Deliverance from irrational reactions to God can come slowly and sometimes immediately.
As a psychotherapist, I have had patients whose negative issues with God cleared up along side the issues with their earthly parents. Somehow, parent emotional responses had cross-wired with God responses. Often the person only recognized their problem with God, after they were cured.
I have also seen people supernaturally delivered from what I have learned to call: Paranoia of the Father. Both type healings happened to me.
I frequently likened what occurs as similar to having a physical disorder; take anemia for instance. The person accepts the tired feeling as the norm. One day a doctor diagnosis anemia, gives some pills and zappo, they feel good. Only when they have been delivered can they exclaim “so this is the way a normal person feels!”
In my post,The Zapped Psychologist, I relate an encounter with God and a deliverance from my paranoia of Him which I did not recognize until it was gone. Besides my story, I have seen other sudden deliverances. The one I am about to describe is one of the more dramatic ones.
I was in an office one day with a woman who was almost totally catatonic. Usual approaches had failed. In desperation, I took off my psychologist’s hat and donned my priest’s. Suspecting something deeper than I had ever encountered, I tried to get her to just say aloud the name of Jesus. She tried, but the word would not come out.
I was treading somewhere I had never been, and really did not know what I was doing. So, I retreated to my office. There I began to quietly pray.
Suddenly, an inner, almost audible voice, said, “Brace yourself, she is coming.” To my alarm, there she was at the entrance to my office. Pathetically, she began to beg me to stop praying. “I know you think you are helping, but you are damaging my brain. You must stop!” She begged.
In my panic, I had enough presence of mind to realize that there was no way she could have known I was praying, plus there was no way I could have known she was coming. I knew I was in over my head.
So, I said to her, “I will call a friend of mine who knows about these things. But, Jane I am not saying this to you, I am talking to that something or someone who is talking to me.”
I dialed my friend and he responded, “I am on my way right now.”
At that exact moment, she snapped up straight, color returned to her face and she exclaimed, “It’s gone! It’s gone!” Raising her hands to her head, she said “It was like a giant vulture had his talons deep in my brain. I heard a whirring noise, and he was gone!”
(Afterwards, she went back to college, graduated with honors and did the same in graduate school.)
People have all sorts of hangups with God. If they ever get delivered from them either through psychotherapy or supernaturally (Mt 17:21), they often look back and exclaim “Man, I was really messed up and didn’t even know it!”
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Irrational Hangups With God
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Inventing One's Own Religion
Larry King once asked Oral Roberts: “Rev. Roberts, when God does not heal someone you have prayed for, how do you explain that?” The famous healer's reply: “I don’t know."
I always admired Oral Roberts for that answer.
As Christians, we take our stand on the Scriptures to tell us who God is and what He does.. Sometimes Scriptures are very confusing. The subject of healing being an example. Confusion though, does not give us license to make up our own religion.
I do have my own way of resolving difficult Scripture for myself. I always start with Jesus. When even His words confuse me, then I fall back on a saying my grandmother taught me: "Actions speak louder than words." That saying even helped me be a better psychotherapist. When I don't understand what a person is saying, I watch what he does.
Therefore, if someone asked me the question posed to the Rev. Roberts, why did God not heal someone, I would have to reply, "I don't know, I never saw Him (Jesus) not do it."
Jesus healed everyone who asked Him. When did any one ever see Jesus do such things as these: “God took your little sister to heaven because she was so sweet, He wanted her with Himself.” Or, “God did not heal in order to bring you closer to Himself, or "God uses your sickness to teach you." etc. etc. Fill in the awful explanations you have heard.
Where do such people get their religion?
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Episcopal Bishops Thumb Nose at Primates
The Anglican primates met at Tanzania and demanded two specific things from the bishops of the American Episcopal Church: first, unequivocally promise not to authorize Rites of Blessing for same-sex unions; second, unequivocally promise not to consecrate any more actively homosexual bishops. It has been described as an ultimatum, and it comes with a deadline (September 30) and consequences: If not followed, the Episcopal Church will not be invited to next year’s Lambeth Conference and so in effect will be judged to have walked apart from the Anglican Communion.
The American bishops were also told to desist from persecuting those bishops, priests and church people who are staying with the the worldwide Anglican Communion rather than remaining in the disfellowshipped Episcopal church.
After meeting together, the Episcopal Bishops on March 20, 2007 REJECTED the ultimatum.
For a background of today's post, the following is taken from an earlier post.
They met and this is what they got:CNN
The above was the secular press' take and the following is from one of the PRIMATES. Read More......
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Anti war colors
Did anyone notice today the banner colors for the anti-war protests? On one side of the street, we saw red, white and blue. On the other side, we saw yellow. Al Queda
says they can beat us because yellow is American's favorite color.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Would Jesus' Praying Embarass the Uptight?
Writing on speaking in tongues and looking for other blogs on the subject, I was dismayed at the number of bloggers who are put off by the experience. It seems that so many are shaken up by the behavior of Charismatics.
A lot of these nervous folk are Bible readers, so I point them to today’s Lectionary reading. There we find a description of Jesus at prayer: “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears.” How embarassing.
The Cherokees and the Eucharist
Click on this link and read it first.Sand Creek Massacre and the Eucharist
One day, my wife and I discovered the book “A Guide to Healing the Family Tree” by Kenneth McAll, M.D. of England. Dr. McAll, describes many supernatural healings as a result of breaking ancestral curses by the use of the Eucharist. After having some successes healing family trees, we became interested in another observation Dr. McAll had made. He believes that even past atrocities by one group against another can be blotted out by the power of the Eucharist.
Around that time, some close family members were in the process of building a golf course and resort. They hit a point in the construction when nothing was going right. At times, the project teetered on disaster.
My wife had always been moved by the story of the Trail of Tears –the atrocities committed against the Cherokees as they were driven off their land.
The maps of the trail revealed the Cherokees had been brought through the territory. There was evidence that Indians had been on the land where the golf course was being built. Because we had just come off the moving experience regarding the Sand Creek Massacre, we wondered if perhaps the evil that had been perpetrated against the Cherokees, still lingered to curse the land.
We offered to do a Eucharist. It was another of those mystical beautiful days.
Almost immediately, the whole project did an upswing and moved rapidly to success.
The Sand Creek Massacre and the Eucharist
Please also visit our new site. Father Charles and I will post our experiences on that one, and I will continue posting on this one as well.
new
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Suffering and The Medium is the Message
In the 60's Marshall McLuhan coined an important phrase: "The Medium is the Message". According to Wikipedia, the phrase means that the form of media delivering the message, is more important than any "meaning" or "content" that the media conveys. The form of the medium itself is what changes our consciousness.
For me personally, McLuhan’s insight has always explained the Book of Job on the question of suffering. Job’s comforters’ timeworn answers were totally useless to Job. At the same time, their insensitivity to his pain carried their message.
Then God Himself shows up. God’s explanation did not satisfy me any more than those of the others. Job though, was obviously pleased. His life completely turned around and he lived happily ever after.
I have always wanted to believe that “The Medium was the Message.” Think of it. What would it be like for the Creator of the entire universe to drop whatever He was doing, to give you His personal response? When He did that for me, my life was changed forever.
As a priest, when someone asks me to explain his or her suffering, they are asking the wrong person. I don’t have a clue. I do know though, that if they will ask God, eventually He answers. When He responds, not only does one get an answer, but the Medium can become the Message.
Monday, February 26, 2007
A Protestant Looks in on Catholic Charismatics
This a response to an interesting Roman Catholic blog "Dubious Criticisms of the Gift of Tongues".
THOUGHTS AFTER READING DUBIOUS CRITICISMS OF THE GIFT OF TONGUES By Father Charles:
The reality is that today many, many good, practicing, orthodox Catholics have experienced praying in tongues. Yet, understandably, many others recoil with fear and suspicion at such claims because it is something new that the Holy Spirit is doing after many centuries of its being relegated to the experience of mystics and canonized saints.
Some of those who understandably recoil, keep an open mind they know that the Popes and the bishops have embraced and continually encouraged the Catholic Charismatic Renewal as part of the universal call to holiness authentically and explicitly affirmed by the texts of Vatican II.
Some of those who initially recoiled have themselves gone on to experience the gift of praying, or even singing, in tongues, not as a mark of privilege or superior holiness, but as a gift of God given for the edification of the one praying. St. Paul so states the matter, "For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit" (1 Corinthians 14:2; all biblical citations are from the RSV translation) and so "edifies himself" (1 Cor. 14:4a, quoted in part; good advice.
Every Catholic, every Christian, should read one Corinthian 12-14 carefully and with an open mind. And if the one praying is edified and brought closer to God and thus becomes more holy, then others who come into contact with that person will likely also be edified. Of course, the mere fact alone of receiving the gift of praying in tongues, just as the mere fact of receiving the gift of teaching or administration or helping or preaching, does not automatically make the person holy.
What those gifts do, when properly exercised in decency and in order (see 1 Cor. 14:40), is to help others become holy--to build up, directly or indirectly, the Church, whose mission is the universal call to holiness. But all of these gifts, including the gift of tongues, can also make the recipient of the gift holier if the recipient continually asks God to give him more of the Holy Spirit in the course of exercising all his gifts for the good of the Church, just as we seek sanctification in our daily work.
Just because we might pray the Rosary daily (which I myself try to do and highly recommend to others) does not make us holier than anyone else without first and continually and sincerely opening our hearts to embrace God's will and to obey it. Without such an attitude of openness to God's messages and of obedience to God's will, the Rosary becomes mere babbling (as anti-Catholics like to say)--and so it can happen with those who exercise the gift of praying in tongues or any other form of praying without freely corresponding to the grace and favor of God.
Now, some Catholics who consider themselves orthodox do not keep such an open mind toward the gift of praying in tongues, even though it is explicitly mentioned in Section 2003 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (tolle lege!/pick up and read!) as an extraordinary charism or gift. They (I assume, in good faith) instead instill fear in people by raising the specter of evil spirits. My response is that it is a good idea for charismatics, and all other Catholics for that matter, to pray the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel to rebuke the evil spirits who are real and who indeed prowl throughout the world. But those evil spirits do not just aim at charismatic Catholics and their praying in tongues. Those evil spirits lurk everywhere and can pervert even the most hallowed and most common of Catholic practices.
The worst sin most consistently condemned by Our Savior in the Gospels is that of hypocrisy. In fact, he calls the Pharisees, the paragons of piety, children of the devil precisely because of their hypocrisy (John 8:44). So, even the most orthodox in their Catholic practices can be subject to the influence of the devil. Even a devotee of the Latin Mass or the Tridentine Mass may be acting under the influence of the devil. Does that mean we should avoid Latin or Tridentine Masses? Not at all. We should pray that God and his angels protect us from the devil, we should frequent the sacraments, we should do all those things that can build us up in Christ, with trust and without undue fear, for we are now children of God who no longer have the spirit of fear of the Pharisees so suspicious of Jesus (compare Romans 8:15-17).
In fact, from my experience, some Catholics treat charismatic Catholics in the same way the enemies of Jesus treated Jesus, who was even accused of being possessed by the devil himself (see Luke 11:14-23). It is quite interesting that Jesus was so accused right after he uttered these words: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" (Luke 11:13). That verse just quoted is the heart of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal: ask the Father to give us more of the Holy Spirit and to give us all the good gifts the Father has for us.
Just like Jesus, today, charismatic Catholics are accused by some of being possessed by devils. The best reply to this accusation is Jesus' reply. Jesus pointed out that he was indeed casting out demons, that he was attacking the kingdom of Satan, and that it was illogical for Satan to attack his own kingdom because "every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste" (Luke 11:17, in part). In the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, many, many orthodox Catholics have found a greater hunger to read Scripture, have found a greater hunger for more prayer (including contemplative prayer and the Rosary), a greater hunger for the Sacraments, a greater desire for Eucharistic Adoration, a greater closeness to Mary who was so uniquely and so fully overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and a greater love for the Pope and the magisterium, all the time yielding fruits of praise to God, evangelism, varieties of lay ministry, and many priestly vocations and vocations to the religious life, including the vocation of consecrated virgins. All of those things lay waste to the kingdom of Satan. Satan is not behind them. The logic pointing this out is not mine. It is the logic of Our Savior in the Gospels. Don't take my word. Pick up and read.
Jesus tomb found
I saw the news today that they have found Jesus' and Maria's tomb. Let's hope years from now some extra terrestrial beings don't land on our planet in search of Jesus' tomb, ending up in some Latin American country. They will find half the graves with the names Jesus and Maria.
Read More......Saturday, February 24, 2007
God knows what He is doing.
In today’s Lectionary reading, as God is leading the Israelites to their final destination, we read: in Deut. 7:22 “The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little; you will not be able to make a quick end of them, otherwise the wild animals would become too numerous for you.” The Torah reads “else the wild beasts would multiply to your hurt.”.
There is a message here to us who get impatient with God when He does not move things along fast enough to suit us. He does know what He is doing.
Friday, February 23, 2007
God is Breaking Through
We live in the most exciting time in Christian history. God is breaking through. Apparently, it has not been easy. We heard the heart of the Father when He said: “...how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Mt 23:37)
There is the fascinating story in the Book of Daniel alluding to God’s difficulty. (Dan 10:12) Daniel had fasted and prayed for weeks. When God’s messenger finally broke through, he said: “.... from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia (a spiritual power) withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and remained there with the kings of Persia.“
These two previous illustrations reveal at least two of the problems God has had getting through to us. In one case He wants to get through, but there is something the people are not doing which will let Him. In the second case,there are powerful evil spirits in the heavenlies blocking Him.
As I said above, our generation is seeing breakthroughs and they are coming to two groups of people with whom I am closely acquainted. I have the good fortune to have in my family, an effective spiritual teacher from each of the two groups.
One group witnessing breakthroughs, takes Jesus at His word when He said:
Mark 11:23-24 "For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.
Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them."
God is honoring that approach with wonderful miracles of healing and prosperity.
The second group seeing breakthroughs, are turning the Great Commandment into behaviors. Lk 10:27 “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength,”
Individually and in groups, they are loving with all their hearts in beautiful
songs of love. They speak love words to Him. They let the Holy Spirit use their vocal chords to speak love to Him. They are dancing before Him with all their strength. And 24/7 their thoughts keep going to Him. They also believe their worship is punching holes in the heavenlies.
And both approaches are working. People all over the world are seeing miracles beyond their wildest dreams. It is a wonderful time to be alive and to be a Christian
Liberal Flip Flops Conservative
Charismatics I know, all became politically conservative, including myself. My hope is this blog might provoke some comments. As a psychologist, I like to make sense out of my behavior. I protested the Viet Nam War, was nearly arrested in the March on Washington, and was pelted with rotten fruit on my campus as one of a handful of anti-war professors. Then I was struck down by God and came off the floor a radical conservative. I look back asking myself. ”What happened?”. Following is an attempt to explain that to myself. My entire adult life has been dedicated to empowering others. When the palpable power of God poured into me that night, I arose empowered with full confidence that I could now lick this life. I then saw that much of what I had been doing was not only not the best way to empower, but much of it was disempowering. First, it was disempowering, because our paternalism was creating what we psychologists call “learned. helplessness.” Secondly, by taking the money from those who were succeeding, we were disempowering them, and finally and most relevant, we were impeding the discovery of finding true empowerment. Politically, along came Ronald Reagan singing: “Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people.” I heard empowerment He was followed by Gingrich: “Respecting the judgment of our fellow citizens as we seek their mandate for reform, we hereby pledge our names to this Contract with America.” Gingrich had and still has the creative ideas that will release the power in people. So, a 60's radical, who marched in the streets chanting “Power to the People!”, became an 80's radical marching in the street chanting “Power to the People!
Like most young people, I came forth from my university experience as a thoroughly indoctrinated lefty. I have the bona fides to show for it. In Mississippi, I met with the Freedom Riders trying to undo segregation. As a result, I had to flee with my family. Over the years, I stealthily indoctrinated my students. I served in President Kennedy’s Peace Corps and President Johnson’s War on Poverty. In Mexico, I studied with the radical priest Ivan Illich, along with many of the radicals of that time.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
God's Discipline
Yesterday, my blog discussed how I dealt with confusing Scripture by watching what Jesus did when I could not understand what was said. Today’s Lectionary reading turned out to be another one of those puzzling Scriptures.
My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
or lose heart when you are punished by him;
for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves,
and chastises every child whom he accepts.’
In my confusion, if I apply my principle of watching Jesus’ actions as a way of understanding God, then I ask myself, “How did God (Jesus) discipline? Seems to me that the worse His beloved disciples received was a chewing out from time to time.
Read More......