Here's a little something that Blogger pointed out for all of us today, featured on The Onion. I swear, despite the superficial details (the age, the location), it's not really me. I never write about my meals. Unless it's at a really nice restaurant.

The interesting thing about being a Christian is that while you're part of a great spiritual family, with the right to legitimately claim such folks as George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., and J.R.R. Tolkien as your brothers in Christ, and while you can find unity with your fellows in Jesus, there's still plenty to differ over, and it won't be long before you find yourself vehemently disagreeing with fellow believers on a particular topic. Fortunately, we're not talking salvation issues here, but it still gets to me.

Since I moved out of California, I've been delving into the world of Pentecostalism...or, more correctly, that side of the denominational divide - I'm still a little unclear on the precise difference between a Pentecostal church, a Word of Faith church, a Spirit-Baptized church, and so on. However, the unifying element seems to be a greater emphasis on the actions of the Holy Spirit within and through the believer. Most noticably (at least, to hear the pastors speak about it) this means speaking in tongues, but it would be more accurate to say that these churches are concerned that we're limiting the Spirit by relying on logic, reasoning, and "head-knowledge" alone. It's an approach to Biblical teaching that is very different from what I was raised with yet not contradictory to it. The emphasis is different, is all.

I've been praying about the entire phenomenon of speaking in tongues, and I think God has been leading me to some understandings of it. Specifically, I've been asking for Scriptures backing it up. Marilyn and I have been doing a Bible study on the Holy Spirit together, and it's started guiding me in the right directions. When we went to church on Sunday, the pastor finally started quoting some verses on the subject that I hadn't read before. The descriptions I've read from Paul suggest that it is a sort of secret language which the Holy Spirit speaks to the Father - a kind of conversation/prayer within the Godhead - so I think I'm starting to understand the foundation of the concept. I'm still not entirely convinced that speaking in tongues is the same thing as the phenomenon of glossolalia (what most people think of when they think of speaking in tongues); I'm especially critical of the idea of preachers doing it in front of a congregation - as far as I've seen, the verses concerning speaking in tongues suggest that it is something to be done in private prayer, or, if done in a congregational setting, that there should be someone who interprets what was said. Of course, there was the first speaking in tongues event on the Day of Pentecost. In that situation, people are described as having understood what the disciples were saying, hearing it in their own language (while some just thought they were babbling because they were drunk). At present, I'm still of a mind that this may be describing two different, yet connected, phenomena. The church we're attending hasn't said as much, but the Bible study book we're going through has mentioned the existence of churches where they insisted that a person wasn't really saved unless they spoke in tongues. There is no Biblical evidence of this at all.

Anyway, this is the big new thing I've been looking into, and I'm glad that I have been, because I've been able to experience a different side of Christianity that I hadn't previously been aware of. Like I said, I'm slow to accept anything without explicit Biblical proof (even then, I'm a bit hesitant, but I'll mark that up as a personal fault). Even if I don't completely accept it, I'm glad that I'm more aware of it, just as I'm glad that my friend Dan has made the underlying reasoning of certain Catholic beliefs clear to me.

So - back to my original topic. I've been listening to a Christian talk radio station out here called KKMS (whose tagline - "More Spirited Talk Radio" - sounds suspiciously like Los Angeles-based KFI 640's "More Stimulating Talk Radio", and when I say "suspiciously," I mean "exactly"). They play my favorites - Alastair Begg, Hank Hanegraaff - and they also have a Rush Limbaugh-like show starring a guy named Todd Friel...whose voice sounds exactly like John from the John and Ken Show. Or Ken. I never remember which; he's the one who sounds all agitated, not the calm Joel Hodgson-like one. Todd sounds exactly like the agitated one.

Like Rush Limbaugh, Todd says a lot of things I really agree with. Like Rush Limbaugh, I find he also sometimes says things I disagree with. For example, I recently heard his reasoning as to why he's opposed to the Word of Faith movement and those who come from it. The argument I heard him give the other day boiled down to this: "I think the whole "name it and claim it" thing is dangerous because it leads people to blame themselves and even to lose their faith when the things they pray for in the Spirit don't come to pass." I understand his argument, his logic, and I agree with him to a point...but at the same time, I wish he would have provided Scripture to back up his argument. Again, this isn't something I'm completely opposed to - a lot of the "name it and claim it" preaching I've heard (mainly when I was in California) smacked of selfish desires. However, the preaching I've heard on the topic since moving to Iowa and then to Minnesota has been very much focused on serving God, not the self, and has been backed up with Scriptural promises God has made as well as the examples of the disciples. I think the key is remembering that it's about serving God, and that God is not going to give us something which is against His nature. We have to go where He tells us to, not demand that He follow us around as we do our thing.

Listening to Todd Friel last night was pretty cool - apparently he designates Wednesdays as "Witness Wednesdays," and he goes out to witness to people on the streets, and records the entire experience. Yesterday, he played recordings from an outing to Los Angeles where he did this along with Kirk Cameron - you know, the "Growing Pains" kid, the guy who starred in the "Left Behind" video as Buck or Bud or Stud or whatever the name of the reporter character is. Nonetheless, I listened and heard why Kirk Cameron is more of a man than I am. He shared the Gospel - very effectively, in a very quick-thinking way - with three big, burly, scary biker gang types. Todd described them as "the kind of guys that, if you were driving down the street in L.A. with the kids in the minivan, would inspire you to tell the kids, 'Okay, lock the doors everyone, let's not make any eye contact while I hit the accelerator...'" Listening to them, I could hear that they were pretty surly, two of them may have been a bit mocking, but one of them was genuinely listening to what Kirk had to say. It was inspiring, really.

Okay, so that was really cool. This morning, I was looking up Todd Friel's corner of the KKMS website to find the Scripture references they were using while witnessing, when I noticed a link to Todd's opinion of the Harry Potter phenomenon.

Well, I found another area where we really differ, and in this case, we differ a very great deal. Todd's opinion was that HP is occultic, candy-coated Satanism for the kids. The problem was that Todd's arguments are the same myopic, superficial "can't see the forest for the trees" list of offenses that completely misunderstand the fantasy genre, the idea of mythology as symbols, the difference between literary "magic" and real-world witchcraft/neo-paganism, and so on. Worse, he complains about passages from the books which glorify the "dark side" approach to magical power and life in general. Were these passages being spoken from the mouths of the protagonists, or being presented in the books as the ideal, I would have problems with them, too - only, these quotes are coming from the villains . Apparently, in Todd's world there should be no stories at all, because even mentioning the existence of evil is somehow harmful.

Throwing this in stark relief, Hank Hanegraaff had a two-part interview with Jim Ware, co-author of "Finding God in The Lord of the Rings" and author of "God of the Fairy Tale," which aired right after Todd's show. While they had their issues with Harry Potter, they also recognized that there were good lessons which could be drawn from the stories - indeed, from any secular fantasy - which point toward Christ, because God is sovereign. The very things all human beings long for - justice, love, etc - are desires God has instilled in us, and our hearts cry out for them. Our very best stories are going to be the ones which long for these same things, and present them as worthy goals.

I could say more about this topic, but I've done so many times before and I really want to finish this entry to go do other things, so I'll just summarize with this statement - I read the first two-and-a-half Harry Potter books, and I liked them. I don't see any problem with kids reading them. I don't deny that people can be drawn to neo-paganism through a love of the fantasy genre (I've worked at Renaissance Faires long enough to see this firsthand), but if they don't recognize Jesus as their Lord, does it really matter? Telling non-Christians to stay away from the occult seems to me like putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. Let's get our priorities in order. Besides, it's not the first time I've disagreed with the seeming majority of my brothers and sisters in Christ. I enjoy roleplaying games, my father is a Mason, and I want to create comic books. By all rights, I should have received my Satan's Buddies Club membership card and Mind-Control Powers years ago, but perhaps strangely, I've never once been asked to renounce Christ. Hmmm.