I recently listened to a program on NPR that was called “Religious Trends In America: The Toronto Blessing, part II”. My godfather will be furious with me for not providing a link to this, BUT I LOST THE PROCEDURE! Anyway, if you go to NPR.org, under All Things Considered from May 12th, you can listen to it. It got me thinking…
I was a Pentacostal for many years. One of the things we firmly believed, in our particular Church anyway, was that the fullest manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our lives was to speak in tongues. To do this, one had to let go of any inhibitions you might have. These inhibitions could have been any number of things: fear of what might happen, embarrassment, sin( which interestingly enough, was not the most talked about) etc. I remember actually getting a lesson from my pastor at the time on how to do this at the altar call. He told me to raise my hands, loosen my lips and tongue, and start “murmering”. Then the Holy Spirit, if He so chose, would give the words. Well, it was a traumatic experience for me because there was a lot of pressure from the pastor and I was too “inhibited”. I never really experienced this phenom. I chalked it up to a lack of faith at the time.
Well, when I heard this program, it brought up all of these memories. When I became Orthodox, I left all of that behind. I came to understand this was not the only manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In fact, once we are baptized and/or Chrismated into the Church, we acquire the Holy Spirit(not requiring that I burst into Cantonese to affirm this). True enough, if we choose to live an unrighteous life, the Holy Spirit will leave us. We have to maintain a righteous life for the Holy Spirit to remain. Truly partaking in the life of the Church will ensure this. The Holy Spirit will give us gifts. The Church affirms that this is one of the gifts, but usually in the context of missions, which doesn’t happen often. The focus is maintaining the Holy Spirit in our lives through righteous living. As we go deeper into our souls and by the grace of God, we are purified. The more we are purified, the more present He is in our lives.
As I listened to the Toronto program, it just struck me how shallow that it all seemed. Most of the people interviewed, when asked what they hoped to experience, wanted to experience something “supernatural”. There was only one guy who said that the experience deepened his faith. The rest just wanted the experience. This was the ends, the means was to “lose those inhibitions”.
I think this is why I never really thought being “slain in the spirit” was what it was all cracked up to be. The experience was like a drug experience. The goal being the ecstasy the Spirit can provide for you; a fix. The Orthodox teach that these “gifting” experiences are to turn us inward, to discover God within us. A purification process which ultimately should end in Theosis. The means are the experience, the end is deification. There is so much depth here. Now, I know that this is a judgement on my part to say that the Toronto people did not experience God as I have described, but their comments did not reflect this. But I just wasn’t taught this.
An important sidebar…The Church fathers teach that these passionful experiences can be demonic. Many a story comes from the desert of ascetics who were lead astray in this way: great feats during prayer, enlightenment to the point of worshiping Satan as the “angel of light” thinking he was Christ. In every instance, they decided to do all of these things without a blessing from a more experienced elder. In my experience, even though I had direction, I would have been the one to ultimately decide that what I was experiencing was Holy. My pastor was relying on his own created tradition. I know for a fact he didn’t follow a prescribed method. He would have said that the Holy Spirit had revealed to him how things were to be done. He did not have 2,000 years of experience to guide him.
I feel so blessed and protected to be a part of a Church that would ensure I did not go astray into demonics. When I think of those past, Pentacostal experiences I say, “No thanks!” I’ll take the sweet stillness of silence in peaceful contemplation, illumined by candlelight and shrouded in clouds of incense.
