That thing I wrote below pt 2
Look, read or skim part one before or this won't make as much sense.
Now before I say more I'm going to say there were some good people in the church and even the ones I'm going to talk bad about weren't evil people, just misguided, but ultimately good.
So it was what it was. But the real kicker was just trying to solve all my emotional damage there, through super-spiritual means. A couple things really stand out.
In order to try to sort out the pieces of my life and put them back together, I decided I needed counselling. I couldn't afford a licensed therapist and didn't want a 'non-believing' one. The pastor would counsel me. The first time I went, he'd forgotten I was coming and was about to leave (just caught him in time and went for a drive and then lunch). I think another time he wasn't there at all. A third time was normal. Anyways he didn't seem too good at making time or keeping it, so I kinda stopped.
A little bit later, I emailed the pastor and asked if there was anybody else who could consel me, I needed help to get my life together. Now let's be honest, I was a bit of a... a guy trying to get other people to solve my issues for me. kinda comin' on strong to anybody who could maybe mentor me. But I remember that email and it wasn't that weird. I mean obviously the pastor wasn't going to be a consistent counsellor to me... anyways, the response was "so sorry, we can't help you, God's way is to let go, man's way is to hold on."
Suzanne's response to that was "RUN."
It still doesn't make a lot of sense to me but it says a lot. Their idea of how I should be helped was "spiritual freedom." Not sorting through shit, dealing with issues, understanding why things are, realizing it's not all my fault, learning to see where others screwed up while still taking responsibility for my stuff, all that. No, we needed to pray and 'give it to God' and I would be better. Counselling? Fffh.
Now I was SCREWED UP at the time getting over the ex (I did a lot of growing up over the next year that I shoulda done years before).
Okay, so I was so screwed up, that I thought, man, my life isn't helping me get better. What I need to do is move into this house for men in recovery, that this older guy owns, and some guys live in trying to get their lives straight and really become spiritual and be 'delivered.'
It sounds totally weird, and it should. There's some decent ideas behind it - i mean some people absolutely need a way to get OUT of a lifestyle that is killing them. Two guys lived there besides the 'mentor' of this household at the time. Or was it three? Anyways two, one who was getting off the street and a normal life, one who was coming out of apparently some serious witchcraft.
So I say this carefully because both of those guys came from extremes I did not know and were in better places, if misguided, and I hope they've grown out of the weird.
The best idea was to move in. Let myself be 'led' and 'discipled' for a while. Humble myself.
So thing #1: being hyper-spiritual, of course, 'things' were harmful. Things such as secular CDs, or books... OH MY I OWNED HARRY POTTER. So the guy says, "Harry has to go." And I, wanting to be humble and not stubborn & arrogant as I always am, said, okay. So I put it out in the garage, not in my bedroom.
Later on it would come out as a negative to me that I only got rid of it to 'please him.' ??! What the fuck? No, I put some of my belongings away because I was being respectful and submissive to the head of the household.
Or how about... and this one always gets me, to this day, it's a moment I want to go back and just change how I reacted.
So I work an early shift at Starbucks. I've only been at the place a few days, I'm pretty nervous/not in my element/figuring things out. I make my breakfast and pack a lunch. I've always been kind of a noisy guy (my dad always said it was like a herd of elephants goin' up the stairs), and being nervous in a dead quiet house doesn't help.
So I'm, uh, probably too loud.
Which of these two things do you think happen?
Dude comes out, grumpy, and tells me to keep it down because they're trying to sleep and it's early
-OR-
dude comes out and tells me I've got problems, but it's not me, it's the demons, my inner angst
If you guessed "dude comes out and tells you that your noise is because of DEMONS MAKING YOU MAKE NOISE and totally belittles you and you have no idea what the hell to say or do and you're just, like, floored and not really good at responding to people who just take you down like that and not always quick witted especially when nervous and totally vulnerable, so you run downstairs and cry and go to work and then don't go home til your buddy goes over to try to talk to dude and that's it for that house", you're BINGO.
kicker was the other guy who I woke up later saying "I wanted to come out and rebuke you."
You know what'd be great?
If charismatics could just fucking be HUMAN for a minute, and dude just admits that he's fuckin' cranky because he got woke up by some dude bangin' cupboard doors in the mornin'. That'd be sweet.
Before that let's go to the DELIVERANCE.
See some charismatics are big on doing things where you like, go through your whole life and repent of every possible sin, real or imagined. Neal T Anderson runs a whole thing about that, and it's pretty much bollocks and unbiblical, but darn it, it's so spiritual. I'd link to some criticisms but I'm always concerned that those sites are also ones that think EVERYTHING in christianity that's not THEM is totally wrong. Google is your friend. Anyways Anderson is a loon but lots of people have similar ideas in these things.
Your whole life, every little sin, every event, has left you in bondage. Bondage that isn't broken just by, you know, the whole Christ thing, but having to repent of every single one. It's kinda weird. And then have some people pray over you and cast out all the demons keeping you in bondages (Seriously, it's always demons, every thing that happens).
But at that time I wanted to stop being so hurt and being so messed up and would try anything. So I was going to have deliverance from the head of the household and the goofy churches youth pastor and wife.
So it starts off, we're going for deliverance at 8pm. Except we go to the church and youth group is still on. So I'm in a pretty emotionally vulnerable state and nervous, so I don't want to hang out with them. Go alone in the sanctuary, okay.
Time passes.
MORE time passes.
It's like 9 fucking thirty and I'm still sitting around.
Now, to be fair here, I reacted badly, by basically finding a dark corner and sitting, hiding, so then they would be looking for me. So not proud of that. I reacted that way when I was younger...
but still. Deliverance at 8pm, almost two hours later we're not even getting started. What the fuck?
Then I get an earful from the youth pastor. "I'm here on my own time, not yours."
?!
What the hell is that? I'm not even really sure. It says a lot though. I guess I was 'privileged' to have some great 'spiritual warrior' praying for me.
anyways so it finally gets going and it's, you know, speaking in tongues, and a little shaking, and this and that. Well, from the people around me. I really stood there.
There was a couple cool things in there. I forgave a lot of people I would rather not have thought about. But that's a bit different from somebody praying apparently dozens of demons outta you (you, a christian).
Deliverance was a pretty key moment in my Christian walk, though, because I definitely heard God.
He was the crystal clear voice in my head telling me that this whole thing was complete fuckin' lunacy.
I remember it going on and on, you know, and not being in any kind of emotional stupor or lull, wondering "should I be?", as the mullet-haired youth pastor with no training made faces like he was constipated and spoke in dubious tongues. Different names of 'evil spirits oppressing me' came up, which I had to 'rebuke in the name of Jesus.' Kay. Okay.
Then we get to music.
Right.
Either before or after this, I had a thing at the dinner table with the head of the house, who basically said Christians can't play rock music. Meanwhile, I have amazing friends who have dedicated their lives to playing THE METAL for Jesus. "Look, my friends have seen people saved at their shows." "Yeah? How many stick?" He was adamant that Christians playing rock, playing METAL, were deceived.
According to him, though, almost every Christian was 'deceived.' Good thing we went to a church that KNEW THAAA TROOOOTH.
So deliverance. And suddenly in the tongues comes up the spirit of rock music.
Charismatics are big on 'spirits of.' Spirit of lust, spirit of gluttony, spirit of witchcraft, spirit of world of warcraft, spirit of roller coasters, spirit of LEVIATHANNNN (OH SHIT IT'S DAVE BATISTA RUN). There's a spirit for everything! And they all should be rebuked!
And this is the moment when God told me this was all completely nuts.
I was half-there, half into it, or trying to be. REBUKE THE SPIRIT OF ROCK & ROLL.
Snap.
Crystal clear.
My mind was absolutely clear and lucid. It actually WAS kind of special, maybe even a touch supernatural. I only say that because of how 'sharp' my 'vision' was. Okay that's a bad metaphor. But when I say my mind was 'lucid,' I mean LUCID. I was completely THERE.
And there was no way in hell I was rebuking a spirit that DIDN'T EXIST.
Butkevenchristianrockmusicisbadkay.
So after a bit of pressuring, I compromised, and was able to say, well, rebellion is totally part of rock music. So I can rebuke the 'spirit of rebellion.'
Crystal.
Clear.
I don't know if I heard a voice in my head other than my own, the voice of God saying, in words or just sensation, "dude, this isn't real. What's going on here, this isn't Christianity and it's not how it works."
But ...
Crystal.
Clear.
Now, that wasn't the end, and two days later the whole morning garbage happened, and then about four-five days after I moved all my (not too many) belongings in, leaving a roommate hanging, I moved back to my basement suite with a dude.
From there things kinda... just started to calm down. I mean my life started to come back together, I grew up a lot. I attended the church for a while still after that, but gradually drifted away the more and more I saw how out there and wrong they were.
The pastor's wife, after the tragedy in Thailand, the tsunami, using that to say 'the judgment God passed on Thailand could come HERE (if we don't stop gay marriage)'. Wait, I thought God was done with the whole heavy judging thing because, you know, JESUS. And judging at the end of things. And not that.
Or the pastor, marrying a couple that had gotten pregnant, turning the whole thing into a thing about why gays aren't right (this was around the big time when Canada was legalizing gay marriage), and saying something as patently untrue as 'when the hymen breaks, there is a spiritual breakthrough!' Um, hello moron. The hymen can break well before first intercourse. Some super athletic girls break it without meaning to. Or like, you could fall on a fence
HOLDEN
Okay, I'll revise. Virginity is lost
when the hymen is broken.
ALYSSA
Then I lost my virginity at ten,
because I fell on a fence post when I
was ten, and it broke my hymen. Now I
have to tell people that I lost it to
a wooden post I'd known my whole young
life?
But really, after the deliverance farce and the "you're too noisy in the morning NO IT'S THE DEMONS" bit, it was all over but the cake eating. What?
That wasn't the end of my charismatic journey, and I know mine is a lot less intense or nuts than others. Lots of people are in much longer, much deeper, in places that are more or less cults or cult-like. I was pretty lucky - my inability to really commit to anything saved my ass. Hooray!
I spent the majority of 2008 obsessing about charismatics, diving into their bits, reading criticisms, especially guys like Todd Bentley and Rick Joyner. Why? There are a lot of denominations out there, everybody has some things right, and a few goofy bits, some worse than others. I wanted to be able to reconcile some of the extreme beliefs of these people with you know, reality, and be able to have common ground as believers.
I'm not saying you can't, but honestly, you really can't. You can't just disagree, because they're prone to believe that you're being deceived by an evil spirit and you could live much more 'abundantly' if you'd only be delivered. In other words, life faith just like them. That sentiment, of course, isn't unique to charismatics, but how the hell can you dialogue or share common ground with people like that? It's nigh impossible.
Somehow I wanted to be able to get through it and say, I don't agree with any one denomination entirely, but I can appreciate most of them and they've got the key bits right. And I mean, there's still a ton of different churches and ideas in the charismatic/apostolic realm of churches too, you know? Some are really nuts, some are decent. If people are serving Jesus and spreading the Gospel (which is Jesus' MAIN command, along with helping the poor, well before miracles and healings and blah blah blah - check the end of the gospels foo').
The final conclusion, unfortunately, is that a lot of these churches and leaders are at best misguided & ignorant, and at worst committing outright heresy.
There are good people in these movements and churches, but I finally came to peace that I can't reconcile the hypers with just plain 'Christianity.' (trying not to sound like a conservative who thinks every church but his is wrong wrong).
Me? You know, I'm also kinda tired of the 'personal God' things in mainline evangelicals... i'm really okay with liturgy, and ritual. They're valuable. But that's another thing, one I'm not really exploring like I want to be, but want to. I'm really more interested in the Lutherans and Anglicans and Catholics, but mostly the Orthodox. I can't stand the typical evangelical service, even if the church is not-nuts.
I do remember though, one of the worship times at the wacked out church...
when this pretty cool mom there, just sang her heart out, and it wasn't forced, it wasn't fakey, it wasn't... it wasn't those things. It wasn't a show. She sang and danced like her life depended on it and I truly believe God met her there. That's what it's supposed to look like, when you have an emotional experience with God. I'm not describing it well but I was so happy for her. She had so much baggage and it wasn't just music helping her with catharsis.
I believe there are spiritual forces, but I think we give the devil way too much credit if we live life thinking he's on our ass every second. didn't Christ beat him on the cross? I'd really like to believe that God does miraculous healings today; I just believe he's more subtle about it, not like these guys becoming 'famous' for their 'healing annointing.' I don't know why God doesn't heal all people but I have theories, most of which basically say "he made the world perfect, we screwed it up, sucks we live in an imperfect world." I believe on some level still that God does do deep things in us.
I just think that Christians need to live in the real world, and we do nobody any good if we try to live the fantasy novel hypers do - not ourselves, not our loved ones, not the world that needs the Gospel.
Oh, and there's no 'spirit of rock & roll,' it's just music.
Crystal clear.
Now before I say more I'm going to say there were some good people in the church and even the ones I'm going to talk bad about weren't evil people, just misguided, but ultimately good.
So it was what it was. But the real kicker was just trying to solve all my emotional damage there, through super-spiritual means. A couple things really stand out.
In order to try to sort out the pieces of my life and put them back together, I decided I needed counselling. I couldn't afford a licensed therapist and didn't want a 'non-believing' one. The pastor would counsel me. The first time I went, he'd forgotten I was coming and was about to leave (just caught him in time and went for a drive and then lunch). I think another time he wasn't there at all. A third time was normal. Anyways he didn't seem too good at making time or keeping it, so I kinda stopped.
A little bit later, I emailed the pastor and asked if there was anybody else who could consel me, I needed help to get my life together. Now let's be honest, I was a bit of a... a guy trying to get other people to solve my issues for me. kinda comin' on strong to anybody who could maybe mentor me. But I remember that email and it wasn't that weird. I mean obviously the pastor wasn't going to be a consistent counsellor to me... anyways, the response was "so sorry, we can't help you, God's way is to let go, man's way is to hold on."
Suzanne's response to that was "RUN."
It still doesn't make a lot of sense to me but it says a lot. Their idea of how I should be helped was "spiritual freedom." Not sorting through shit, dealing with issues, understanding why things are, realizing it's not all my fault, learning to see where others screwed up while still taking responsibility for my stuff, all that. No, we needed to pray and 'give it to God' and I would be better. Counselling? Fffh.
Now I was SCREWED UP at the time getting over the ex (I did a lot of growing up over the next year that I shoulda done years before).
Okay, so I was so screwed up, that I thought, man, my life isn't helping me get better. What I need to do is move into this house for men in recovery, that this older guy owns, and some guys live in trying to get their lives straight and really become spiritual and be 'delivered.'
It sounds totally weird, and it should. There's some decent ideas behind it - i mean some people absolutely need a way to get OUT of a lifestyle that is killing them. Two guys lived there besides the 'mentor' of this household at the time. Or was it three? Anyways two, one who was getting off the street and a normal life, one who was coming out of apparently some serious witchcraft.
So I say this carefully because both of those guys came from extremes I did not know and were in better places, if misguided, and I hope they've grown out of the weird.
The best idea was to move in. Let myself be 'led' and 'discipled' for a while. Humble myself.
So thing #1: being hyper-spiritual, of course, 'things' were harmful. Things such as secular CDs, or books... OH MY I OWNED HARRY POTTER. So the guy says, "Harry has to go." And I, wanting to be humble and not stubborn & arrogant as I always am, said, okay. So I put it out in the garage, not in my bedroom.
Later on it would come out as a negative to me that I only got rid of it to 'please him.' ??! What the fuck? No, I put some of my belongings away because I was being respectful and submissive to the head of the household.
Or how about... and this one always gets me, to this day, it's a moment I want to go back and just change how I reacted.
So I work an early shift at Starbucks. I've only been at the place a few days, I'm pretty nervous/not in my element/figuring things out. I make my breakfast and pack a lunch. I've always been kind of a noisy guy (my dad always said it was like a herd of elephants goin' up the stairs), and being nervous in a dead quiet house doesn't help.
So I'm, uh, probably too loud.
Which of these two things do you think happen?
Dude comes out, grumpy, and tells me to keep it down because they're trying to sleep and it's early
-OR-
dude comes out and tells me I've got problems, but it's not me, it's the demons, my inner angst
If you guessed "dude comes out and tells you that your noise is because of DEMONS MAKING YOU MAKE NOISE and totally belittles you and you have no idea what the hell to say or do and you're just, like, floored and not really good at responding to people who just take you down like that and not always quick witted especially when nervous and totally vulnerable, so you run downstairs and cry and go to work and then don't go home til your buddy goes over to try to talk to dude and that's it for that house", you're BINGO.
kicker was the other guy who I woke up later saying "I wanted to come out and rebuke you."
You know what'd be great?
If charismatics could just fucking be HUMAN for a minute, and dude just admits that he's fuckin' cranky because he got woke up by some dude bangin' cupboard doors in the mornin'. That'd be sweet.
Before that let's go to the DELIVERANCE.
See some charismatics are big on doing things where you like, go through your whole life and repent of every possible sin, real or imagined. Neal T Anderson runs a whole thing about that, and it's pretty much bollocks and unbiblical, but darn it, it's so spiritual. I'd link to some criticisms but I'm always concerned that those sites are also ones that think EVERYTHING in christianity that's not THEM is totally wrong. Google is your friend. Anyways Anderson is a loon but lots of people have similar ideas in these things.
Your whole life, every little sin, every event, has left you in bondage. Bondage that isn't broken just by, you know, the whole Christ thing, but having to repent of every single one. It's kinda weird. And then have some people pray over you and cast out all the demons keeping you in bondages (Seriously, it's always demons, every thing that happens).
But at that time I wanted to stop being so hurt and being so messed up and would try anything. So I was going to have deliverance from the head of the household and the goofy churches youth pastor and wife.
So it starts off, we're going for deliverance at 8pm. Except we go to the church and youth group is still on. So I'm in a pretty emotionally vulnerable state and nervous, so I don't want to hang out with them. Go alone in the sanctuary, okay.
Time passes.
MORE time passes.
It's like 9 fucking thirty and I'm still sitting around.
Now, to be fair here, I reacted badly, by basically finding a dark corner and sitting, hiding, so then they would be looking for me. So not proud of that. I reacted that way when I was younger...
but still. Deliverance at 8pm, almost two hours later we're not even getting started. What the fuck?
Then I get an earful from the youth pastor. "I'm here on my own time, not yours."
?!
What the hell is that? I'm not even really sure. It says a lot though. I guess I was 'privileged' to have some great 'spiritual warrior' praying for me.
anyways so it finally gets going and it's, you know, speaking in tongues, and a little shaking, and this and that. Well, from the people around me. I really stood there.
There was a couple cool things in there. I forgave a lot of people I would rather not have thought about. But that's a bit different from somebody praying apparently dozens of demons outta you (you, a christian).
Deliverance was a pretty key moment in my Christian walk, though, because I definitely heard God.
He was the crystal clear voice in my head telling me that this whole thing was complete fuckin' lunacy.
I remember it going on and on, you know, and not being in any kind of emotional stupor or lull, wondering "should I be?", as the mullet-haired youth pastor with no training made faces like he was constipated and spoke in dubious tongues. Different names of 'evil spirits oppressing me' came up, which I had to 'rebuke in the name of Jesus.' Kay. Okay.
Then we get to music.
Right.
Either before or after this, I had a thing at the dinner table with the head of the house, who basically said Christians can't play rock music. Meanwhile, I have amazing friends who have dedicated their lives to playing THE METAL for Jesus. "Look, my friends have seen people saved at their shows." "Yeah? How many stick?" He was adamant that Christians playing rock, playing METAL, were deceived.
According to him, though, almost every Christian was 'deceived.' Good thing we went to a church that KNEW THAAA TROOOOTH.
So deliverance. And suddenly in the tongues comes up the spirit of rock music.
Charismatics are big on 'spirits of.' Spirit of lust, spirit of gluttony, spirit of witchcraft, spirit of world of warcraft, spirit of roller coasters, spirit of LEVIATHANNNN (OH SHIT IT'S DAVE BATISTA RUN). There's a spirit for everything! And they all should be rebuked!
And this is the moment when God told me this was all completely nuts.
I was half-there, half into it, or trying to be. REBUKE THE SPIRIT OF ROCK & ROLL.
Snap.
Crystal clear.
My mind was absolutely clear and lucid. It actually WAS kind of special, maybe even a touch supernatural. I only say that because of how 'sharp' my 'vision' was. Okay that's a bad metaphor. But when I say my mind was 'lucid,' I mean LUCID. I was completely THERE.
And there was no way in hell I was rebuking a spirit that DIDN'T EXIST.
Butkevenchristianrockmusicisbadkay.
So after a bit of pressuring, I compromised, and was able to say, well, rebellion is totally part of rock music. So I can rebuke the 'spirit of rebellion.'
Crystal.
Clear.
I don't know if I heard a voice in my head other than my own, the voice of God saying, in words or just sensation, "dude, this isn't real. What's going on here, this isn't Christianity and it's not how it works."
But ...
Crystal.
Clear.
Now, that wasn't the end, and two days later the whole morning garbage happened, and then about four-five days after I moved all my (not too many) belongings in, leaving a roommate hanging, I moved back to my basement suite with a dude.
From there things kinda... just started to calm down. I mean my life started to come back together, I grew up a lot. I attended the church for a while still after that, but gradually drifted away the more and more I saw how out there and wrong they were.
The pastor's wife, after the tragedy in Thailand, the tsunami, using that to say 'the judgment God passed on Thailand could come HERE (if we don't stop gay marriage)'. Wait, I thought God was done with the whole heavy judging thing because, you know, JESUS. And judging at the end of things. And not that.
Or the pastor, marrying a couple that had gotten pregnant, turning the whole thing into a thing about why gays aren't right (this was around the big time when Canada was legalizing gay marriage), and saying something as patently untrue as 'when the hymen breaks, there is a spiritual breakthrough!' Um, hello moron. The hymen can break well before first intercourse. Some super athletic girls break it without meaning to. Or like, you could fall on a fence
HOLDEN
Okay, I'll revise. Virginity is lost
when the hymen is broken.
ALYSSA
Then I lost my virginity at ten,
because I fell on a fence post when I
was ten, and it broke my hymen. Now I
have to tell people that I lost it to
a wooden post I'd known my whole young
life?
But really, after the deliverance farce and the "you're too noisy in the morning NO IT'S THE DEMONS" bit, it was all over but the cake eating. What?
That wasn't the end of my charismatic journey, and I know mine is a lot less intense or nuts than others. Lots of people are in much longer, much deeper, in places that are more or less cults or cult-like. I was pretty lucky - my inability to really commit to anything saved my ass. Hooray!
I spent the majority of 2008 obsessing about charismatics, diving into their bits, reading criticisms, especially guys like Todd Bentley and Rick Joyner. Why? There are a lot of denominations out there, everybody has some things right, and a few goofy bits, some worse than others. I wanted to be able to reconcile some of the extreme beliefs of these people with you know, reality, and be able to have common ground as believers.
I'm not saying you can't, but honestly, you really can't. You can't just disagree, because they're prone to believe that you're being deceived by an evil spirit and you could live much more 'abundantly' if you'd only be delivered. In other words, life faith just like them. That sentiment, of course, isn't unique to charismatics, but how the hell can you dialogue or share common ground with people like that? It's nigh impossible.
Somehow I wanted to be able to get through it and say, I don't agree with any one denomination entirely, but I can appreciate most of them and they've got the key bits right. And I mean, there's still a ton of different churches and ideas in the charismatic/apostolic realm of churches too, you know? Some are really nuts, some are decent. If people are serving Jesus and spreading the Gospel (which is Jesus' MAIN command, along with helping the poor, well before miracles and healings and blah blah blah - check the end of the gospels foo').
The final conclusion, unfortunately, is that a lot of these churches and leaders are at best misguided & ignorant, and at worst committing outright heresy.
There are good people in these movements and churches, but I finally came to peace that I can't reconcile the hypers with just plain 'Christianity.' (trying not to sound like a conservative who thinks every church but his is wrong wrong).
Me? You know, I'm also kinda tired of the 'personal God' things in mainline evangelicals... i'm really okay with liturgy, and ritual. They're valuable. But that's another thing, one I'm not really exploring like I want to be, but want to. I'm really more interested in the Lutherans and Anglicans and Catholics, but mostly the Orthodox. I can't stand the typical evangelical service, even if the church is not-nuts.
I do remember though, one of the worship times at the wacked out church...
when this pretty cool mom there, just sang her heart out, and it wasn't forced, it wasn't fakey, it wasn't... it wasn't those things. It wasn't a show. She sang and danced like her life depended on it and I truly believe God met her there. That's what it's supposed to look like, when you have an emotional experience with God. I'm not describing it well but I was so happy for her. She had so much baggage and it wasn't just music helping her with catharsis.
I believe there are spiritual forces, but I think we give the devil way too much credit if we live life thinking he's on our ass every second. didn't Christ beat him on the cross? I'd really like to believe that God does miraculous healings today; I just believe he's more subtle about it, not like these guys becoming 'famous' for their 'healing annointing.' I don't know why God doesn't heal all people but I have theories, most of which basically say "he made the world perfect, we screwed it up, sucks we live in an imperfect world." I believe on some level still that God does do deep things in us.
I just think that Christians need to live in the real world, and we do nobody any good if we try to live the fantasy novel hypers do - not ourselves, not our loved ones, not the world that needs the Gospel.
Oh, and there's no 'spirit of rock & roll,' it's just music.
Crystal clear.