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A couple of nights ago, spurred on by reading William Crawley's bog, from which the above pic is taken, I watch a live streaming from one of the healing services from the Elim Christian Centre in Belfast. Very much like the Lakeland 'Revival' stuff, in fact in Belfast they claim that it's as a result of Lakeland, the services in Belfast have run every evening for the last two and a half months.
On Wednesday and Thursday Joshua Mills took time out of his busy schedule (I've no reason to doubt this) to do 2 nights in Belfast. Mills comes from the Extreme Prophecies stable which is heavily into 'signs and wonders' which include the appearance of gold and sapphire dust, oil, diamonds, angel feathers and such like. It also includes healings, imparted anointing, prophecy, and so on.
Previously I've seen footage of various Shamen whipping people into frenzies from which they experience all sorts of things - the 'supernatural' if you will. Psychologists will tell you it's all to do with expectancy and allowing yourself to get into a suggestible state. In such a state you can 'see' and 'experience' all manner of stuff which you genuinely believe to be real, but which doesn't pass mustard in the cold light of day. Mills is a slightly tubby, slightly camp American Shaman.
Joshua Mills claims that people have experienced weight loss, whitening of teeth, appearance of gold fillings, healings of all descriptions at his revival meetings. Gold dust, looking suspiciously like glitter but no-one has actually analysed what it really is, has appeared on his hands and jacket. Oil has flowed from his hands, or possibly from out the tubes up his sleeves.
On Thursday he emphasised the power of the Hallelujah. Indeed, he used the word frequently, and I mean frequently - possibly six or seven hundred times in the space of two hours. It punctuated almost every other sentence he spoke. And boy did he speak. He hardly took a breath.
Stage hypnotists, and people like Derren Brown, use something called "anchoring": a technique where a particular word or touch is anchored, or linked, to a suggestion. The 'victim' is put into a light hypnotic state and the suggestion is implanted via the anchoring. The anchor will then trigger the suggestion in the subconscious of the individual. That's why in Derren Brown's programs people believe they have a free choice, whereas they've actually been conditioned to choose the card, envelope, whatever, that he wants them to choose.
Pastor Brian warmed up the cried shouting "Are you ready to see God at work!". When the cry of 'yes' wasn't loud enough he asked them the same question again. There was then a time of worship led by a loud rock band where there was singing and also prayers. Pastor Brian prayed by shouting into a mic(!) while the band continued to bash out a beat. By the time Josh stood to speak the crowd were well warmed up, but more importantly, they were expectant.
Then Joshua spoke for 2 hours. He talked of miracles. He talked of power. He talked of healing. He talked of the supernatural. He talked of change and glory. All these things were punctuated with "Hallelujah....Hallelujah....Hallelujah". The anchoring was done. He spoke so quickly that no-one had time to process and think about anything he said which was lucky for him as he made ridiculous claims (the power of the Hallelujah brought his house plant back to life; the power of the Hallelujah enabled him to lay hands of healing on Fluffy the dog). By the time people were queueing for healing the power of the anchoring Hallelujah was so deeply implanted that they 'experienced' healing. They were expectant, whipped up, and hungry and so they believed whatever they wanted to believe, or whatever they were told to believe.
You may ask, O kind reader, and by the way, thanks for sticking with me thus far, why I'm so sceptical about Joshua and his like. A reasonable question. Why can't I leave him, and the hapless gullible fools who lap up his bullshit alone, and instead let them be happy in their delusion.
Last week the 7 year old daughter of people who lived down the street was buried. She was diagnosed with a brain tumour in December 2007 and died in August 2008. No miracles. No gold dust. No power of the Hallelujahs. God wasn't to be found in that house in any healing capacity. Allegedly He is in places where Mills and others are - there in bucket loads. But not where He is needed. Not in that little girl's home.
My anger is because some people will be so convinced and deluded that they will say that real healing occurs, but won't be able to see the factors that cause people to pretend to see it. For them it is freak shows like the Mills spectacle that is proof of God's healing power. Would not greater proof of healing be in the quiet and despair of the 7 year old's house rather than in the self-induced and deliberately enhanced emotional and hypnotic whirlwind of these revival meetings?! Why does God fail to do what is needed for her, yet seems to turn up big time only when particular people claim to have certain gifts. To compound the cynicism, Joshua quoted from Corinthians ("God loves a cheerful giver") as the bucket was passed around and also informed people they could donate online (and if they were writing a cheque could they please make it out to ECC). God can't/won't heal unless He is properly funded.
Who is this, you might ask? Well, actually many people did, and they were supposed to have known him. His name is Michael Guglielmucci and until recently he was a Pastor in Sydney.
In 2006 he announced to his congregation that he had an aggressive form of cancer which was terminal. Since then he has appeared in church wearing an oxygen tube and wrote a song, "Healer", which was included on the latest Hillsong worship compilation CD. Updates were guven regarding his condition, including the news that various secondary cancers were discovered.
Then, approx. one week ago it was revealed that his 'illness' was a lie and that there was nothing wrong with him - apart from mental illness. His father, the senior Pastor at Edge Church, revealed that an addiction to pornography had caused massive guilt with Michael, and to take focus off this he invented his cancer. Michael kept the truth not only from his congregation but also from his wife, children, and wider family.
Money that was collected in connection to his claimed 'treatment' was pledged to be returned and Michael is said to be seeking help for the many problems he obviously has.
The usual initial response to this type of deception by a prominent churchman is to condemn him for his actions, but this case seems to be slightly different. Yes, he lied, and yes, many thousands of people were left feeling confused and betrayed, but he didn't act out of a desire for personal gain, nor was it a cold and calculating plan to deceive. The man was just mentally ill and I'm glad he is being treated.
Do we expect those who stand at the front of our churches to be perfect? Do we expect perfection when we ourselves are not perfect? The 'double life' is a fairly common occurrence in the Church and is made all the more juicy when the person caught out is someone who has preached against the very thing that he himself ended up doing (for a wonderful recent example of this why not Google "Michael Reid Ministries"). People like Reid, IMO, deserve the ridicule they get. People like Michael, again IMO, deserve our sympathy and our help. Someone once said that the church is the only organisation that shoots its own wounded. That's very possibly true. Yet another reason to review what we believe and how we 'do' church.
Having just finished watching The Genius of Darwin on 4oD (God bless you Channel 4) I thought I'd dig out my copy of the above book. I read it 2 years ago when it was first published and was keen to reacquaint myself with its contents. I'm only just a few dozen pages into it, but without reading it completely for the second time I feel able to raise some of the questions Dawkin's asks.
The main premise of the book is, can the existence of God survive scientific empirical examination, and not to spoil the end for those who haven't read it, but the answer is no.
Bronze age cosmology is not appropriate for today. We, as humans, have had to change the way we think about the Universe. No longer can we be geocentric in our outlook. Neither can we think in terms of a three tiered universe - consequently there is no such thing as "up". As Bishop John Robinson said some 40 years ago, we cannot just shuffle the mental furniture around and pretend we have a new room, we need to get the Transit down to Ikea pronto! (well, he did say the first bit).
No-one likes to have to radically rethink anything. The comfort of the familiar is much more................comfortable!!?! But we do need to rethink and re-evaluate how we frame God. Otherwise we might continue in our delusion.
Mortuary Outreach
The above link takes you to a video from an organisation called Extreme Prophecy who are advocating a campaign of Mortuary Outreach. That's right! They're suggesting that Christians go into mortuaries and offer to resurrect the dead. I'll leave you to watch it yourselves, and to be fair the video is not the original but is one which has been edited with comments from another individual. Having said that, the person who put their comments over the original did a grand job, in my opinion.
The question the video poses is where does delusion end and out and out insensitivity begin. The women presenting this video is certainly certain about her certainty, and anyone is entitled to believe what they want. And to that end, I endorse anybody's right to believe the earth is flat, or that unicorns exist, or that, as Bertram Russell posited, that there is an invisible teapot that orbits the Sun. Anyone can believe what they want, provided their belief does not trample over the feelings and sensibilities of others. Hope springs eternal, but false hope can flood the house and ruin everything.
What the Mortuary Outreach team was doing was not raising the dead. Nor will they ever do such a thing. They talked about it. They generated prophecies about it. They speculated about the wonder and awe that would occur when they eventually succeeded. But when they left the building the number of dead people in it remained the same. The only thing they added to the situation was an increase in pain and grief. You can't say they're not generous.
They arrived as happy, clappy fuckwits, and they left as happy, clappy fuckwits, safe within their own delusions. It's the mess they left behind that's the real story here. People who are grieving are at their most vulnerable and would do literally anything to get back the person who has just died. These morons turn up and offer them false hope that this will happen. Straws are presented and duly clutched at. And surprise, surprise, the corpse remains a corpse and the grief remains grief.
Another thing that stays the same is the delusion of the Outreach team. I imagine they could visit a million mortuaries and have a million non-raised bodies and STILL they would believe that the next one would produce a positive outcome. What they don't seem to realise it the harm and hurt they are causing along the way. Some might even go so far as to say that it was a lack of faith on behalf of one of the family members that prevented the resurrection taking place. Or dare I say, an unconfessed sin from the cadaver that's stopping life flowing back again.
Can we not deal with what is real!! Grief is real. Death is real. Resurrection is not.
Being there for the bereaved is real. Supportinng those in pain is real. Presence Ministry is real. Mortuary Outreach is not.
In the top left corner of my wing mirror you can just about make out the body of a spider and part of his web. He is actually one of two - the other one, his cousin I presume, lives in the right hand one.
I've always spotted the webs but never saw the boys in action. Then one day, when I was parked I glimpsed both of them dragging some poor wee sod of a fly behind the glass.
I'm always amazed at how they manage to survive at all! It just shows you how strong the survival instinct is in all life. Life just gets on with it, no matter how tough it is. With this in mind, should we be making it any harder for animals (ourselves included) than absolutely necessary?!
There is an attraction in living simply but also a repulsion. As I sit here typing on my laptop I don't feel 'able' to ditch the creature comforts, even though I know that I don't need 90% of the crap I live with. And yet...........I'm loathe to get rid of things because without them I might feel hard done by.
If I had a simple life then I might not be putting pressure on the rest of Nature. I'm not going to save the world, don't get me wrong, unless I'm Superman and not known it, but I am responsible for me and what I do.
While I ponder the mysteries of Life and living I will keep half an eye out for Incy and Wincy, should there ever make an appearance again. God bless those little guys!
The last week has seemed to me like a strange dream. Seven days ago I would've been pushed to pinpoint Georgia on the map. Seven days later and it looks like Russia is pushing to remove bits of it from the map.
The conflict over the breakaway region ofSouth Ossetia is indeed a frightening one. As with these post-Soviet countries, the situation is not quite as simple as the 'big guy vs little guy' scenario that it first appears to be. Ethnic niggles that became more apparent when Georgia broke away from the former Soviet Union spilled over into 'vengeance' attacks and many homes have been burnt and lives lost.
While the US have been strong in their condemnation of Russia there seems, at present anyway, little stomach to do anything than bandy strong words. In the short term there may be some punitive sanctions, but the long term Russia has little to fear because America needs countries like Russia in its so-called War on Terror.
For me, the most frightening thing is that a large and militarily able country like Russia can roll into a small country like Georgia, and nothing be done. It's almost like those horrible Primary School fights that occasionally broke out. Two kids would batter hell out of each other while a sizeable crowd gathered around them, not to pull them apart, but to encourage them on.
The idea of International Law is something of a joke, and not a particularly funny one at that. It seems to be complied with by stronger countries when it suits. It is used to justify attacks on certain regimes but can be blatantly ignored when it becomes a hindrance. The Law is an illusion, International Law doubly so.
Lying in bed has always been something I celebrated, and practiced as often as possible. For the third time in three months I've been in bed with a bout of gout. That's right! Gout!
It reminds me how dependent we are on our feet, especially when we're off them. Gout prevents you from walking so you're restricted to an aching hobble-style of movement. Running is out of the question, and to a 20 month toddler that spells a lot of fun - running so far ahead to be well clear then waiting until his hop-a-long father catches up and then the game of mouse and crippled cat continues. The wee monkey!
If it were all down to steaks and port then I'd have no excuse, but as a vegetarian who hasn't had port in a long while mea non culpa. According to t'InterWeb, the source of all useless knowledge, gout can be triggered by carbonated drinks. Oops! Mea culpa big tempus!
Usually it takes 48 hours to get over this, thanks to the tablets the hospital gave me. So, I should be back on my feet (literally) by the weekend, but may have to visit the quack to see if there's some other cause. Ho hum.
I've been thrilling myself recently with the deeply dull yet utterly compelling John Shuttleworth who takes the banal and ordinary things of daily life and makes them warm and engaging. He is a bit like Marmite though, in the sense that there's little by the way of middle ground.
Radio Shuttleworth is definitely worth listening to (repeated on BBC7 - check listings)
