You're Invited!
First Mutant's LiveJournal Halloween Party!The party will begin next Saturday, October 22nd. We'll be playing games, talking about horror movies, holding a seance, and much more. You may choose to come as you are, or in costume--once you find an outfit you like, post a link/picture/description here so that we will know what you're wearing. You can
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From long before I believed anything, I was entirely puzzled by the idea of a seance. It seems to me that there are two possibilities.
1) It is a waste of time because there is nothing to contact. If so then maybe people like play acting, I don't know.
2) There really is something to contact. In that case, what reason is there to suppose that it is a good idea to try? How can we uncritically suppose that the 'dead' are indeed the dead, or instead would they be those that had knowledge of them, and enjoyed stringing us along?
So quite irrespective of belief, maybe I'm a killjoy, but I can't see how anyone can suppose this to be a good idea.
Bringing belief into it, yes I've had to deal with the aftermath of seances, and if I met those you treat, it wouldn't take me long to find that you had patients whose problems began with them.
To this day I don't know for sure on every occasion whether I've hit the dead or a spirit until I get to work. What I do know is that when confronted with the Rules they respond to those that are appropriate to them, and thus I can say which was which after they've obeyed one or the other.
The one Rule I always obey, is never to give them the time of day unless I am required to do so, and by that I mean when I am required to tell them what they shall and shall not do. Anything else, no matter how well meaning, will in the long term result in problems.
Enjoy your Halloween, but please don't let it enjoy you.
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Nah, you're not a killjoy, Dave. This pretend "seance" will just be for entertainment purposes. As you already know, I myself am unsure of whether there is anything to contact in reality, or even if there is an afterlife. In this matter, you probably know a great deal more than I.
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It sounds like your post and my reply were about as serious as each other :)
Thinking about it, it's a pity that believers don't learn from seances, really. They gather together on a Sunday, because they believe that someone else is there, and then they ignore him and talk to each other. How nuts is that? But primarily, that's what happens. If they all gathered round a table, ate together a little, called on the one they believed was there, and expected that each one of them might come to be in some form of contact with them - why, they would be the disciples! And it is because of the absence of that element from corporate worship, that it commonly doesn't work.
The whole charade of 'worship' is based on the idea that there is a priest, who vicariously stands between the believer and God, and in some way is supposed to transmit the thoughts of God to the gathered crowd. Problem is, that is if anything Judaism, and a fairly defective Judaism; and for the believer, this model of priesthood is or should be unacceptable. It has arisen solely because in the 5th/6th century, there was a power grab, and those supposedly in charge of the church decided that communion should only be given by priests. The result is that all acts of corporate 'worship' since that time have, where people accept this false view of the concept of priesthood, acted to preclude real christianity from ever arising; and thus, people quite reasonably assume that there is nothing behind it.
The times I have known God turn up most were either
- in small groups, preferably that cared enough about each other to eat together, who wanted him to show up, and who if they had a leader didn't see that leader as being a God-substitute.
- in churches that diverted from the usual pattern by giving God a spot in the service to make himself known. Yes, it works! God is polite. He comes when he is asked, or when he knows that his presence will be welcome
on the terms he would like.
But how nuts is this? Why, unlike the seance, is God not the focus of attention all the time? Why does he not get the whole of the service for his attention, and to decide what will happen?
I can tell you. Because when he is given that permission, he will use it. And when he does so, that results in the well laid plans of the servants of religiosity, finding that their opinion of what ought to be sung and what readings ought to be read, gets blown away. They then bitterly complain that they aren't getting their way (though they find very pious sounding ways of saying so) and thus the idea of letting God in the church is abandoned, because it does upset people so, not to be able to run the operation themselves, however empty and pointless it becomes without the presence of God.
Sadly I have seen that coming and going at least three times. And the only solution is really to learn from the seance - I am 100% convinced that a seance is wrong and dangerous, but one thing it gets right - it focuses on what it is supposed to focus on.
Would you, or anyone else, go to a seance if they handed out little books about seances, talked about famous historical seances, had appeals for the restoration of the crystal ball, but never used it?
But that, by comparison, is the church we have today. It is an anti-church; and that is why I am often glad to find people outside it and genuine in their doubt, rather than inside it and in control of their emptiness.
You've made me think :)
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They gather together on a Sunday, because they believe that someone else is there, and then they ignore him and talk to each other. How nuts is that? But primarily, that's what happens. If they all gathered round a table, ate together a little, called on the one they believed was there, and expected that each one of them might come to be in some form of contact with them - why, they would be the disciples! And it is because of the absence of that element from corporate worship, that it commonly doesn't work.
Interesting point. In psychology, an important aspect of group therapy is social interaction--simply meeting other people with similar difficulties is itself a form of therapy. It seems worship is different.
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In the fellowship group, those present really are all suffering from similar difficulties. It is, or should be, a requirement that each of them first stands up in a public ceremony and announces that they have a problem with sin. (We call that baptism). In many ways it should have and sometimes no doubt does have things in common with AA, but again I'm not qualified to speak on AA, so I'm guessing.
Once inside that environment, not harassed by those who think that a little sin is all right for them, or that they themselves never sin, and amongst those only who admit to sin and desire to be rid of it - then you do get healing group interaction. But in every case you'd find that those there would ascribe that not to the wisdom of their colleagues or their experience, but to the one extra person unseen but often felt; the one that showed every one of them the way out of sin; and who by getting across to one the way out of one sin, and to another the way out of another, enables them to help each other with things they find easier to see in others than to go directly to God for.
Now maybe that's like group therapy? But when you also get people instantly and permanently cured of glandular fever (never recurring), healed of eczema that had ruined their lived for seven years with full effect in just seven days, old men who cannot walk upstairs because of joint problems instantaneously healed without recurrence (the last two I saw myself), you have to ask whether it is down to group therapy or divine action. I've never heard of a secular group therapy that resulted in any of those physical healings.
A lot of other things happen that don't usually get talked about elsewhere, because they are more than society really wants to listen to. I know of a number of people who will tell those who they think will not laugh at them, how God saved them out of homosexuality by releasing them from a compulsion to do it. That doesn't come about by societal pressure; rather the sufferer is instantly released because they ask God. I suspect that most compulsive behaviour doesn't generally disappear overnight?
Actually I think the autism score is quite something. Did you see my test results earlier this year? Whilst you are better qualified than I to say if the test is valid (and it certainly hit home to me as relevant, given that my own little boy has suffered so badly), the scores I got were I think 25 in March (high but not officially autistic) and NINE in July (about 13 considered normal). That is like the tree that falls down after the axe has been set to it for some time; the pressure for change has been on for years, and bits and pieces have been done away with over time, but this Spring, the entire edifice collapsed, and everyone who knows me IRL would tell you I'm unrecognisable.
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Yes, I've been in churches like that. My mother used to belong to a Catholic church for a while, the membership of which was very non-social. The same was true of several of the Episcopal churches we attended in connection with my school. Black southern Baptist churches are another matter, however. Church is an incredibly social event for these people. They are a community in many senses of the word.
In many ways it should have and sometimes no doubt does have things in common with AA, but again I'm not qualified to speak on AA, so I'm guessing.
I don't doubt it, since AA is supposed to have a basis in Christianity. That's one of the most frequent complaints I hear from non-Christian patients about Alcoholics Anonymous.
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And you're right, of course; there is no instant healing in group therapy or in psychology (or most of western medicine, for that matter) in general. It's also true that the patients are not coming together with the intention of worshipping the therapist. Do you see homosexuality as an illness? It isn't a disorder in psychology unless it creates a problem for the individual.
Actually I think the autism score is quite something. Did you see my test results earlier this year? Whilst you are better qualified than I to say if the test is valid (and it certainly hit home to me as relevant, given that my own little boy has suffered so badly), the scores I got were I think 25 in March (high but not officially autistic) and NINE in July (about 13 considered normal). That is like the tree that falls down after the axe has been set to it for some time; the pressure for change has been on for years, and bits and pieces have been done away with over time, but this Spring, the entire edifice collapsed, and everyone who knows me IRL would tell you I'm unrecognisable.
That's wonderful. I think I do remember that post, though I don't think I went through the criteria to see whether they were accurate. I tend to be wary of online personality tests for the most part, because much of diagnosis requires actually meeting the patient. *g*
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Yes! Hooray! :)
AA is supposed to have a basis in Christianity.
I'd never heard that before, but it would explain a lot.
It isn't a disorder in psychology unless it creates a problem for the individual.
I know people who have gone to the doctor and asked for help with homosexual feelings that they have but don't want to have. Now if the doctor tells them that their feelings are normal, is he stating an opinion he can absolutely swear to, or is he expressing a view, and telling people not to be upset about things that they want help with? It seems to me that medicine has rightly accepted that it has no 'cures' for homosexuality, and I certainly wouldn't advocate any of those that have been tried (aversion therapy). But of course if you can't cure someone, it is awfully easy to tell them that they are well, and much harder to accept that you have simply failed to heal them.
Whether you call it an illness or not is beside the point. If people have it and they don't want it, it is a problem. Anyone who knows Christ and doesn't want it, finds they are rid of it in time. Sometimes that is instantaneous. Other times when their feelings are mixed, those feelings are worked with for a long time (by God only) before the day comes that they can truly regret their state. And once they do, then it is gone.
I have met any number of homosexual people over the years, and there are several lesbians on my f-list. I don't feel the need to condemn them, because it is utterly futile and counterproductive. I know they are so far under a compulsion that they don't even know what it is to be free. How will yelling at them help? And how do I know? Because I have seen people set free from it instantly. On one occasion by no more than me calmly telling them that they could be free of it. That individual had a compulsion to mutually masturbate, and frequented the public toilets to do so. He hated himself for it. Next day he singled me out and furtively said "I don't have to do it any more". "What?" I asked, for I had quite forgotten. He wasn't even the only homosexual I had been healing the previous day. And he told me how the compulsion had completely left him. Now which is better - solve what he thinks is a problem, or condition him to believe that he hasn't got one?
I have some sympathy for the medics however, because you really don't have a cure, and you never will have one. Whereas there are churches that I don't have any sympathy with, because they seem to think that people should just make a decision and stop. It really isn't that simple - because that decision has to be in spite of a spiritual compulsion. Such churches should offer the means to deal with that compulsion, or they should offer sympathy. If they can't fix it, they have no place condemning people for not stopping.
There are those who would say that autistic people are 'normal for them'. I don't know if you've come across that view. I utterly hate the very thought; autism is nothing but a corruption of what a person is and could be, and can be associated with the most utter misery, and denial of the potential of the individual. Now if we start saying there is no cure for autism, then we can go on to saying that it is normal, and encourage people to celebrate their autism as natural to them. This also is associated with compulsive behaviour. Over time it may become possible for society to train autistic people to believe that their 'mental orientation' is one of a normal spectrum. Then people may come to believe that it really is natural - after decades of social pressure that insist on it, delivered as doctrine by dedicated education professionals who all share in their convictions, and present them as if they were great truths.
I don't recognise the authority of a compulsion to control the life of a person, and pass that off as natural. It may manage to convince them that it is natural to them, but it isn't convincing me, and still less so God.
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The relative success of the A.A. program seems to be due to the fact that an alcoholic who no longer drinks has an exceptional faculty for “reaching” and helping an uncontrolled drinker.
In simplest form, the A.A. program operates when a recovered alcoholic passes along the story of his or her own problem drinking, describes the sobriety he or she has found in A.A., and invites the
newcomer to join the informal Fellowship.
The heart of the suggested program of personal recovery is contained in Twelve Steps describing the experience of the earliest
members of the Society:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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This is what used to be called 'Power Evangelism' but with all the flash written out. If it had been written as a short tract on how to achieve the miraculous, it would be excellent guidance, and I'm saying that from the viewpoint of someone who is well used to the miraculous.
All of the above can come to be expressed in nothing more than a single statement if it is truly heartfelt. Now on the day that I was baptised, God said that I would never again be put to shame - I heard the words come out of my mouth as he found a way for me to tell everyone what I had done. But since then he seems to have utterly forgotten it, except when he nudges me to tell someone else who has been through the same. And because he has forgotten, and you don't need the help, I'll trust you not to press me on what it was that had troubled me so. I think that privately you'll guess near, but you know better than to ask.
For 15 years I did something I thought I liked, and never knew why that was so. Then one dreadful day I remembered how it began, and utterly wished what formerly seemed to be my one happiness had never entered my life. For four years I struggled, and could not stop, no matter how much I wished to. One day I gave someone else a lift to church, and thought there was no harm in seeing if there was any way I could relate to what they did in there. Inside, my mind utterly changed, though no one else knew; and when I went back home, alone, I cried out,
I don't want to do that any more! I want to worship you instead!
And from that day to this, I have never done it any more, and worshiping God, since I came to understand the how and the why of what happened that day, has been the happiest thing that I have ever experienced.
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May 5th: Score 25
July 30th: Score 9
In 1987 you could have found a church full of happy stories like that, with 1300 people a week seeing the same things happening, and doctors among them praying for people. Sadly even in that situation there were a few malcontents in key places who wanted to keep a grip on the service. Ministers. Some of them. However when they had got control again, God left. To this day those affected are like so many seeds, waiting to flower when they are ready. Soon, please ---
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In my case it acted as a prompt to ask those close to me what differences they had noted, and it turned out they were very real. In practice I know a lot of things about me have changed that make it easier to get on with life, and I'm more than glad. I also know I can now relate to the only person I know who got a lower score (eight). Six months ago we couldn't even hold a functional conversation, though we liked each other, because our minds were completely incapable of dealing with each other's ways.
I have a lot of ideas about how it happened in both spiritual terms and in mechanistic terms, though as is often the case with healing, I didn't see it coming when it happened. But I had better finish for the 'night' now, as work is pressing for the next day!!
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I have a lot of ideas about how it happened in both spiritual terms and in mechanistic terms
Good. When you get a chance, I'm happy to hear them.
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The difficult bit was to convince me that it was a worthwhile thing to do - and that's where God's control of circumstance comes in. I got in a discussion about how one achieved poetic effect with a friend, and though I felt I made the better arguments, I also felt he had a better case if he could have made it. That willingness to consider alternative ways of thinking despite arguing hard - I don't know if it's come across to you!
Meanwhile I was having trouble with missing the kids, and all I can really say of that is that ever since I got saved, God changes me when times are hard, and it always works out with me more healed. Before I got saved, it was exactly the reverse. Trouble just beat me to death.
Somehow the combined actions did the trick. If I could bottle it, it would be priceless, but what does it take to get someone writing that much in that technical a way (rhythmic poetry) just so you can re-program the way their mind works when it is at full capacity?
I'm now re-wired, and the eerie bit is taking the test before and after, without knowing it was going to be before and after the change; because that was what made me ask the question. At this point, those changes are making me happier. At that point, I was under so much stress that the changes just helped me get by, but were less noticeable.
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