth and support, and for evangelizing the world.”
That’s it. How does a Christian live? Believe the things you just read, read your Bible and pray, fellowship in a local church that believes these basic things, and share your faith in Christ with others by living a decent life and being ready to share your faith in Christ verbally when God opens the door.
There are a whole slew of other minor doctrines that Christians get hung up on: hair length, clothing style, whether or not to consume alcohol, dancing, how Jesus will return, male vs. female clergy, how to be baptized, when to be baptized, etc. I used to get upset about these things myself, but not anymore. Once I came to the realization that most if not all of these secondary issues were open to interpretation and that even if I was wrong on one or all of these secondary issues, I still would not lose my salvation, I decided to live this way: if I have the choice between two ways to view a certain secondary doctrine and both choices are considered to be “within the pale of orthodoxy”, I will choose the one that makes my life easier. Since both cannot be proved to be better than the other, why not pick the one that is easier to follow? It makes sense to me. Life is hard enough without worrying about whether my hair is too long or not. I am going to list off various things that I have dealt with or things I have read about that other Christians have dealt with and give you my take on it. Hopefully, this will bless your life as a follower of Christ. I have to think this would be the way Jesus would want it when I read of His dealings with the Pharisees.
Abortion: it’s wrong. Don’t kid yourself. A human life is a human life. John the Baptist lept for joy in his mother’s womb. Only a human with a soul can experience joy. Case closed. Don’t get an abortion. If you have, pray for forgiveness and Jesus will give you new life. Crisis pregnancy is a good ministry to consult whether you have had an abortion or are thinking about it.
Alcohol: Good arguments on all sides. All would agree getting rip roaring drunk is a sin. I am like Jesus, Luther and Calvin in that I like a glass of wine (or even a beer) now and then. The best book on this subject is “God Gave Wine” by Kenneth Gentry.
Baptism. I think adult believers baptism by immersion makes the most sense, but you can disagree. The main thing to know is that baptism is required (Jesus said to do it), but it is not required for salvation. Kind of like my wedding ring doesn’t make me married, but I wear it to show my allegiance to my wife. If you believe in Jesus and don’t want to be baptized then you should doubt whether you are really saved. A real Christian would want to be baptized ASAP.
Bible translations: Stick with whatever one works for you. The best book on this topic is “The King James Controversy” by James White
Birth control: John McArthur has written the best piece I have ever read on this subject. Good Christians disagree on this, but all agree ending a life is wrong (abortion). I don’t have a problem with birth control and since there are good arguments on both sides, I have chosen to pick the one that makes my life easier and consequently I have 3 kids and not 10.
Church government/clergy: you can make a good argument for any type: congregational, Presbyterian, Episcopal, whatever. Some also argue women may function as pastors and elders. I don’t agree with that view as it does not seem to jive with Scripture, BUT many good Christians do believe it is ok for a woman to be a pastor and it is not an issue that affects salvation.
Creation vs. evolution: I see compelling arguments on both sides, but the creationist argument seems far more compelling. The first 11 chapters of the Bible (and therefore the rest of the Bible) don’t work if evolution is true so I choose creationism. I think the science behind the evidence for creationism is far better as well. Read anything by Ken Hamm.
Denominations: as long as yours jives with the “essentials” listed above, go to whatever church you like. I would not jump from church to church just because you disagree with some non essential doctrine, unless you really feel convicted. I love my church, but I don’t always agree with everything. However, the main things are there and I am able to serve the Lord and raise my kids there (plus the people are great) and that is good enough for me. If your church goes ultra liberal and abandons the essentials, it’s time to leave.
Divorce/remarriage: Again, best thing I ever read on this subject was by John McArthur. Don’t get divorced. God hates it, but if you do realize it is not the unforgiveable sin. Some believe you can get remarried, others believe you can’t, still others believe it depends on the circumstances. I like John McArthur’s view. Order it or do a Google search and find it on the Internet for free.
The end of the world: You have to believe Jesus is coming back because He said He would and He has not done it yet. Outside of that believe what you want. Just don’t try to predict when and realize it could happen any minute so live a holy and decent life. I personally like the Left Behind series myself, but there are other views as well such as amillenialism which are totally valid.
Free will vs. predestination: You got me. I don’t believe you can lose your salvation, that just doesn’t seem to make sense to me. The best book I have read on this is “Chosen, but Free” by Norman Geisler. You can believe what you want, but I think the truth is in the middle and no easier to understand than the Trinity (that means you cant understand it, it’s a God thing so don’t worry about it).
Hair, clothes, etc. Some take what Paul wrote about hair and clothing and run with it. I believe the standards remain: a man should look like a man and a woman should look like a woman, but those standards change from culture to culture, from age to age. A whore wore a veil in the Old Testament, but a holy woman wore a veil in the New Testament. In America, style does not define sexual identity as much as it used to so long hair, short hair, green hair, whatever. Just be a manly if you are a man and feminine if you are a female. If you disagree then disagree. It seems like a stupid thing to debate. Just remember most of the great Christian leaders of the past had long hair or even wore powdered wigs!
Home schooling: I have home-schooled and I have put my kids in public school. I went to a private school. I learned the “F” word at Bible camp. The bottom line is that whatever you do, your kids will be exposed sooner or later so you need to be engaged in their lives and live by example.
Homosexuality: it’s wrong. The Bible is clear. It can be forgiven like any other sin. Homosexuals are just like any other group of unsaved people and need you to be a good example for them to look to. Most of the homosexuals I have known have been very needy due to some sort of disruption in their childhood (divorce, molestation, etc) and having a positive Christian role model in their lives will often be the best way to lead them to the Lord.
The Lord’s Day: I think it is everyday. Some think it is Saturday or Sunday. Choose what works for you. I only have a problem with those who would say you are doomed if you don’t go on a certain day like Saturday. Nonsense. The main thing is that you should fellowship with other believers and take part in the Lord’s Supper often.
Music, dancing: Use your best judgement. I like some secular music. Most of it is garbage. If you can find secular music that is not vulgar, that’s great. Otherwise, there is a ton of great Christian music out there. If you don’t like dancing, then don’t do it. As for me, I am like King David in that I need love, liberty and disco (Newsboys).
Movies, television: same thing as music. I don’t like most of it. Some like Harry Potter, I don’t, you can make up your own mind. I prefer movies like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings which show a real good, a real evil and a real choice. My favorite movie right now is “Luther”.
Race: Read "One Blood" by Ken Hamm. And please don't be a racist and call yourself a Christian.
Self defense: Some believe in it, some don’t. I do. Jesus passed out swords in Luke and never condemned the military profession. If you want to get beat up while your wife is raped, go for it, but I bet she won’t be happy with you. As for me and my house, don’t come in uninvited.
Spiritual gifts: Speak in tongues, speak in English, don’t speak at all. This one is totally up to you. If someone tells you that you have to speak in tongues to prove you are saved or that speaking in tongues is of the Devil, ignore that person.
Tattoos and piercings: see the section on hair. My only advice is to think about it if you plan on making a decent living. I won’t judge you, but your boss might.
Tithing: Some believe it is mandatory, others believe it is whatever God puts on your heart. It’s your call. I think Christians should tithe, but if you need to buy food for the kids or you are behind on your bills, please don’t send your money to Oral Roberts. Use your head.
God’s will: God’s will is for you to live the Golden Rule and to tell others about Jesus. Just live and God will direct your path. The best book I ever read was…drum roll please …”Found: God’s Will” by John McArthur. As long as you are living a godly life, do whatever you want to do and you will be in God’s will. Don’t think so hard about it. He is in control!
I am sure I have left some topics out and please contact me if you have others that might be helpful. To sum it up, if you have the basics down, don’t sweat the rest. Life is too short and it won’t make a difference anyway. If you have accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, that is all that matters. Only He can save you and how you view all of these other doctrines really doesn’t matter from an eternal perspective. Enjoy life knowing that you will go to Heaven when you die and nothing can take that away from you. God bless.
Your brother in Christ,
Matthew D. Johnson
christianitymadesimple.blogspot.com