I’ll admit this on a personal level. I am warring against a superstitious mentality in my own life. When I get my paycheck every other Friday, I make sure that I am at church the following Sunday after payday with a tithe check in my pocket to place into the offering plate. Even if I am sick running a fever or need to pack and review notes for a field service trip across country, I made sure if possible that I was at church the Sunday after payday with a tithe check. Even though I had enough money in the checking account before I deposited the paycheck, I used to not write a check from the time I deposited the check that payday Friday afternoon until after Sunday morning when I wrote the tithe check fearing that the ‘holy hammer’ would come down on me for not ‘giving the firstfruits’ by writing a check to pay the utility bill before writing the tithe check.
(note, this is not about whether to tithe or not. I believe in tithing and I do tithe.)
Why? Because it seemed that if I missed the Sunday after payday or paid the light bill before paying the tithe, my week went awful. Work did not go well. Some friend gets mad at me. When I traveled on field service trips, flights got delayed or my pre-requested aisle seat became the middle seat between the heavy set woman and the six year old who cried the entire flight. etc.
The most bizarre thing was that when I attended church the following Sunday and placed the tithe check in the offering plate, the work week went well, people didn’t yell at me. Airline flights were not cancelled, etc. Good things happened.
What happens if we are not careful is that the priority and reason of going to church changes from voluntarily wanting to go worship and exalt God to required attending just to insure that God will not make you his ‘whipping boy of wrath’ the next week. How many times have we seen people experience tragedy, misfortune, etc. and state to our fellow brother or sister in Christ that the people experiencing tragedy and misfortune really made God mad at them and that God must hate them and equate their times of blessing and joy to God ultimately loving them.
It was as if the ‘divine wrath’ came forth. Coincidence? Probably. However, to the typical Pentecostal, Charismatic, Word of Faith believer, it was ‘the spiritual spanking’ that ‘you deserved’. You will not believe in many Pentecostal, Charismatic, Word of Faith circles, etc. how when bad things happen, it is blamed because someone did not pay their tithes (after the ’secret sin, lacking faith, and disagreeing with a televangelist excuses failed to bring out a repenter) that caused broken thirty-five year old air conditioners, rusted out fifty year old metal pipes bursting, excessive static in the sound system, church split, power failures, the ten year old church van with 200,000 miles to break down. etc.
Worse was when someone did confess. The ’superstition’ turned to ’stigma’ of shame and spiraled downward into a ’stigmata’ of a spiritualized unseed mark on a person in order to avoid fellowshipping with them fearing the same bad things (caused by their delaying to pay their tithes) would rub off of them and happen in your life.
What ever happened to the protection of the Holy Spirit? We brag about how the Holy Spirit is in control of our life. However, when something happens that does not fare well with us, we resort to following these spiritualized superstitious sayings we formulated just to ‘make sure’ that ‘the bases are covered’. Eventually, we end up short-circuiting the sovereignity and protection of God and the people that love to proclaim their faith in God actually demonstrate their lack of faith believing that it has to be worshipping and loving God plus some superstitious ritual that keeps God protecting us and keeping us in His hands instead of God who reveals his protection via the Bible and keeps his children safe in His hands no matter what happens.
We say that we trust God but deep down do not trust by our enacting the God plus something else mindset. We waste our time and our energy feeding the God plus something else machine when all we have to really do is to just obey and love God.
Another example of Finneyism ran amuck.
Just this week, a friend called me frantic because her doctor had found a “spot” on her lung and wanted to do tests. She and her husband had been the founding members of a “church” that had been solid and loving for over 30 years. They and about 200 others were forced out by a new pastor who let “church growth” become the be all and end all. They taught that “if you don’t agree with what we are doing God will not bless you” and “Submitting to us(pastor and his wife)is your only hope, if you don’t like it leave, but if you leave you are against God’s anointed and bad things will happen to you.” Needless to say this lady was upset, I offered Scripture and support and prayer. I talked with her yesterday the test showed nothing serious. Where did all this garbage teaching come from and why did we let it happen. Is there anyway to stop this? This lady is just one of many in my small city who are coming under this teaching and not just at one church. I had left the same church over 3 years ago when it became obvious that the new teaching and the Word were not in harmony. I wonder should I have stayed even when they drove me out for asking questions. TAM
TAM:
That is a good question to ask. Spiritual abuse experts call this “fight or flight”. One great resource that talks about this is the book “The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse” by David Johnson, Jeff Vanvonderen. There is one chapter near the end of the book that specifically deals with the dynamics of ‘fight vs. flight’and how to analyze whether it’s best to fight or to leave and go elsewhere.
I found that alot of this garbage started within the ‘dominionist / kingdom now” churches of the late 1950’s and got very popularized in the 1960’s and early 1970’s with the famous “Fort Lauderdale Five” (aka the Shepherding Movement). Even after the Shepherding Movement fell apart, the word of faith and the pentecostal/charismatic teachers carried it to a new level of holy horrors to the point where we see it today.
Our society is entrenched with euphemisms and superstitions to the degree of paralysis. We can’t escape the “don’t do this for fear of that” attitude. Christians need to understand the authority and the freedom that we walk in. The devil uses our paranoia, to propagate our fears. Your experience with the work week being good or bad was a fallacy, a trick to cause you to walk in bondage. I did not say that to condemn, you know that….we all walk in error because we’re in a fallen world. We all need our spiritual blinders to be removed.
be blessed!