Flesh and Spirit

Excellent post. I’ve linked to it from my blog.

I come from a charismatic/Pentecostal background and I believe God can do all sorts of out-of-the-ordinary things, but I also believe that most of the out-of-the-ordinary things we see in the church today have human origins, not divine. The trouble is, we are too often taught not to think critically.

Great post, thank you.
When I saw how long it was, I wanted to skim. Then I saw tantric sex in the first line and though, “OK, now THIS is probably going somewhere.”

Great stuff, man, thank you this insight.

Yes AnneD – I agree different personalities respond differently and probably need to – in that sense I think it would be a mistake to deny the authentication experienced by those who are inclined this way. Just because a human spirit produces a particular physiological response to the Spirit (similar to that found in secular or other religious situations) does not mean it is a false experience of the living God. I am grateful for the subdued, more internal, feelings of God’s presence that come to me from time to time; I know they are similar to what a secular person might feel when contemplating an orchid, but they are real for me and my place is to recognise this and be grateful.

I know others experience God in different ways; the exuberant guys are only a problem when they claim their way is the Real Way, and look for their style of response in others as authentication. (and exclude and even despise the rest)

Learning to recognise how God meets with me enables me to trust my emotions, my gut responses to something. So I can’t agree with SteveM – if someone has a regular spiritual practice of reading the Word, of prayer, of being with God’s people, and of taking opportunties to do good stuff in daily life – if thereby they are “walking by the Spirit” then I say – trust yourself! The good person brings good out of the good stored up – out of the heart the mouth speaks. Intuitive “right brain” stuff needs to be trusted if we are not to be paralysed by a need to logically work things out before we can respond

Cool post! Having spent a large percentage of my life on the more charasmatic side of Christendom it really does make me think about all the experience-based expressions I’ve heard like “feeling the annointing”, etc. One must ask what is it is one is feeling….

Richard

I remember once being involved in a wrap up meeting for a summer singing outreach that a group of local churches were doing. It was our 2nd and last one that summer.

The general consenses was that in this 2nd outreach, we didn’t really feel the spirit like we did in the first outreach. People were remarking how the spirit never showed up etc.

Anyway, it was at that moment that an Anglican minister, who had till this point remained silent (and usually did in these by times chatty meetings) spoke up and simply said that “The spirit was there because the spirit promises to be there when we meet together in God’s name. It doesn’t matter what you ‘felt’.”

simple – biblical – wise

I have since become an Anglican.

David, having alrady talked with you concerning the post, let me just add here that, after 36 years in such element of Christianity, I’ve learned that one can “learn” what is known as “the anointing”. I well know what you address here concerning what goes on within the Church. Tozer once said that the greatest blow the enemy ever struck was creating within the Church a fear of the Holy Ghost. He just didn’t live lone enough to see men usurp the reality and create a mistrust of the gift….

ah, the charismata and glamourous presence and powers of God can so easily become parlour tricks and selfish seduction when purloined by the demonic…i continue to find the wisdom of ellul to be one that walks through the valley of the radical middle when it comes to kingdom, charismata, prayer and our common christian cause…thanks for sharing david

I found this article on Flesh and Spirit intriging. I have not heard of these “manifestations” described in this way before, but I have always held them as suspect. I used to go to a church where some people would manifest something peculiar like speaking in tongues or falling on the floor. I hoped in my heart that it was not the Holy Spirit or that he would not manifest himself in me. However, it does raise a question for me; how does the Holy Spirit manifest himself? How can I learn to know when something is truly from him and when it is not?

I’m enjoying your insightful site.

i couldn’t find it yesterday, but your post made me think of benedict XVI’s first encyclical ‘Deues Caritas Est’ – God is Love…an excerpt:

Nowadays Christianity of the past is often criticized as having been opposed to the body; and it is quite true that tendencies of this sort have always existed. Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive. Eros, reduced to pure “sex”, has become a commodity, a mere “thing” to be bought and sold, or rather, man himself becomes a commodity. This is hardly man’s great “yes” to the body. On the contrary, he now considers his body and his sexuality as the purely material part of himself, to be used and exploited at will. Nor does he see it as an arena for the exercise of his freedom, but as a mere object that he attempts, as he pleases, to make both enjoyable and harmless. Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere. The apparent exaltation of the body can quickly turn into a hatred of bodiliness. Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility. True, eros tends to rise “in ecstasy” towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.

Julia, I e-mailed this to David earlier because of its volume; but, by his permission, I extend to you my own experience and thoughts on this subject:

“David,

This is the old man who fell into old-time holiness over 36 years ago with no previous religious affiliation other than a childhood catechism that was no more than a Lutheran “cloning exercise” leaving me with just about no real understanding of anything. My conversion at the age of 30 turned my life around; and yet I would tell you that, without the second experience, somewhere down the road the first might have been filed and categorized as no more than an emotional climax to a bad mess.

In those days, Pentecostals told you that, in getting “saved”, you received the Spirit, but not in its fullness. I, therefore, sought what they promoted, and I sought it in such manner as the Bible described it in Acts. How long, I do not remember; but one night, as I arose from the altar after much time in prayer, a fellow announced to me: “You got it! I heard you speaking in tongues!” My own reaction, though, was “That’s it? That’s all there is to this deeper experience I’ve been trying so hard to achieve?”

A few weeks later, lying flat on my back in bed, thinking of nothing but how good God was to save somebody as dirty as me, The Holy Ghost, the REAL Holy Ghost stepped into my prayer and I found myself outside my body, in my spirit, looking down at myself as something realized to be as pure as praise gets kept flowing out of my mouth. How long? I know not. Sitting up in bed, once more physically myself and finding the event was no dream, I was a bit startled, to tell the truth.

There have been other encounters along the way, if none identical to the one expressed here. I realize that there’s a lot of foolishness within that agenda as well. I’m under the opinion that the Charismatic movement, a decade or so ago, brought their version of Full Gospel into being, it just had to leave a lot of people disappointed somewhere down the road. But none of that dismisses God’s gift unto us.

Does everybody need to “get it” the way I “got it”? No. I’m just saying that, in spite of your guru, regardless of all the counterfeit hoopla that the Church, herself, has created, there is an assurance beyond that which we attempt to produce ourselves. Faith is not a balloon I inflate till it bursts and God has to give me what I want, but a Reality who lives within me and meets me when I surrender all to Him.”

Moves of God are funny things, i have space to respect that God moves, at times in power and at times beyond our understanding and experience. we cant always be prescriptive.Its helpful if we have had a sign post to at least reference it as we reflect such as Peter in Acts 2 where God has clearly kicked off big time and Peter is able to latterly draw a reference with ‘this is what was spoken by the prophet joel’.

In good english, a friend said the church is full of ‘Wa%kers’, in that we are frequently and primarily about ‘self love’ and not about multiplication of kingdom. I look on now at another experience strong move of God and struggle not to repeat the cycle of the previous generation who said, God only moves like he moved with us – this cannot therefore be god. Dangerous stand point.

The bottom line with it all is ‘where is the fruit’ – in individuals, in the body…. but hopefully, please god, getting beyond our seemingly endless pit of need to reach others, change society as we lay ourselves broken in service at their feet.
Good post – I hate anything that smells of Self Indulgence, which i think will always be present in the body when God is at work, and we seem able to try and conjur something up for entertainment when he isnt, sadly. but we will buy a building, nail our sectartian distinctives to the door concerning the vision we recieved in part, and shouted about like we saw it fully, called it a model, wrote a book and stopped playing games in the streets with people not as ‘in the truth – in the spirit = 2nd class christians’ and we went indoors to sing songs.
In balance i would say yes – demons – in some situations, but they have a habbit of manifesting when God is up to something. I guess you need discerning people who wont pray ‘more of you god’ when it isnt God. And Folks who will know the difference.

I do think a charismatic pentecostal etc etc (insert stream here) bunch of folks perpetuating what God says last in highly stylised ways, is different to a here and now move of God. We forget that these now, reduced to songs and managed spaces movement all had a beginning, what mess we make after those beginnings isnt something that negates that fact God was wanting to restore something to his people.
The trouble is the alters we build to hold us to a moment in time long after God has moved on. I long to keep in step with God, be in his seasons and do at least, hopefully, resist the urge to settle and give something a name.

What i do know, is that i cant be sure that im not still standing, fighting for what i fight for, as a fruit of the last move of God. In light of this, i will question, wrestle with ‘thinking all my discernement is cynicism’ when its probably just cynicism, ultimately i will enter in, trust God and be willing. But then, i have a degree of objectivity and am not a muppet who goes along with what the specialist or salaried noisy people say i should.

All the above probably means i dont want to chuck the baby out with the bathwater of what i dont like, am suspicious is human in origin and will seek to find the pure and the good, the wholesome and the godly….. less i miss the fruit or discourage others from it by my position and metaphors.

good one though
cheers

I believe “true spirituality” (or experience of God) is represented by sexuality, which raises the potential for confusion between the two. Then again, if “everything is spiritual” then sexuality is spiritual, which I believe as well.