This post is a response to posts by Matt Stone and Jonny Baker, they both raise questions about engaging with Alternative healing methods and practitioners such as those practising Reiki, Chakra balancing etc.
Matt raises questions about how and where we might expect to see Gods healing presence at work, suggesting that this healing presence and power might be encountered outside of the traditional Christian framework;
I think we need to be open to the possibility that the Spirit of God is actively working in alternate healing, that we should not assume its all demonic a priori, even if they have not given God/Jesus his due.
He goes on to challenge us to re-asses the way in which we view alternative healers, and to consider how we might engage missionaly with people who are actively involved in healing, in bringing about wholeness in the lives of others ;
One challenge I have raised though is that inadequate attention has been given to discernment issues or how to missionally engage with non-churched people who may be seeking healing. How would a Wiccan herbal healer or Reiki master or Chakra rebalancer walking through the door interpret Christian healing for instance? And just how do they interpret Jesus?
Also;
As part of the process of rethinking healing in these different contexts I think we also need to do a serious rethink of spiritual warfare, again moving beyond the received polarisations that plague discussions about 'the powers' and 'deliverance'.
Essentially Jonny Baker is asking the same questions, following positive interaction with some reiki healers at the London Mind Body and Spirit Exhibition.
So how do we move forward? First of all I suggest that we need to engage in some double listening- listening to both The Spirit of God, and to the prevailing culture, we need to step back from the tendency to declare everything outside of the framework we know as wrong or worse evil and to consider that God's creative purposes might just be at work in places we least expect to find them.
This also throws up questions about the spiritual realms, I would suggest that a large part of the Church's problems in engaging with these questions stem from its embracing of modernity and the use of apologetics to beat out rational arguments thereby dissociating itself from anything mystical or unexplainable events in the super-natural realms. This is particularly prevalent in Western Protestantism.
Paul gives us a good model in Acts 17, although he is distressed to see a city full of idols and of idol worshippers he does not jump in with both feet, rather he chooses to listen and to debate, and only then when he finds a point of engagement does he speak; interestingly the point of engagement comes through an unknown- in this case an unknown but acknowledged God.
Many conversations I have had with alternative healers have concerned the source of healing, which many of them see as an impersonal yet powerful spiritual force, an unknown, yet an unknown force that is recognised as being present throughout creation. Is there a challenge then as Phil Johnson suggests to re asses our theology of the Holy Spirit:
Evangelicals have inherited from the Reformers a strong awareness of human sin and the fall. Unfortunately evangelicals tend to focus exclusively on the fall, and say very little about the original blessing of the creation. This is compounded by an undeveloped theology of God's Spirit as explicated throughout the Old Testament. Evangelicals and charismatics have a post-Pentecost pneumatology, all of which is valuable and important. But the Holy Spirit did not show up on planet earth in Acts 2 or at Jesus' baptism. The OT has a very deep theology of the Spirit's presence throughout the creation.Evangelicals have inherited from the Reformers a strong awareness of human sin and the fall. Unfortunately evangelicals tend to focus exclusively on the fall, and say very little about the original blessing of the creation. This is compounded by an undeveloped theology of God's Spirit as explicated throughout the Old Testament. Evangelicals and charismatics have a post-Pentecost pneumatology, all of which is valuable and important. But the Holy Spirit did not show up on planet earth in Acts 2 or at Jesus' baptism. The OT has a very deep theology of the Spirit's presence throughout the creation.
This would probably lead us to a more open view of the creative and re-creative purposes of God throughout the whole of creation, and might lead us to other questions such as the ones posed by Sun Warrior:
As far as healing from the spirit world, (Westernised) Christianity is at a disadvantage of sorts. It believes that the only spirits are God and humans. It does not know anything about the spirit world, which encompasses Creation itself. It is a taboo and murky waters for a (Westernised) Christian to venture into. So it struggles with non-Christian spirituality from its ignorance. It does not know the reality, the ground rules, of all the other spirits God has Created outside of the specific consciousness of God and souls.
Spiritual healing is our attempt at breaking the natural laws of inert matter, just like Jesus did. It is a pining to know more about the spirit world but with only the Christian doctrine to go by. How does Jesus fit into this other spirituality? How does it relate to the monotheistic God? How do we become a part of it and break free of the limits of this inert matter? We are interested in the 'gap' in our spiritual knowledge.
-Brackets mine
I would suggest that in some places Christianity is more able to embrace a mystical and unexplainable picture of God (e.g. Eastern Traditions) and others e.g. African and South America there is an acknowledgement of the spirit world that is largely dismissed in the West.
All of this suggests a creation that is far more complex and interconnected in both a physical and spiritual sense than we might like to acknowledge, it faces us with a God whom we cannot hope to explain. It creates grey areas, and forces us away from our black and white certainties and at the same time demands that we develop a level of critical and self critical discernment when faced with the unexplained and unexplainable in areas of energy/ alternative healing and also spiritual experiences we might be faced with.
These quotes and questions leave us with more questions, I cannot hope to sum up the subject of alternate healing in a short post like this, what I can do is say that I remain open to the possibility that God is indeed at work in creation and therefore that through that creation he is perceived by some as an impersonal creative force, when people seek to harness that force for good, ( e.g. healing) is it so impossible that God would make her creative power available in that way. If this is the case might we have an opportunity through listening first and entering into dialogue second to point as Paul did to the mighty power that raised Jesus from death to life... coming to the cross from a different direction?
I leave myself with questions... I have not attempted to draw any conclusions here except that I need to remain open for
Isaiah 55:8-9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
