Mike Guglielmucci - a sad, sad situation

Just a couple of days ago I posted a YouTube clip here featuring the cancer-fighting testimony of Australian pastor and worship leader Mike Guglielmucci. As you can see below it was a story that really moved me - moved me enough to want to share it. Well, I now find myself wishing I hadn't. Hillsong Church have removed the clip from YouTube now because it has emerged over the last 24 hours that his condition is not cancer at all - rather he has been existing for some time now in nothing short of a self-delusion. In the words of another famous song 'it's a sad, sad situation.' The guy has conned his church, his friends, even his wife and family. Very, very sad.
I actually got a phonecall about 48 hours ago to break the news to me as I'd used the clip in a talk at church on Sunday - something I won't be doing again of course. As I write I'm at the Soul Survivor 'Momentum' festival where Mike Pilavachi this morning broke the news to a stunned audience. He confessed to the thousands of students and young adults that his first reaction had been to comment to a close friend 'It just goes to show, you can't trust anyone anymore.' That friend was wise enough to reply 'Mike, that's exactly what Satan wants you to believe.'
And it's true, we all know where lies and deception originate and it's not with God. At the end of the day whilst I feel sad about this I don't feel rocked in the slightest. It was quite some time now that I realised that every circus has its clowns. Every genuine move of God will attract the damaged and deluded as well as the solid and sincere. The challenge is spotting the difference which can be very difficult to do.

Accusers of the brothers

"Your mother is a necromancer!"
It was at that point that I realised there would be absolutely no reasoning or meeting on common ground with these black-clad, finger-pointing, prophets of doom. The words were directed at one of my close friends, a colleague of the last ten years. We'd wandered over to the far corner of an outdoor youth event we put on yesterday in Manchester city centre having heard reports that some guys were handing out pamphlets dissing us as heretics and apostates. It hadn't escaped my attention that a website has been running a smear campaign against our work and I had my suspicions that the people behind this might one day show up in person. However, to finally meet these virtual personalities in the flesh was quite an experience.
Over the years I've become used to the daily grind of working in environments that are hostile to the gospel but have not really encountered any direct assault from others who also call themselves Christians. That's perhaps all the more remarkable considering the extensive networking I do within the wider church. Largely, even when I meet people with whom there is clearly a degree of disagreement about doctrinal issues there is a measure of grace evident upon which we can agree to disagree. So I must admit I was shocked to encounter at close quarters what appeared to be fully matured hatred spilling from the mouth of someone claiming to know Jesus. One of the two guys, the one who accused my friend's mum (the most faithful, saintly lady on the planet) a witch was literally shaking and trembling as he spluttered out one accusation after another. As you might imagine, after a few minutes of graciously pleading with these guys to please do something more constructive with their time we turned our backs on them and walked away.
Part of me really wants to name and shame this group but I sense the Holy Spirit restricting me from doing that so that no more fuel is added to the arson these deeply deranged people are trying to commit within God's house.

The Location of Evil

It's been dawning on me of late that we live in a world that teaches us to always locate evil outside of ourselves. This is manifest in the blame culture, the demonization of certain people groups and sub-cultures and the blatant hypocrisy of mass media. And this isn't just a problem that resides in secular society, the church is equally possessing of this worldview. We have a particularly effective way of ensuring we are not troubled by the thought that something within us may be wrong. Religious imagination weaves a spell constructing a Satan with powers out of all proportion with the character described in the pages of scripture. He is omnipresent, he knows our thoughts, he afflicts us with sicknesses of body, mind and spirit. Before long we actually begin to shift our focus away from the author and perfecter of our faith and begin addressing our prayers to this imposter - beckoning him nearer by the volume of our declarations that he must flee.
It is two millenia since the Master first warned us that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him unclean, rather 'all these evils come from inside' (see Mark 7). Why then do we still fail to allow the transformational potential of these words to affect our discipleship? Are we so blinkered by pride that we fail to see that the seeds of every human evil lie dormant below the carefully raked topsoil of our hearts. I hope not but fear so. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect every believer to walk around in a state of permanent shame and unworthiness, I just want to hear less blaming of the devil for issues that are self-generated and need dealing with honestly in the privacy of the 'secret place'.

The Power of Ikea

I'm reading Walter Wink's The Powers That be: Theology for a New Millenniumat the moment. It's an interesting book that has a lot to say about the interaction between the spiritual and the material. Wink believes that every organisation, has a 'spirit' - not an actual celestial being like an angel or a demon - but a personality of sorts which once it has been given life then begins to will and act through the entity of the organisation. These 'spirits' can often be tangibly felt by those with a modicum of spiritual discernment. I must admit, whilst his writing is communicated with a good deal of biblical coherence I was struggling to make the mental leap necessary to take his ideas on board. Then I went to Ikea.
What is it about Ikea? The place makes me feel so uncomfortable (which must be the ultimate irony considering its a furniture store!) The minute I walk in the place I start to get a creeping sensation of rage. And every Ikea store I've been in seems to have the same effect. It's like there's a mass-hypnotism in progress, people just aren't themselves. From the car park to the checkout it seems that the blue and yellow beast has its wicked way with otherwise ordinary citizens. Is it just me or can anyone else relate to that???

Onward Christian Gardeners

...it just doesn't sound right does it? And that, I think is a large part of the problem. Many in the Christian networks I tend to mix in seem to really revel in the idea of being a warrior for Jesus, fighting off Satan and his demonic hordes with the Sword of the Spirit and War Cry prayers. Revealing, creatively and consistently, the beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven in our little sphere of influence just doesn't appear enough to capture anyone's imagination.
This whole issue has really been on my mind this week. During a break in a tub-thumping prayer meeting on Wednesday I confided in a friend my worries about the whole militaristic dimension of charismatic Christianity (worries that have become even more acute in these days of religiously-sanctioned terrorism and war). I asked him whether he thought the primary reality for the resurrection community is one of ongoing conflict with spiritual forces - punctuated with some times of rest, or, whether the primary reality is one of increasing shalom - punctuated with an occasional battle here and there. We got interrupted before he could answer!
Anyway, that very afternoon, we had the opportunity to spend an hour listening to a guy describing his decade of ministry in Burundi (central Africa, bordering Rwanda and Congo). In that hour any illusions I had of forming the 'Onward Christian Gardeners Society' utterly evaporated. I was left with the stark reality that in a large proportion of the world the only response to the prevailing evil (and I can't even repeat the evils he shared with us) is a potent faith lived out through the travail of blood, sweat and tears.
As an interesting adjunct to all this I happened to be checking out an MA course this morning. The subject notes were handed to me as I arrived, the headline: The Powers. What followed was three hours of in-depth critical engagement around the theme of Spiritual Warfare particularly centred around the trilogy of books by Walter Wink. Superb stuff. It seems that God's making a concerted effort at the moment to get through my thick head.

The Big Fight: God vs Satan

I don't typically spend time thinking about the devil at all but just recently, maybe triggered by reading Paradise Lost, I have been. For a long time I've been baffled by the obvious mismatch between God and Satan. The God we meet in the bible is eternally all powerful and all knowing whereas his adversary is a jumped-up celestial being of limited power and influence. So why is the world so in thrall to his charms? I've come up with a possible answer. Imagine you're involved in a game of chess with a grand master. The grand master adheres to the rules fastidiously but you completely disregard the rules every turn and in doing so manage to give the impression to the audience (who don't know the rules) that you're doing quite well.
The golden rule in the celestial chess championship that is our world is that of free will. God has given it to us and will never take it away. Satan, in total rebellion against God, couldn't care less about our free will. Ever since the misty days of the garden he's been dead set on decieving and manipulating the human psyche. No wonder we see such chaos around us, no wonder so many people have warped and twisted ideas about God. But hey, the game's not over yet and despite his endless cheating Satan's never going to win.