Apparently, some of my Catholic readers believe that everything I write is somehow an attack on Roman Catholicism.
Let me suggest that perhaps the view from inside evangelicalism is a bit different than it is from outside of it. For example, when people are desperate to “experience God,” as evangelicals like to say, then religious experience becomes a collection of desperate measures to bring God down.
Courtesy of Youtube, here’s what I have in mind. Be sure: I am not making fun, I am simply showing you what happens when people are desperate for God to “show up,” and they don’t understand the Bible’s message about Jesus, where he is now and what he’s doing now.
And by the way, if you keep up with these things, the fascination with this kind of manifestation has gotten far more extreme in the years since this video.
And this happens all around me here in Appalachia.
Then listen to contemporary Charismatic prophet John Crowder explain his gnosticism in words that even middle schoolers can understand.
I read the dispensing Christ comments as a broad brush stroke, and while I understood the thrust to be a be primarily an evangelical critique, the language was certainly broad enough to be read as a Catholic critique. I assumed the secondary target was intended. If not, great. I apologize for the hypersensitivity.
Evangelical practice is almost totally unknown to me so I have nothing much to add on those points. Just a couple of questions, are these videos typical? When you say “far more extreme” I guess you mean a small group has more extreme practices?
I ask because I can find videos of extremes in Catholic masses from radical to traditional and they would tell you zero about the typical parish.
Very extreme example. Esp the snakes. But demonstrative of the point.
Thanks for the context – it helps. I thought the snake thing was pretty unusual.
I guess whether these videos are typical of Evangelicalism depends on how you define Evangelicalism.
I would say that this emphasis that Jesus is here to bless us, which in some way, shape or form is present in most of Evangelicalism (not just in the US or North America) constitutes a sort of slope, more or less steep and slippery depending on how extreme the emphasis, and how devoid of an awareness that we are here to worship God for who He is, not just for what He gives us.
These videos demonstrate what happens when the slope has got very steep and very slippery, and people have slid pretty far down it.
As to the target of Michael’s ruminations, my impression is that most of the time the target is Evangelicalism (understood very broadly); the only time I felt Michael was lashing out at Catholicism was when at a particular point in his and his family’s journey he was asking questions about Catholicism, and instead of calm, reasoned, objective answers got the high power “come swim the Tiber” routine from some folks.
If however, some of the criticism hits home for Catholics, I would say, “If the shoe fits, wear it!” Living in a country where despite massive secularization Catholics are still the largest religious group I have encountered enough Catholics whose views of the Sacraments (and especially the Eucharist) have more in common with magic or the way a slot machine works than with the sovereign work of God through His Spirit and His Church, and in that case some of Michael’s criticism can fairly be applied.
Video 1: THAT’s the “Toronto Blessing” I heard about? A contact of mine in Louisville told me about that being one of the weirder Pentecostal things going around a few years ago, but this was the first time I’ve seen actual footage.
Looks like something you’d expect to see in Haiti at midnight, except Legba decide to be funny and send animal spirits to ride de horses instead of de usual Loa. Sorry, guys, I cannot take anyone who’s into that seriously.
Video 2: Classic Holy Rollers getting carried away? Okay, they’re snake handlers. (Which in a lot of fiction is used as shorthand to indicate a rural Appalachian setting.)
Kind of strange, but compared to the antics in Video 1, they’re not extreme at all. And probably a lot more orthodox than Video 3…
Video 3: JOHN CROWDER? Isn’t this the guy who preaches about “Getting High Tokin’ the Ghost” on “Jehovah-Juana”, staggering around like he’s falling-down-drunk preaching about “Little Friar Tuck Bartender Angels — YOING! YOING! YOING!”?
His were the first “Crazy Preacher Videos” I saw getting emailed around, in the immediate pre-Lakeland days. Dude’s not High, he’s Crazy. Flat-out CRAZY.
Michael,
Do you think Crowder’s “theology” (it really hurts to have to use that word, but…) is more indicative of gnosticism or middle platonism?
I think you could just about teach a class in Greek philosophy in the first century from Crowder’s talk.
Platonism doesn’t draw quite the crowd as Jesus on weed.
Michael,
I highly recommend you read “Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia” by Dennis Covington. In fact, one of the people shown in your second video is mentioned often in the book. It’s a really moving book and I’ve posted on it at my blog at http://alexlsilva.blogspot.com/2008/07/193-snake-handling.html
Man, I am way too familiar with Crowder’s type of warm fuzzy feelings over obedience and faith. It’s a strain you find among us Pentecostals that’s supposed to be about seeking greater intimacy with God, but it rapidly turns into a church that spends all its time seeking the next fall-on-the-floor experience, and none of it ministering to one another and to the lost.
Confession time. I was overdoing it myself about a decade ago, coming forward to “altar calls” that weren’t about confessing Christ or sin, but were about receiving ecstatic experiences. They’re pretty common among Pentecostals. We do love our altar calls, but sometimes everyone’s a believer, so we mix it up: We tell people to come forward if they want to repent of something, or if we want to be closer to Jesus. Well, who doesn’t want to be closer to Jesus? (Actually, there are a few, but they don’t want to be the only ones sitting in the pews, so like the good little hypocrites they are, they come forward too.)
If you wanna be closer to Jesus, once you come forward they’ll have you sit there, pray a lot, and work yourself into an ecstatic trance; then they’ll come by and push you backwards, and you can continue praying on the floor till you’re done. Contrary to the skeptics, the Holy Spirit works with that method quite a lot. Sometimes He even does the pushing. Sometimes the reason you don’t get up is because He’s revealing a lot of stuff to you. And yes, sometimes it’s just people seeking a “holy” feeling they can connect with “experiencing God.” But I will argue that despite the existence of frauds and charlatans, there’s a lot more God there than the skeptics think. (And I could say the same for their churches.)
I participated in that activity quite a lot. For a while I was going forward at every single service. That is, till I went forward one day and the Holy Spirit told me, “What are you doing here?”
“Trying to get closer to You,” was my answer.
“No you’re not,” He said. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to feel…” I started to say, and realized that was wrong; I don’t need to feel Him in order to know He’s there. That’s not faith.
After sputtering out a few more sentence fragments that were equally, obviously wrong, I got up, went back to the pew, sat down, and never went forward for the “warm fuzzies” again. This, to the great consternation of various pastors who want everyone to come forward, and will accuse you of being hard-hearted or Spirit-resistant when you don’t.
The proper answer to God’s question (for me anyway) was “I’m here to minister,” not “I’m here to twitch on the floor.” If the power of the Holy Spirit doesn’t move us into ministry, we’re turning into 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 Christians: God may be empowering us to do it, but we’re not doing it, so we’re worthless.
Back to Crowder: Notice all the extra-biblical language that has to be invented in order to justify this practice. He can’t just say, “We’re doing this because some of us wanna be assured by physically feeling God’s presence; their faith is small, and God is meeting them where they are.” Nope, he’s gotta have a whole (questionable) theological rationale behind it. Thing is: they’re moving in small faith, claiming it’s big faith, and not growing. Uh-oh.
Serious question- and thanks for the journey report btw:
If Jesus never acted like this, how can anyone possibly say this is a result of the Holy Spirit?
Not only did Jesus not act like this, but no matter how I read the biblical text there is one conclusion I can’t avoid when I consider the earliest church: after the upper room experience the disciples left the upper room! They did not consistently try and recreate that experience.
I could only imagine some “leaders” “preachers” and “theologians” of our generation if they had been part of that experience. They would have tried to stay at God’s “special portal” and “get more of the Spirit,” sending letters to Corinth, Ephesus, and Philippi to “Come Get Some.”
I know you can imagine the Christianese right now, “Lord we just invite you into this place today, Lord God. And God, we just want more of your pillar of fire; release your pillar of fire in this place Lord. Fill us Father, we ask Lord God” (repeat ad nauseum no matter what God does).
Jesus didn’t act like this because Jesus didn’t need this experience. Others do. Or others think they do—like I did—and find out they really don’t. Unfortunately, they often go to the opposite extreme and say nobody needs this.
What it always comes down to is fruit. The Holy Spirit’s goal is to point to and glorify Jesus. If Jesus is being glorified, mission accomplished. If Christians are being mocked by skeptics and unbelievers… well, that happens no matter what, doesn’t it?
We just happen to find it more annoying when we’re mocked for something we don’t believe in either. Like the snakes and the rolling around. Or the people who think wafers magically turn into Jesus. Or the people who put full-grown adults into white robes and dunk them for initiation. Or those who think a dead guy came out of the grave, flew up into outer space, and is coming back any minute now to take over the world.
But again: Fruit. If the people are growing closer to Jesus, getting better at following His teachings, bringing others to Him, and demonstrating love, joy, peace, patience, etc. I say let ‘em play with all the snakes they like. If not, nothing they do, no matter how orthodox, makes any difference: They’re wrong.
K dub,
Paul once advised one of his churches to “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.”
That alone would make me question many of the experience driven seekers… and first paragraph of 12.
Back in the mid 90s I was an elder at a very middle-of-the-road evangelical church in Marquette, Michigan. A group of members traveled to visit the Toronto Airport Road Vineyard Fellowship and “experience” the blessing. They came back very excited and wanted to “import” the blessing to our church. They described the blessing as people barking like dogs, laughing uncontrollably and doing Chuck Berry imitations across the front of the church . . . and to them, it was an exciting thing.
Now the troubling thing, was the fact that I was the ONLY person on the elder board to question the experience. It wasn’t like the other elders or the pastor were “radical experience” inclined, but almost like a Post-Modern (everyone has their own truth) concept, they were irritated that I would even question “what God was doing in someone else’s life.”
I found that while that evangelical church was very, very critical of those outside the church, there was absolutely no accountability for those within. I couldn’t even discuss neo-Gnosticism or Platonic Dualism (where the physical emotions have no value so they have to be “spiritualized” and exaggerated them to have merit) because no one had a clue what I was talking about.
I ended up resigning my post over those issues and moved on. So what are they teaching pastors these days? Never to question an experience if someone claims it is from God?
I hope that experience was unique to that church.
Oh, I’m not saying don’t question the experience-driven seekers. Question everything. But don’t treat with contempt anything that might actually come from the Holy Spirit. (As Paul put it, at the end of 1 Thessalonians 5.)
I’m also not saying that Paul’s advice, to follow him as he followed Jesus, isn’t a bad rule of thumb. But you have to keep that in the context of 1 Corinthians 10:32: Don’t cause people to stumble. Don’t seek your own good, but the good of many, so that they might be saved.
Now, while you might say, “Exactly. The experience-seekers are seeking their own good; they’re selfishness-driven, and not following Paul and Jesus” —I am actually talking about those folks who reject the experience-seekers out of hand. What the experience-seekers are doing, quite honestly, weirds a lot of people out. So the knee-jerk reaction is to reject it, and quickly dig up scriptures to support the knee-jerk reaction, instead of doing what John told us to do, and test the spirits. (1 John 4:1) Which is much harder to do, and involves a lot more investigation than watching three brief YouTube videos, and listening to hearsay about how bizarre these people are.
I used to see this stuff many times a week when I was at a revivalist church. Lots of it weirded me out—’cause I wasn’t raised this way; I was raised Fundamentalist. But I had to resist the temptation to reject it for being weird, and to consistently apply the test, “What’s its fruit?” Were people coming to Jesus? Were they following Him? Were they reading their bibles and praying more often? Were they sharing Him with their neighbors? Were they, subsequent to the strange stuff, actually following Paul and Jesus?
Or were they following the strange?
Honestly, some of ‘em were. Our pastors didn’t do the best job at setting them straight, either; there really were too many people coming forward for them to correct the glory-seekers. Some of the pastors were glory-seekers themselves.
But don’t let the many bad apples get in the way of proper spiritual discernment. Just because there were false Messiahs in Jesus’s day doesn’t mean there were no Messiahs. There was, of course, Jesus. And just because people do goofy things to get the Holy Spirit to act among them doesn’t mean the Holy Spirit doesn’t, despite their sometimes questionable motives, act—and in so doing, fix their motives and correct their direction.
Unbelievable.
Un-freakin’-believable. Desperation is not exactly the word I would use.
I’m sorry that’s about as deep as I want to go with that.