I wasn't content to put that out. I presumed he was happy that said group of people was meeting, though without any context it was hard to work out. I had a suspicion he might have been thinking of the 'spiritual awareness group' which asked to use our church hall not long ago and whose money I refused on the grounds that what the organiser was actually planning to do was equip members to 'tap their psychic potential'; or the potential pagan-Wiccan-Druid meeting which is being bruited about on Facebook. He was indeed, so I altered the text to 'praying to reduce the influence of non-Christian spiritual groups', which made me a bit less uncomfortable.
I felt I could have a go, if called on, to explain my version to an ordinary secular liberal person who feels that all religions are basically alike, and can't everyone just get on with one another? You can't expect Christians to welcome people dipping into Wicca and psychic experimentation, I might say. Those people are God's beloved children who he longs to reach out to, and here they are wandering around in delusion of their own making which could even do them damage. So it makes sense to pray that the work of delusion and falsehood, as we see it, is impeded and the people who might be tempted to join in with it find their attention diverted in a more healthy direction by some conversation, some happening, some encounter. We're praying for angels to stand in their way and whisper in their ears, not for the organisers of the meetings to have a car accident or something. But that, you see, sounds less like praying against, and more like praying for.
'Don't worry,' an evangelical parishioner told me when the issue of the spiritual awareness group came up. 'We'll pray them down. We've done it before.' It's been a year and they haven't managed it yet, it must be said.
Interesting. Would you encourage praying to reduce the influence (growth, let's say, or establishment) of a Buddhist group? Lines, lines - tricky to draw? Is at least some spiritual awareness better than none? (I'm not referring to Drudical magic etc.)
ReplyDeleteThat's a sharp and proper question. I suppose Christianity assumes, at its very mildest, that belief in Jesus Christ is good for people and therefore, logically, if you're praying for the advance of the Gospel that entails the retreat of what is *not* the Gospel and that would encompass any religious tradition. But as Dr Dawkins says, just because all religions are wrong doesn't mean there aren't degrees of harm they do. It's easy to think of Buddhism as so mild and so marginal in the UK anyway that nobody would think of 'praying against' a Buddhist group in an area. But what happens in a society where Buddhism becomes badge of a kind of militant community identity? It might look a bit different then. I imagine the kind of Christians in question get very worried about paganism because they think it's the same as witchcraft and the occult, and to be fair there is a hinterland where the one shades into the other so it's not a completely unreasonable concern. But you might argue that establishing a group which brings together pagans in an area to meet and talk is actually a positive move because it offers to bring together disparate and individualistic traditions in the kind of deliberative community that long-established religions have, one which can sift and analyse and debate about what's appropriate for that tradition and what isn't. For my part I can't presume that anyone who isn't part of the Christian religion observably and demonstrably is heading for eternal perdition: I really don't think that's how it works. For any given individual that may be an experience that takes them further away from God, or closer to him; I can't predict or dictate that process. So as I say, I prefer to pray 'for' rather than against.
ReplyDeleteBut developing people's psychic potential is something I can't see as positive. It's a landscape of madness and should be left alone.
Helpful, as well as even more interesting - thanks for taking the time. Militant community identity sits all too clearly alongside Myanmar's military action against a minority.
ReplyDeleteI shall steal your useful phrase about a deliberative community!
I'm both relieved that I'm not headed for perdition (well, not necessarily)and pleased that you're pointing out that the Christian Gospel has boundary markers. I think people on a spiritual path or search need cairns to help them along, not a sort of New Age fog.As for developing psychic potential - as you say, "that way madness lies." It was just such a developmental group - cult, it turned out - that destroyed the sanity of a school friend of mine in the early 70s. He'd have been a lot better off going to church, or temple, or a pagan solstice ritual.