Let me tell you a few short stories.
Maybe five years ago, I stood in the front of a church, praying with a young woman who was crying her eyes out. She explained to me the pain she experienced as a result of her scoliosis. This girl must have been 15 or 16 years old; she didn’t understand why her young body was harboring such constant pain.
And it’s not like I had an answer for her. And it’s not like I could do anything to help other than to ask God to become involved in the situation.
So we prayed a simple prayer. It was all of ten minutes before this young woman was free of pain, her back as good as new. And I can’t tell you how or why God answered that prayer, but simply attest to the fact that He did.
Okay, so that was short enough, right? I have some others of this nature.
I remember standing in a small kitchen of a suburban home, praying with a man I hardly knew. I don’t remember his name, just that he was a bigger guy with a beard, probably in his early forties, and his hands were covered with these large calcium deposits. Besides the pain they caused him, I imagine he was most disrupted by the embarrassment of having numerous large bumps on his hands that could not be easily ignored. These things were substantial in size, and, to be completely honest, somewhat disgusting.
I had been asked to pray with the gentleman, and, as we prayed, I literally felt the calcium deposits falling off his hands. Not hitting the ground or coming away from his hands – just collapsing into oblivion.
(And yes, I realize how bizarre that is.)
As we concluded our prayer, the guy for whom I’d been praying was as perplexed as he was thankful. It was weird, certainly, but it happened.
Okay, here’s one more: Maybe five years ago, I was in the back of a church service, keeping to myself as many other members of the congregation sang and a few prayed together in the front of the church. I’m not sure what happened, but one thing led to another (I say this so casually…) and a teenage girl was on the floor, quasi-rolling around, in a bit of a frenzy.
One might have thought she just needed an intermission for some sort of holy aerobics, except for the deep growling voice that was coming out of her body.
There was no way that body was producing that voice.
As some sort of demonic presence tortured this girl, the people around her began doing productive things – like screaming at her to stop. (Sarcasm; that’s probably not productive in any way.) I made my way to the front of the sanctuary and prayed over her. I had a very short conversation with this demonic being, and it left her.
It had no other choice.
The girl was suddenly overwhelmed with peace – can’t imagine why – and in response to the dramatic ordeal committed herself to following Yeshua. (Sidenote: So as to warn you from falling into a theological trap that many do, I want to clarify that I’ve seen these same things happen with people who couldn’t be more Christian, more “saved”.)
Thanks for listening to three short stories. There are probably twenty or thirty more where those came from; maybe we’ll unpack those another time.
I love telling people about the kindness and power of God, but, coincidently, it’s usually the proclaimed Christians who have the most negative responses to what I think are great or exciting stories (or snippets of stories).
There is a propensity within Western(ized) Christianity to hear stories of this nature and do one of several things with them.
First, we might question the veracity of the account and the sanity of the folks involved. The person relaying this story must be exaggerating or something. Or maybe things were staged. I’ll bet that’s it: the persons involved are probably some sort of wonder-working magicians.
Go ahead, cry voodoo.
Maybe I would do the same if it weren’t for the fact that I was present for the aforementioned instances. And not only was I a witness, I was participating in all of it. And I assure you, there is nothing up these sleeves, save for arms. And I honestly don’t know a single card trick.
I’m just some guy who sits around playing guitar and watching a lot of ESPN (which, in case you are culturally ridiculous, has to do with professional sports and not telepathy).
Just some guy who prays, who is trying to take Jesus up on the entirety of His offer.
We live in a culture that needs to understand something to believe it. If we don’t get it – if it’s not within our cognitive grasp – then we feel inclined to diminish or dismiss it.
Think about it: we do this with most of our problems, collective and individual. We love diagnoses in American culture, and we love our meds. Maybe it’s the relief – albeit a false one – that comes with diagnosis. We feel figured out. And with that comes the belief that someone is identifying with us, whether it be a doctor, a psychiatrist, or the 387,453 people who share our disorder.
I could walk into a psychiatrist’s office, and, within minutes find out that I have more mental illnesses or disorders than Sam Adams has ales.
(In case you’re unaware, or possibly fighting the prohibition crusade, Sam Adams, at my last count, has 27 different ales. Summer Ale and Brown Ale are superior among the others. Don’t drink if you’re not of age.)
How is this dire crisis addressed? Well, by swallowing Pill X, I counter-balance Problem X. By taking my daily dosage of Med Y, I will be spared of the noticeable effects of Illness Y. And by building an addiction to Chemical Z, I’ll be broken of my dependence on Substance Z, a far less socially acceptable thing on which to depend.
If I take all of this seriously, next thing I know I’m downing half of a medicine cabinet the way a third grade boy inhales a Pixy Stick.
O joy of all joys: I’ve been regulated.
Please understand that this isn’t a bash against medication; I’m not saying that God can’t or doesn’t use medicine to help someone with problems, mental or other. Please don’t attempt to back me into a corner built by generalization. But seriously, let’s admit that we’ve become a people of pill popping and not of prayer, a group of proclaimed Christians who are predisposed to pay weekly homage to our legalized drug dealer. There is something seriously wrong with that picture.
Western church culture is less interested in fixing problems than in hiding the proof or symptoms of those problems. It’s a matter of what came first; we’re attacking our problems at their branches (symptoms), rather than at their root. Why? Because the average American Christian is not a spiritual person.
Yes, I meant to write that. And in case you missed it the first time, or are questioning whether I’ll stand behind that statement, I’ll do us all a favor and repeat myself:
The average American Christian is not a spiritual person.
We’re not taking Jesus up on the entirety of His offer. And we sure aren’t taking him seriously when he demonstrates firsthand the way the Kingdom of Heaven is supposed to minister to a world in need.
No, we pull a Thomas Jefferson and skip the miracle accounts in Scripture. ‘That stuff was only for Jesus, right?’ Wrong. But you could go on believing that, and living out that belief, and you’d be hard pressed to find a Christian who would stop you.
We misrepresent Jesus when it comes to problems in the individual, and we do the same when it comes to the much larger issues in today’s world.
Looking at present day issues like the denial of human rights in Darfur, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the threat of terrorism, Christians tend to fall into one of two groups: the Ultra-Natural and the Ultra-Spiritual.
The Ultra-Natural folks have zeal and no discernment. ‘Why pray when you can act? Act now!’ They end up running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to save endangered species and people in tropical climates. They’re often so concerned with people (it seems noble enough) that they forget to be concerned with a God who has better solutions to the problem than they do.
You can be so busy serving that you end up missing God.
So those are the Ultra-Naturals, but there’s also the Ultra-Spiritual group. These folks don’t lift a finger for much. ‘Why help a suffering person when Jesus is coming back?’ (Reading the two canonical letters to the Thessalonians might do much to help this group…) They think the answer to everything is prayer and prayer alone.
Enter Charles Finney.
Possibly the most influential person to nineteenth-century American church life, Finney was a revivalist preacher and social reformer in New York and Ohio, and head of the latter part of the Second Great Awakening. The core of Finney’s message was to connect the spirit of revivalism with the responsibility of the Church to uplift the troubled.
Finney certainly didn’t restrain himself from preaching about the power of the Holy Spirit. No, Finney’s message was centered on the notion that the Spirit’s power could enable a person to be changed into the image of God. That working power of the Spirit would heal problems of the individual, and equip the individual to meet societal needs.
And Charles Finney practiced what he preached.
Finney fought social norms and in his services allowed women to pray – something that was unthinkable in American churches at the time. Finney founded Oberlin College, which was one of the only places a woman could pursue a college education.
Finney’s revivalist services stirred people toward vigorously fighting the dominant societal injustice of their day – slavery. Those who were experiencing the changing work of God in Finney’s services became active members of the abolitionist movement, to such an extent that the revivalism associated with Finney is considered the groundwork for the abolitionist movement.
Finney’s philosophy in ministry was to deal first and foremost with the sinfulness of mankind, and he approached that sin with a strong understanding of the Holy Spirit’s power. He believed that large social burdens were merely symptoms – symptoms of the sinfulness and brokenness of this world. Finney believed that in approaching the heart with an unseen reform of spiritual power, the visible symptoms – the individual’s and society’s – would take care of themselves.
What if Charles Finney were around today? I wonder what he’d say to our over-natural diagnosis of human brokenness, and our over-natural approach to curing it.
Back to the story I told earlier, the one about the girl who was shaking on the floor of the church as the impossible growling voice came out of her young lungs. Wouldn’t it have been something if I’d have simply told her to calm down, or tried to feed her the right pill?
Or maybe I could have told her that I don’t believe in these spiritual things.
‘They challenge my lordship over reality, and so I choose to dismiss them. Sorry, can’t help.
Sorry, My God doesn’t make Himself present in today’s world. And He would never do so in a way that makes me uncomfortable – in a way that challenges my ability to calmly and cognitively rationalize my definition of Him and His work.
And anyway, why are you shaking on the floor, young girl? Don’t you know this is a church service, and that services are for four-point sermons and three hymns that make me feel cultured and aesthetic?
You don’t look too aesthetic, young lady.
And to tell you the truth, it’s a little disruptive. I know you’re hurting or whatever, but can you just sort of suppress that? Do you really have to make it so noticeable?
We’re trying to have church here.’
