A Charismatic Civil War?

Commenter and old friend Lois asked me to read this article, the confession of a pastor deeply involved in the so-called "Toronto blessing." He now calls it deception. I'm a Vineyard guy in a church that largely reveres the Toronto thing, but I myself have been quietly skeptical all along.

Anyway, this got me reading up a little more on the Lakeland thing, which is distinctly creepy in my opinion. Glancing about, I came upon J. Lee Grady's interesting Charisma article, Can We Avoid a Charismatic Civil War? Actually, I found this article via Dan Edelin's commentary on it, The Coming Charismatic Civil War, which I found via Mark Byron's Border State Report.

All three of these articles and the confession of the Vineyard pastor are interesting ruminations on the same theme, each contributing something important to the discussion. The whole idea of a division in the charismatic ranks between those ruled by the intellect (boo!) and those ruled by "the heart" and therefore open to the Spirit (yea!) lies behind all this.

In my opinion, for individuals to have a self-understanding that pits intellect against emotion and largely favors one while denigrating the other is dangerous and will have unhealthy results. I could go on and on about this. Some tend to denigrate all experiential spiritual knowledge as untrustworthy (because, as they say, the heart is untrustworthy). The public persona of these types (I think of John MacArthur) is thoroughly "left-brained," although I'm sure even MacArthur is often moved by emotion which is in every way genuine and reliable.

On the other hand, others tend to denigrate "head knowledge" and put their confidence in "the heart." This is not only the predisposition of all Broadway musicals and greeting card poets, etc., but perhaps America at large and certainly most people in Charismatic circles.

As you'll read about in the articles above, it was "prophet" Rick Joyner who predicted a war within charismatic/pentecostalism between these two groups. People of the heart, of emotion, free in the Spirit to receive spiritual impartations of dreams and visions, etc., and people of the head, coldly intellectual and spiritually dry.

But of course these ways of describing the two "sides" are mere caricatures. In truth, things are not so cut-and-dried. Every individual is far more complicated than this; no one can extricate emotion from intellect for long, or live lives entirely free from reason or intellect. We are each of us a mixed bag. Both intellect and emotion are gifts from God, but both are fallen and therefore not entirely trustworthy. Therefore, humility with regard to both is the proper response.

We happen to live in an age where so much preferential status is given to the "heart" or emotion, so that the final and unquestionable word in any decision goes to the heart and puts thinking to flight, that the application of discernment and humility to these matters seem especially called for. In other words, we are not so much in danger of running amuck because of our lack of emotion, as from our failure to think carefully (and Biblically). Our problem is the unquestioning worship of the emotional. And such people are particularly prone to be led astray by opportunistic "leaders."

Lakeland, like Toronto, is the result.

Note: after writing this post I came upon the following passage in Richard Foster's fine book, Stream of Living Water. Speaking of one of the dangers that seems to be inherent in the charismatic "stream":

... the danger of rejecting the rational and the intellectual. This one can easily happen because the charismatic emphasis is on the emotive side of our faith. And it should be. But it must never reject reason or the mind as a consequence. Emotion and reason are not opposites that we must choose between. The language of Christian conviction here is "both/and" rather than "either/or." The charisms of the Spirit do not offend our rational facilities even though they are not confined to them. We love God with both mind and heart.