I am a no-longer-teenage Orthodox charismatic

Xanax Purchase When I first began to serve the Lord, as an older teenager, I returned to Christianity through a charismatic group. Actually, at first through a Pentecostal group, but that was of very short duration. I do know that out of that hothouse situation came a life-long desire to experience the Lord. Mind you, I am not simply talking about “knowing” the Lord. I mean, a lifelong desire to get that, uhm, shivery inner feeling that says you are connecting with the Holy Spirit.

Buy Generic Xanax Online Yes, I know, I know, believe me, I am quite aware of all the dangers of relying on such feelings. I have seen congregations turn towards the shepherding extreme. I have seen people give prophecies that did not come true. I have seen people drop into the oldest of the heresies because they were convinced that the Holy Spirit was revealing the truth to them that what the Church had said in ancient times was wrong. Mind you, at the other end of the theological spectrum, the Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity most cited to justify all the progressive/liberal departures from the faith once delivered. In an earlier series of posts I had commented how the Radical Reformers (and Calvinists) were the philosophical ancestors of today’s progressive/liberal Christians. However, in the same way, the extreme ecstatics of the faith, that is, those who claim that their inner knowledge is greater than either Scripture or the Councils of the Church are the spiritual precursors to many of today’s progressive/liberal Christians. Both the extreme ecstatics and many of the progressive/liberal Christians appeal to the Holy Spirit in order to be able to contradict the received faith.

So, why do I say that I am an Orthodox charismatic? Well, just because an idea has been misused does not mean that the idea itself is bad. That is why that NRA slogan has been successful. You know the one, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” The actual sentence is true, in and of itself. And, because it is true, many people do not catch the problem with using that saying. The problem is that the argument is not actually over whether people kill people. The argument is over whether fewer people will be killed if there are fewer guns around. No, no, no, I am not taking sides on this argument. I am merely pointing out a logical fallacy. The statistics  on guns and crime can be parsed in a variety of ways. But, I am pointing out that the NRA slogan is a misuse of the language.

https://transculturalexchange.org/7ox3enxp In the same way, in Church history, there is a constant witness of a desire to experience the uncreated light of God. Another way to express that could be [depending on which variant of Orthodox theology you prefer] that there is a constant witness of a desire to experience the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church and in our personal lives. As you have guessed by now, I am using the word charismatic in a different way than I would have used it twenty years ago, and yet I am using it in many of the same ways.

===MORE TO COME===

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