Supernaturalism

Clash of the Titans

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SwordsmanBefore I begin this post, I want to point something out. Call it a disclaimer, but here it is:

  1. What follows is not based on any scientific assessment, merely my general impressions after surfing through many blogs, talking with folks from both sides, and my history from being in both camps.
  2. As general impressions, they do not represent all individuals in either camp.

Now, onto the observation….

This struck me just this weekend and it shows an intriguing divide in the Christians blogosphere and in our churches. What I noticed was this:

  1. On the issue of Halloween, Calvinists were regularly FOR Halloween participation, while Charismatics were regularly AGAINST it.
  2. On the issue of the appropriateness of Christians reading Harry Potter books, Calvinists were routinely FOR reading the Potter books, while Charismatics were routinely AGAINST the books.
  3. On the issue of spiritual warfare, what constitutes spiritual warfare for Calvinists becomes more an issue of waging war against falsehood (conceptual), while Charismatics consider spiritual warfare to be waging war against the demonic (personal).
  4. That differing perspectives on spiritual warfare may be the reasons why Calvinists and Charismatics are on opposite sides of the Halloween and Harry Potter issues.

Is this merely C.S. Lewis's assertion about the demonic fully realized? (That two errors exist on demons: too much attention and too little.)

Thoughts?

The Obligatory “Halloween Is Bad” Post

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Witch's brew“Halloween is bad!” said my son just the other day.

That wasn’t how I was raised, though. My good Christian mother went into overdrive to handmake our costumes. More than once as a child I won the best costume award at my school. That same creative spirit in my mother extended to me, and by the time I was in my teens I was winning awards for costumes I made myself. During the energy crisis of the 1970s, I dreamed up “Super Arab,” a kind of Snidely Whiplash-like character dressed in Saudi garb with a giant felt oil derrick on my back and a bag of phony Franklins that I would shove in the faces of parents and say, “Look who’s got your money now!” Those parents got a BIG kick out of that one.

If only I had known how that would turn out in the long run.

Anyway…

I’m one of those crazy ones who believes he’s witnessed the whole Halloween thing take a decidedly more nefarious turn. Despite some essays that Halloween is a most Christian holiday, and despite protests that this Christian event has been co-opted by neo-pagans, the fact remains: it’s been co-opted by neo-pagans.

So my wife and I, despite going out as kids pretty regularly for Trick or Treating, have given a thumbs down to Halloween. Our son has most definitely picked that up and he tosses off the “Halloween is bad” mantra without much coaxing from us.

Blame us if you will for being freaky charismatics that are constantly on the lookout for demons hiding behind this tree or that, but despite the fact that a lot of high-profile Christian bloggers have poo-poohed such anti-Halloween vigilance, I’m going to defend my position here with one bit of logic that no one is discussing: We’re not raising our kids for 2005.

What do I mean by that? Well, isn’t it the goal of every parent to raise their children for the future? Given what I’ve seen in the rise of neo-pagan practices in just the last twenty years, I’ve got to believe it’s going to get worse instead of better. Earlier this year I was drawn into a conversation on an Emerging Church website of some renown where the topic was whether it was possible to be a Christian Wiccan. Trust me, I never in a million years thought anyone would be trying to combine those two, but there you have it.

Compromise comes through the little things. One day your daughter is preferring to wear black all the time, the next thing you know she tells you she’s into the Goth scene, and before you can say “Transylvania!” she’s running around with kids who fashion themselves to be vampires, even going so far as to drink each other’s blood. Satan looks for chinks in the armor and he’s had a long time perfecting his technique.

Who knows what my son will confront twenty years from now? All I know is that I’m trying to prepare him for that day. If my wife and I have ruined what some believe to be just another attempt by the greeting card industry to make some more cash, then so be it. I’m willing to err on the side of caution. Twenty years from now when some worldwide bastardization of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism and whatever “-ism” they throw in the mix is masquerading as the new religion of the enlightened, I hope all children now being raised in Christian homes will have enough grounding in rejecting even the slightest hint of evil that the Lord will still find faith on Earth when He returns.

It’s going to cost something, too. Even now my son is missing his preschool Halloween party. That was a tough decision, but it’s a decision we made. We may not go to our church’s Halloween-alternative party, either, because I’ve never been a fan of Christians trying to redeem every worldly activity. Some things are best left rotten rather than trying to wash the stink off them and bring them into the Church. I’m still divided on that one. Ask me again on Tuesday.

I’ve got to admit that I do have some level of admiration for Christians who fire up the BBQ, hand out food and drinks, and try to use Halloween as an opportunity to witness to parents and kids trolling through the neighborhood. That fits with my image of Christians being the most hospitable people in any neighborhood. Still, I’ve got to wonder at what point we bag the whole thing because Halloween keeps taking one more step over the line.

Most people reading this today aren’t prophets, but I think that many of us know what’s coming down the road. Call me a prophet of doom, but I’m less encouraged by the day that things are going to get better rather than worse. Bunker mentality? Perhaps. But I think it’s wise to have one foot in the bunker right now rather than being a hundred miles away from it.

What’s happening to Halloween is just a symptom of a greater problem. As for me and my house, we’re going to serve the Lord. That doesn’t mean you can’t send your kids out Trick or Treating or dress up yourself as Mr. Incredible or Elastigirl if you want to and hand out candy. It’s just not something that’s worth it for us anymore.

See also: The Church and the Halloween Alternative Party

Curses

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Death and life are in the power of the tongue….
—Proverbs 18:21a ESV

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God.
—James 3:6-9 ESV

At a healing service about ten years ago or so, I was called upon by my church to help with prayer. As a prayer team leader, I was charged with making sure we met the prayer needs of the church while directing the trained volunteers who would pray for others after our meetings. That role was an uplifting ministry that I cherished.

The healing service began and all of us were praying with folks who came up front. After a time, the crowd thinned and I found myself alone. Only then did a small man dressed in a suit entirely in white approach me. He was timid, and with an Eastern European lilt he could only say, "Please pray for me."

When I laid my hands on him, I knew immediately that this man did not covet my prayers for a nice day. Asking God to reveal the man's true need, I couldn't avoid a word that kept coming back to me again and again: Curse. CurseSo I prayed that the blood of Christ would sever the power of all curses on this man's life. The instant I spoke this out loud, he began screaming and fell to the ground.

Being a prayer team leader, I swiftly summoned several others to come over and continue praying with me over this man. We prayed for about ten minutes and I witnessed his countenance utterly change from terror to peace. If ever I needed a video camera to record that kind of profound release in a tormented soul, that moment called for it more than almost any other I've witnessed in my life.

Talking with this man afterwards, he told me that back in his native country his mother had crossed the local sorceress, who responded by placing the entire family under a curse. The man's mother, pregnant at the time, later died in childbirth. The girl that was born was left profoundly retarded as a result of problems in delivery. The man's brother soon afterwards went insane and was institutionalized—until the country's asylums were dismantled in the wake of the fall of the Soviet Union. The man's father went blind a few years after his wife died and now rarely spoke.

In my years as a Christian, I've prayed for a lot of people, but there have always been times when people I've prayed for embellish their stories. However, as much as I was beginning to think that this little man standing in front of me now was perhaps adding to his tale, he silenced my doubts by leading me to the back of the church where his blind father, deranged brother, and mentally disabled sister sat as quietly as could be expected, the brother only occasionally muttering something unintelligible.

I was shocked.

I was also called away for another prayer need. Telling the man I wanted to talk with him more, I went back up front, prayed for the new need that had arisen, then immediately walked back to that broken family, discovering they had left quietly in the sanctuary's semi-darkness, only one of them finding release.

Too much "Evil Eye" for you? Not the kind of thing you've ever encountered? Well let me share a more personal story.

I got a call from a friend one night who was truly suffering. He'd come to the decision that he could not be a Christian any longer, and as we talked he confessed that the reason he was abandoning the faith was me.

No Christian ever wants to be the stumbling block for another person's faith, and I was taken aback by the comment, searching through every conversation, every encounter I'd had with this friend for as long as we'd known each other. Nothing I'd said or done to him was coming back to me.

Then my friend confessed that the reason he'd come to this decision was from noting all the rotten things that had happened to me in the years since he'd known me. I won't go into that list here, but my friend recalled every item on that list in excruciating detail, some of which I had never told him, but he must have gotten from other sources. He summed up his comments by saying that he could not reconcile how a Christian like myself, who had given everything up to follow Christ, could possibly go on considering what I'd experienced. If "God" truly existed, what kind of god could he be if he treated his own servants so badly, returning faithfulness with pain? My friend also wondered if I was merely deluded for pressing on in faith with a smile on my face and hope still in my heart. It was for these reasons that he could no longer believe anything in the Christian faith was true. I was the example that proved his deduction.

We continued to talk for hours after. Only later did I learn that our conversation had probably saved his life. But what I didn't know was what was going on in spiritual places because of what he said to me one humid summer evening long ago.

I think it was just today that I came to grips with his pronouncement. In some of my darkest times, what he said to me that night haunted me, and only now do I recognize it for the curse that it was. Only now do I feel like the black power of that comment has been rendered inert in the light of Christ.

How many of us are laboring under a curse someone glibly tossed out a decade or more ago? What words carelessly spoken—or even spoken with intent—have pinned us to the ground or left us flailing?

Many of you reading this are not charismatics; I understand that. But this isn't pew-jumping, bark-like-a-dog charismania, folks. Curses are a dark demonic oppression that gets called into use to destroy, undermine, hamper, and diminish the work of God in our lives. If we do not take curses before Him and let His Strong Right Hand shatter them, they can persist and wreak havoc.

Ask God today to expose curses that have been pronounced over you in your life. Some of you may have had parents that said things to you that have bound you in chains for years. Get those before God. Or you may have said things with a fire on your tongue that has burned people so fiercely that they can't get over it. Pray that out and let God show you who you need to approach in forgiveness. Too many of us speak carelessly and unleash things that can damage many.

Life and Death are in the power of the tongue. Therefore, speak life and not death. Our witness for the Lord depends on it.