01.26.09
Why I Am Not Charismatic
I think I probably still believe in everything the Charismatic church teaches. While much of the Church catholic1 suffers under a brand of philosophical materialism2 that impoverishes their view of God and man alike, this cannot be said of the Charismatic church. There is another thing the Charismatic church has gotten right, and perhaps it’s the only thing that needs to be gotten right: the primacy of spiritual communion with God. This is my core conviction, which has led me into, and out of the Charismatic church.
I have two additional convictions, however, that deprecate rather than recommend, the Charismatic church to me:
First, I believe that God is big. I very much dislike—I will even use the word despise—the careless attribution of such ambiguous adjectives3 to God, so I will elaborate. As humans, we very much like drawing sharp lines of distinction. We assimilate knowledge by defining, comparing, contrasting, placing in neat categories everything we encounter. God defies and defeats these processes—He cannot be known about but only known.
God has shattered the categories I learned in the Charismatic church. A man raised from the dead or made to see by the power of God is a miracle. But so is a newborn baby. And so is the sun rising day after day. The categories of prophecy and revival and gifting, have been overwhelmed and destroyed and I am left only with the conviction that God is active in this world to an extent I cannot comprehend, and in ways I cannot imagine.
When I pray, I do so believing that God answers prayer, and that it would be foolish for me to tell Him how to do so. When I listen for the voice of God, I know He will speak—in a still small voice, through my friends or my circumstances, through a talking ass, or in some way I’ve yet to experience or imagine. And when I fail to listen, I know He will patiently wait for and with me. I am in love with and in awe of a God who is found in and yet is bigger than speaking in tongues or being slain in the Spirit or delivered of demons.
Second, I believe that we as Christians, stand in the context of the Church catholic—the universal Church; the past, present, and future; the living and the dead. The Charismatic Church, as a cult4, has ignored this to their detriment. They fail to realise that God has always given Himself and His gifts to those who love and seek Him—be they borderline-heretical sects like the Montanists, Roman Catholic ascetics like the Carmelites, fornicating bumpkins like those at the camp meetings of the Second Great Awakening, Hippies like the Jesus People, or modern day Charismatics. Many Charismatic pastors fail to study Theology and Church history, or, having studied them, do not teach them, thinking their parishioners will find them uninteresting or irrelevant.
Not only have they failed to learn about or acknowledge what God has done in the world between the book of Acts and and Azusa Street—they have also ignored much of what He has done since then. Any move of God that doesn’t involve religious enthusiasm5 fails to qualify as revival and is cast aside.
God has moved, is moving, and will move in ways that escape our observation or interest, in ways that break our paradigms, and in ways that flat out offend us. I don’t want to miss anything God is doing.
- In this context, ‘catholic’ with a little ‘c’ means universal, not Roman Catholic.
- This refers to denial or minimization of spiritual realities, not the pursuit of material wealth
- We should be very careful what we say about God.
- Cult, in this context is a technical term for a religious group. I’m not saying the Charismatic church is a cult in the profane sense of the word
- Another technical term describing an intensified emotional state brought about either by the Holy Spirit or by the group dynamics of certain religious activities. Charismatic stuff.