charismatic healing and applying scripture: two unrelated thoughts

On Charismatic Healing and Such

There is a problem in charismatic healing and experience where:

1) People often will demonstrate spiritual gifts in order to "go along" with the group or even "stand out" from the group.

2) Because the experience is utterly egalitarian in so far as it is a one-to-one relationship between the person and God, there are no intermediaries. This means that the group must establish rules of conduct even as Paul advised the people of Corinth in his first epistle to them. But because of this direct cause and effect relationship between God and people, it is hard to say that there is not a sense not unlike animistic cultures of magic where one is granted the supernatural abilities of God to wield and "use." Which gifts one is allowed to use by God are connected with ones status of relative favor by God and so, ones status among the rest of the people is elevated to a degree and then legitimated by God alone.

The interesting bit is that this can be a self-regulating process of social legitimation where magic is used to confirm a new structure of class status within the group. And we return to Pauls exhibit in Corinth. For modern-day pitfalls, the legitimacy granted to Todd Bentley, Peter Popoff, Pat Robertson, Ernest Angeley, etc. is a palpable expression of social legitimacy given to someone that is made unquestionable by an interpreted manifestation of God"s special power given to that person to use. Gods favor is not something to be critiqued and so, the person is beyond critique. If this is starting to sound a bit like putting the person in the place of God, its probably because it does.

On Applying Scripture to Life

The idea of applying Scripture to life, culture, "the world", etc. is also strange. What is one applying? The culture and society that Scripture reveals? An interpreted moral gleaning? What one ends up applying is another God-mandated and legitimated social function from one social frame to another. These can be for reasons that one believes God literally commands it, for class mobility, race equality, confirmation of Gods grace through wealth, political strategy, etc. No matter what, there is a social idea or structure that is causing the religious principle to be enacted and legitimated.

However, the idea of "applying Scripture" indicates that there is a direct isomophism between any given social structure and that which we read in the various passages in Scripture. Hence, there is always a match. the idea that the various passages in the book were actually pieced together over a very long time and are each representative of often divergent and incongruous religious and socio-cultural frames is either blissfully ignored, or rejected as heretical. Why is this so? For the various other social reasons I have noted above.

Guess What?

Maybe these two ideas are connected after all. In both kinds of behaviors, it is social legitimacy and mobility that creates the religious and theological legitimation. It is not that God is an afterthought here. But God is the primary structure that carries these social structures to where the people, and not necessarily God, would like to move within a given social frame. The danger exists when that social frame becomes confused with God"s mandate. This kind of organic religion creates more socio-political problems in the world than it can possibly help.

Related posts:

1. go where god is, not where you believe god ought to be.
2. sociology and religion, what a pair