|
jayvance -> RE: The bigger issue behind Bentley (8/18/2008 11:16:11 AM)
|
I was raised in an independent Pentecostal environment and perhaps can offer some insight, not that I have all the answers by any means. In that world, the "manifestations of the Spirit" trump all, and those ecstatic experiences are ultimately what everyone is seeking. The singing, the testimonies, even the preaching of the word, are all just part of the warm-up act, the foreplay, if you will. The good stuff happens at the "altar call," when people get "slain in the Spirit" or when sinners get "filled with the Holy Ghost" and start speaking in tongues, or when backsliders come back to God and get a "fresh dose of the Holy Ghost," or when folks who haven't spoken in tongues in a while can "pray through" and thus have reassurance that they're still saved.
If you haven't lived in that world it's very difficult to understand the emotional manipulation that takes place. Only after having left that environment and experienced other expressions of Christian living am I able to look back and somewhat objectively analyze what was going on. Watching videos of the "Lakeland Outpouring" literally make my stomach hurt as I watch the sincere yearning on the faces of the congregation, wanting so desperately to get a "touch from God."
Bottom line, the Pentecostal experience for many is a spiritual drug addiction, and the "high" becomes the focus of everything that happens. If you look at it in that context, it becomes easier to understand why sound doctrine and Biblical accuracy become secondary to getting the next spiritual fix. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that for many Pentecostals, the supernatural manifestations of the Spirit are all the proof they need that their doctrine IS sound and that their Biblical exegesis IS accurate. The fact that the manifestations THEMSELVES may be totally un-Biblical or at the very least simply the result of emotional manipulation is totally lost on many who live in that world. So as you can see, it becomes a never-ending merry-go-round, a self-fulfilling and self-affirming cycle of spiritual desperation. Like a giant whirlpool, it is enormously difficult to escape its grasp long enough to recognize its inherent errors.
That's why there will ALWAYS be spiritual dope dealers who simply "give the people what they want." As long as there's a demand, there will always be a supplier. Doesn't matter how many dealers get busted, doesn't matter how many of them fall from grace, gotta keep the "stuff" flowing down the pipeline to satisfy a needy clientele.
Coming from where I came from, I have more sympathy than contempt for the sincere people who in many cases simply don't know any better; this world is the only world they've ever known. But the fact that I saw the light gives me hope for others as well.
Jay
|
|
|
|