Answer Number Eight!

8) I believe in the supernatural.

TRUE...and FALSE!

It's a bad question really, because the term "supernatural" means about a bazillion different things to a bazillion different people. I should have been more clear.

If "the supernatural" is God, well yeah. I believe in God. She is "super" or "above" nature because God is the creator of nature.

But all the other things supernatural could mean - from ghost and goblins to prophecy and healing ? Well, no. I don't believe.

I don't believe that they are supernatural. I believe they are completely natural.

Which is to say, very simply, that I think there is one division in the world that is of any significance - namely, the division between God and everything else.

God = Super + nature or supernatural.
Everything Else = natural.

So, we all have frameworks through which we see the world.

Americans and the rest of the world.
Men and women.
Leaders and followers.
People and natural resources.
Kind, smart people and the Republican Party.
(Just kidding! That's for my liberal friends!)

It's not that factually these divisions are mere conjecture, but instead that they are not divisions of any great significance in light of the division between Creator and creation.

BUT MORE THAN THAT...what significance do they have at all when you consider how this great divide between God and creation was bridged in the being we call Jesus, the Messiah, the God Human?!?

And so we can say, like that guy named Paul who wrote a lot of letters to the first churches over in Asia...

There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Christ.

So what of ghosts and goblins? Healing and prophecy? Yes, I suppose I can't end without really addressing the most common understanding of this word supernatural.

Ghosts? Who knows what happens exactly when we die? I don't. But I do know that God is God over the living and the dead, so I'm not worried.

Goblins? I don't know exactly what a goblin is, but regardless, if there is a reality of something like a goblin, it still belongs to the realm of the created, not the realm of the Creator.

Prophecy? Tongues? Healing? All those weird things that Pentecostals do?

So do many other religions...

Those things known to Christians as spiritual gifts - including both the "Pentecostal" gifts and the "Baptist" gifts - are to my mind, all within the realm of the natural. They are part of the creation known as humanity.

In fact, if there is anything "supernatural" at all about the spiritual gifts, it is that we respond to the Spirit who calls us to rise above our own little needy self - indeed, our fractured humanity - and consider others highly enough to offer our gifts to their service.

Did you ever have a teacher who saw you as of greater importance than himself?

Did you ever see preacher who thought herself inferior to her congregation?

Don't be too disturbed by the words "greater importance" or "inferior" - they are only ways of talking. Those who truly see themselves as inferior look quite different than those who serve, and in that way become, for lack of a better word, "inferior."

Anyway...

Practical Application: Put your hocus pocus back in the bag baby, cause I ain't impressed! But tell me now, is there any balm in Gilead?

If you believe there was any clarity in this post, the credit should go to The Human Puzzler, Mike Wittmer - author of Heaven is a Place on Earth, and the guy we speak of when we say, "My pastor can hit a home run, what can yours do?"

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 11/02/2005 09:02:00 PM

 

Comments:

And, the Standing Ovation of the Day goes to.... HEADLESS. Groovy, baby. I like this post.

and here I was, thinking *I* was supernatural.....

# by:  Captainwow : 10:49 AM

 

"...it is that we respond to the Spirit who calls us to rise above our own little needy self - indeed, our fractured humanity - and consider others highly enough to offer our gifts to their service."

Outstanding. And kudos to whoever deserves credit for this one.

# by:  Steve : 4:09 PM

 

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