Irrational Hangups With Godhttp://spiritfilled2.blogspot.com/2007/03/inventing-ones-own-religion.html

Irrational Hangups With God http://spiritfilled2.blogspot.com/2007/03/inventing-ones-own-religion.html http://www2.blogger.com/rearrange?blogid="4972654261783347245"

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Irrational Hangups with God

Deliverance from irrational reactions to God can come slowly and sometimes immediately.

As a psychotherapist, I have had patients whose negative issues with God cleared up along side the issues with their earthly parents. Somehow, parent emotional responses had cross-wired with God responses. Often the person only recognized their problem with God, after they were cured.

I have also seen people supernaturally delivered from what I have learned to call: Paranoia of the Father. Both type healings happened to me.

I frequently likened what occurs as similar to having a physical disorder; take anemia for instance. The person accepts the tired feeling as the norm. One day a doctor diagnosis anemia, gives some pills and zappo, they feel good. Only when they have been delivered can they exclaim “so this is the way a normal person feels!”

In my post,The Zapped Psychologist, I relate an encounter with God and a deliverance from my paranoia of Him which I did not recognize until it was gone. Besides my story, I have seen other sudden deliverances. The one I am about to describe is one of the more dramatic ones.

I was in an office one day with a woman who was almost totally catatonic. Usual approaches had failed. In desperation, I took off my psychologist’s hat and donned my priest’s. Suspecting something deeper than I had ever encountered, I tried to get her to just say aloud the name of Jesus. She tried, but the word would not come out.

I was treading somewhere I had never been, and really did not know what I was doing. So, I retreated to my office. There I began to quietly pray.

Suddenly, an inner, almost audible voice, said, “Brace yourself, she is coming.” To my alarm, there she was at the entrance to my office. Pathetically, she began to beg me to stop praying. “I know you think you are helping, but you are damaging my brain. You must stop!” She begged.

In my panic, I had enough presence of mind to realize that there was no way she could have known I was praying, plus there was no way I could have known she was coming. I knew I was in over my head.

So, I said to her, “I will call a friend of mine who knows about these things. But, Jane I am not saying this to you, I am talking to that something or someone who is talking to me.”

I dialed my friend and he responded, “I am on my way right now.”

At that exact moment, she snapped up straight, color returned to her face and she exclaimed, “It’s gone! It’s gone!” Raising her hands to her head, she said “It was like a giant vulture had his talons deep in my brain. I heard a whirring noise, and he was gone!”

(Afterwards, she went back to college, graduated with honors and did the same in graduate school.)

People have all sorts of hangups with God. If they ever get delivered from them either through psychotherapy or supernaturally (Mt 17:21), they often look back and exclaim “Man, I was really messed up and didn’t even know it!”

God's Chastisement

I explain how I deal with confusing Scripture by watching what Jesus did when I could not understand what He said. An example of another one of those puzzling Scriptures.
My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
or lose heart when you are punished by him;
for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves,
and chastises every child whom he accepts.’

In my confusion I remember Jesus tells us that when you have seen Him, you have seen the Father. If I apply my principle of watching Jesus’ actions as a way of understanding God, then I ask myself, “How did God (Jesus) discipline? Seems to me that the worse His beloved disciples received was a chewing out from time to time.

Inventing ones own religion

Larry King once asked Oral Roberts: “Rev. Roberts, when God does not heal someone you have prayed for, how do you explain that?” The famous healer's reply: “I don’t know."

I always admired Oral Roberts for that answer.

As Christians, we take our stand on the Scriptures to tell us who God is and what He does.. Sometimes Scriptures are very confusing. The subject of healing being an example. Confusion though, does not give us license to make up our own religion.

I do have my own way of resolving difficult Scripture for myself. I always start with Jesus. When even His words confuse me, then I fall back on a saying my grandmother taught me: "Actions speak louder than words." That saying even helped me be a better psychotherapist. When I don't understand what a person is saying, I watch what he does.

Therefore, if someone asked me the question posed to the Rev. Roberts, why did God not heal someone, I would have to reply, "I don't know, I never saw Him (Jesus) not do it."

Jesus healed everyone who asked Him. When did any one ever see Jesus do such things as these: “God took your little sister to heaven because she was so sweet, He wanted her with Himself.” Or, “God did not heal in order to bring you closer to Himself, or "God uses your sickness to teach you." etc. etc. Fill in the awful explanations you have heard.

Where do such people get their religion?

Doing Bad Theology

When I was a child, my grandmother use to scold me with “what you do, speaks so loudly, I can’t hear what you are saying.” My grandmother’s teaching helped when I became a psychologist. Whenever I was confused about something someone said, I could watch actions. “Actions speak louder than words” she taught me.

For example, Jesus confused me when he told the story we call the Good Samaritan. He had just finished telling people to love their neighbor, when someone asked, “Who is my neighbor?” Obviously, they all knew who their neighbors were. For thousands of years, a neighbor was a fellow member of their tribe plus anyone who worshiped Yahweh. Everyone else was excluded. Typically, when people asked such obvious questions, they were baiting Jesus.

So did Jesus take the bait and scandalize them that day by making Samaritans their neighbor? If He did, then where was the reaction?


You want to see a reaction? One day Paul declared to the Jews that the Spirit ordered him: “Depart for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.” At the word “Gentile,” the listeners went nuclear: “Away with such a fellow from the earth: for it is not fit that he should live!” They screamed. He barely got away with his life.

So how did Jesus get a pass that day if He said something similar? Why was there no riot?

Maybe the reason they did not react to Jesus’ story of the Samaritan was because they heard the story the way Jesus told it. Reading carefully, we see the neighbor in need of love was their fellow citizen in a mess. It took a hated Samaritan to remind them how to treat him.

The story is a very shaky foundation upon which to build an entire theology. Yet a lot of people who do not know their Bible well, do just that.

The Rev. Rick Warren and the main thing

The Rev. Rick Warren, author of a “Purpose Driven Life,” with thirty million copies sold, was all over the networks during the Christmas Holidays. We were informed by CNN, NBC, and Fox commentators, this incredible man was poised to change the face of Evangelicalism and perhaps of Christendom itself. As I understand it, he will mobilize the religious impulses of people, Christians (hot, lukewarm, and cold), as well as Imams and Rabbis, all over the world, to attack the problems of poverty and disease.

What could be more wonderful? But his timing is lousy.

Questioning Rev. Warren, I feel like David up against Goliath, but with the uncomfortable difference that David was certain God was behind him. I don’t possess that certainty.

I am going to be reckless though and pick up my sling shot and hope I can hit my target.

When I was a boy, I use to sit in a doughnut shop and ponder a poster on the wall which read: “When you travel through life brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole.” Over time, that became a guiding principle in my life, joined later with that affirmation: “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.”

Jesus taught His disciples that the causes of poverty and disease originate from an unseen realm. After modeling their weapons, He sent out His disciples to do what He did. Mat 10:7-8 “And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.”

From church history, we learn that for the next 300 years, His disciples did exactly what they were taught to do. Then somewhere around the time of the Church Father Tertullian, the church jumped the track and the main thing ceased to be the main thing. Over time, Christians created all sorts of activities; everything but the job Jesus left them to do.

Wonder of wonders, in our century, the main thing became the main thing again. We understood that the Church is the only institution with the power to attack human misery at its source. No other organization has demonstrated that ability.

Some of us should get a little nervous when the secular world, having found Rev. Warren, is acting like what he is teaching is the best thing since sliced bread. Both Jesus and Paul informed us that the world could not understand what we are about.

By the way, I did what the Rev Warren is suggesting when I was in the Peace Corps. I only recently began to see Jesus’ way of doing things. If we all go rushing off after the Reverend, who will be left to mind the store?

I Love God the way my pets love me.

The other day I was watching a TV commercial in which puppies were jumping all over a little boy. They were licking him, nibbling gently on him, and showing affection in every way possible. The little boy was giggling joyfully. It was a beautiful sight.

I remembered how wonderful it was to come home to my dog Hans, who jumped with excitement the minute he saw me, then expressed his devotion with his entire being.

Lately, I have had a series of dreams of all types of animals approaching me with affection.

Because, I believe that God communicates with us in the night when we are still, I asked Him the meaning of my dreams. My answer was that in our pets, God has given us a model of how to worship Him. Equally important, He has allowed us to experience what it is like to be worshiped.

If God experiences one tenth of what I experience from the love His creatures pour out to me, He must have a wonderful time when we worship Him. I can certainly understand why He created us to love Him.

Liberal Flip Flops Conservative

Charismatics I know, all became politically conservative, including myself.. My hope is this blog might provoke some comments. As a psychologist, I like to make sense out of my behavior.

Like most young people, I came forth from my university experience as a thoroughly indoctrinated lefty.. I have the bona fides to show for it. In Mississippi, I met with the Freedom Riders trying to undo segregation. As a result, I had to flee with my family. I stealthily indoctrinated my students. I served in President Kennedy’s Peace Corps and President Johnson’s War on Poverty, In Mexico, I studied with the radical priest Ivan Illich, along with many of the radicals of that time. .

I  protested the Viet Nam War, was nearly arrested in the March on Washington, and was pelted with rotten fruit on my campus as one of a handful of anti-war professors.

Then I was struck down by God and came off the floor a radical conservative.I look back asking myself. ”What happened?”. Following is an attempt to explain that to myself.

My entire adult life has been dedicated to empowering others. When the palpable power of God poured into me that night, I arose empowered with full confidence that I could now lick this life..

I then saw that much of what I had been doing was not only not the best way to empower, but much of it was disempowering. First, it was disempowering, because our paternalism was creating what we psychologists call “learned. helplessness.” Secondly, by taking the money from those who were succeeding, we were disempowering them, and finally and most relevant, we were impeding the discovery of finding true empowerment.

Politically, along came Ronald Reagan singing: “Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success -- only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free. Trust the people.” I heard empowerment

He was followed by Gingrich: “Respecting the judgment of our fellow citizens as we seek their mandate for reform, we hereby pledge our names to this Contract with America.” Gingrich had and still has the creative ideas that will release the power in people..

So, a 60's radical, who marched in the streets chanting “Power to the People!”, became an 80's radical marching in the street chanting “Power to the People!