Praying for the sick.

Praying for the sick is ridiculously easy.

It consists of asking God—exactly the same as we ask God for every other thing—“Father, would you please cure this sick person?” Or, if I’m the sickie, “Father, would you please cure me? I’m asking for this in Jesus’s name. Thank you. Amen.”

What, you thought it was more complicated than that?

Well I get that. We humans overcomplicate everything. Especially religious stuff.

Especially because we’re asking God to show us favor, and cure people for free. Yet our karma-plagued mindset, found everywhere in our culture including Christianity, nudges us to think, “But shouldn’t we earn or merit God’s favor?—at least to some degree?” And next thing you know, we’re trying to earn it.

• We try to get into the prayer mood, and pray as fervently as possible. As if God’s gonna see us stressing ourselves out and think, “By Me, it looks like they really mean it,” and acts faster.
• We try to play on God’s emotions. With lots of crying, a few sad stories—“God, I’ve suffered so much”—and all the stuff which usually works on other people. Hey, sad people moved Jesus; maybe it still works.
• We try to rope other saints into praying for our request. Which isn’t in itself a bad thing! But we do it thinking, “I’m not righteous enough for God to answer me, so I’m gonna borrow their righteousness, and if one saint is all I really need, a buttload of saints oughta do the trick.” So we start a little prayer campaign—as if God is swayed by numbers.
• We try bargaining. “What do you need, God? I’ll give you this…”
• Didn’t James say something about gathering the elders and anointing the sick with oil? Jm 5.14 Let’s cram the church’s board members into the hospital room and start lubing the victim up! Let’s get oily.

And people who teach on prayer, and people who lead prayer groups, will totally recommend these practices. No doubt you’ve thought of other strategies.

But are they valid techniques for getting God to cure people? Nah. If you read Jesus’s healing stories in the gospels, you know he didn’t need ’em; he simply cured people.

What Jesus did teach is that God prefers faith. By which he means faith in God. Not faith in our techniques. Not faith in getting our incantations right. Not faith in ourselves, nor our merit. Nor some “storehouse of merit,” consisting of all the faith-filled people of our church, which we can call up for prayer. He wants us to trust God.

And this includes trusting God if his answer is no. ’Cause it might be! It has been for me. I’ve prayed for other people, and myself, to be made well. Sometimes God answers yes, and that’s awesome! And sometimes he answers no; we’re gonna have to ride this illness out, and let the immune system beat it, or let the doctors remove it, or let time pass, or learn to treat it… or learn to suffer. And trust God while we’re suffering. Which sucks. But we gotta.

Fascism and cultists.

A lot of Americans didn’t pay attention in their high school history classes, and therefore aren’t all that clear about what fascism is. Which is understandable; too many history books don’t define it, and too many historians insist, “Well it’s not really that; it’s more like this.”

Fascism was the movement led by Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini in the 1930s. It was… pretty much whatever Mussolini said it was, ’cause the movement was tightly connected with the man. And what he was all about was

• NATIONALISM—defining “Italian” by race, and insisting all “non-Italians” conform or get out;
• AUTARKY—a self-sufficient economy which needs nothing from other countries;
• HIERARCHY—the wealthy or noble are the proper leaders of society, men should rule over women, and traditional gender roles should be enforced;
• WARTIME STATUS—the nation should be on high alert against any enemies, with everyone contributing to national defense;
• LIMITED RIGHTS—or in some cases eliminated rights for undesirables.

In general, fascists think we have too much freedom, and it permits people to be immoral. Well, they wanna fight “immorality”—however they define it, and they have some really wide definitions. They’ll consider entire religions and entire political parties, “immoral.”

If you grew up Fundamentalist—particularly the sort of Fundie whose church was actually an authoritarian cult, whose fathers tried to establish their own little mini-patriarchy where Dad was king and ruled with an iron fist—fascism isn’t gonna be a new worldview to you at all. You grew up under fascism. If you didn’t flee those cults and their fruitless, godless behavior, but instead adopted their mindset, you might even think it’d be good for the country as a whole. In other words, you’d be fascist too.

This is why fascism has always had a foothold in the United States. Always; the mindset predates Mussolini. It’s been around since the very beginning, when some of the first English colonies were created to be little religious oligarchies in which Puritans (or Baptists, or Catholics) ruled. Thankfully the United States ultimately adopted the Quaker position of religious freedom. But y’notice a lot of Fundies chafe at this idea—because to their minds, the Puritans had the right idea. The U.S. was founded as, and ought still be, a Christian nation, with all non-Christians required to either conform to Christian principles or leave. And the government should have the power to enforce it—a power which includes imprisonment and death.

Now don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not writing this to alarm you—“The fascists are coming; the fascists are everywhere!—we gotta fight them before they gain power!” Like I said, they’ve always been around, and way more Americans are antifascist (“antifa” for short) than not. I’m writing this to inform you. Like herpes, fascism is a problem which is never really going away, but there are steps we can take to tamp it down really hard, and make sure it doesn’t consume us.

And it starts by knowing about one of its most popular breeding grounds: Cults.

An unclean spirit in Jesus’s synagogue.

Mark 1.23-28, Luke 4.31-37.

This happened right after Jesus went to synagogue one Friday night… and didn’t teach like the scribes. We don’t know what he taught. Probably something profound and life-changing. But despite his amazing, world-rocking message, the only words we have from his entire lesson was Φιμώθητι καὶ ἔξελθε ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ/Fimóthiti ke éxelthe ap’ aftú, “Shut up and get out of him.”

Lousy evil spirit.

Mark 1.23-26 KWL

23 Next, a person with an unclean spirit

was already in their synagogue,

and he screams out,

24 saying, “Who are we to you, Jesus Nazarene?

Do you come to destroy us?

I know who you are. God’s ‘holy one’…”

25 Jesus rebukes it, saying, “Shut up and get out of him.”

26 Convulsing him and shouting with a loud voice,

the unclean spirit gets out of him.

 

Luke 4.33-35 KWL

33 A person is already in the synagogue

who has a spirit, an unclean demon.

It screams out in a loud voice,

34 “Whoa! Who are we to you, Jesus Nazarene?

Do you come to destroy us?

I know who you are. God’s ‘holy one’…”

35 Jesus rebukes it, saying, “Shut up and get out of him.”

The demon, dropping the man in the middle of the room,

gets out of him, never harming him.

Movies tend to overdramatize this scene. Your average Jesus movie shows Jesus, peacefully offering koans to a group of fawning students and skeptical Pharisees, when suddenly some wild-eyed madman forces his way into synagogue. Clothes disheveled. Hair unkempt. A little foam on his lips. Looking like Charles Manson after crawling through the desert two days without water. Because movie devils are profoundly stupid, this critter’s ready to pounce on our Lord—the one guy with the power to annihilate it with a word.

Any chance it was like that in real life? Nah; you just read the gospels. Get those movie images out of your brain and lookit the text. And bear these historical details in mind.

Sabbath began at sundown Friday night. Synagogue services began immediately afterward. People would enter the building—men up front so they could ask questions, women in the back where they were expected to not ask questions, sometimes separated by a partition but not always. Once everybody was in, the synagogue president would bar the doors to keep latecomers from interrupting. If you were late, you stood outside and listened as best you could, or you turned round and went home.

So if you were a raving lunatic, you couldn’t burst into the service and interrupt Jesus. All you could do is shout a lot, beat the doors, throw stuff through the windows… but you weren’t getting in.

Got that? Good. So how’d this demoniac get into the building? Simple: He entered along with everybody else. You had to be ritually clean to enter synagogue, and this guy looked clean. Had he appeared out of place, or off, he’d’ve been sent away. He wasn’t. He looked normal.

Entered with everybody else. Stood there in the crowd. Sang psalms. Listened to the scriptures and their translation. Listened to Jesus’s lesson… up to the point he got noisy. Nobody suspected he had a demon in him. Y’see, not every demoniac looks like a madman. Not every madman does either.

Judge not. Or judge. Depends on the context.

Matthew 7.1-5.

Christians and pagans alike love to fling around the following Jesus quote a lot.

Matthew 7.1 KJV

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Usually for one of two reasons. Both incorrect—though sometimes with good intentions.

1. Be kind to other people. When they offend you personally—when they’re clumsy or awkward, boorish or rude, look and smell and dress funny, have horrible taste in music and movies and comedy, or even sin in ways which really bug you—remember God still loves them, and so should we. Besides, it’s not like we don’t sin either. Or have our own offensive flaws.
2. Hey, don’t you judge me. “Judge not,” right?

Since kindness is one of the Spirit’s fruit, it makes sense to remind people to be kind and compassionate towards the weird or the sinful. When he was on earth, Jesus didn’t drive such people away; he ministered to them and befriended them.

Thing is, he didn’t just tolerate them: He forgave them. And forgiveness means they did do something wrong; otherwise there’d be nothing to forgive. Forgiveness indicates we do judge them—as either sinning or trespassing against us. But forgiveness means we’re gonna overlook it, and pay God’s grace forward. It’s not mere tolerance, which ignores their behavior, pretends they didn’t sin, pretends we’re not bothered… and festers within us like a sour tumor.

As for those folks who quote that verse in order to use our religion to their advantage, so they can evade judgment and consequences… well, they’re just being jerks.

Baptism: Get saved, get wet.

BAPTISM 'bæp.tɪz.əm noun. Religious ritual of sprinkling water on a person’s forehead, or immersing them in water, symbolizing purification, regeneration, and admission to Christ Jesus’s church.

[Baptist 'bæp.təst noun, baptizand 'bæp.tɪ.zænd noun, baptismal bæp'tɪz.məl adjective.]

Whenever the ancient Hebrews did something ritually unclean, they had to ritually clean themselves before they went to temple. How they did this was to simply immerse themselves in water, then wait till sundown—after which point they were ritually clean.

Since they were only required to go to temple thrice a year, they really didn’t have to do a whole lot of ritual cleansing. That is, till Pharisees decided every form of worship required people to be ritually clean. So if you went to synagogue—whether daily, or just Friday nights for Sabbath services—you needed to be ritually clean. Gotta wash!

How Pharisees (and today’s Orthodox Jews) did so was to create a מִקְֶֶוה/mikvéh, “collection [of water].” Basically a vat or pool large enough so a person could stand upright underwater. It had to consist of “living water,” by which they meant running water—and because Pharisees were big on loopholes, any kind of running would count. Water could be dripping into it and dripping out of it; that’d count. You stepped into the mikvéh fully clothed, then walked out. Then awaited sundown.

This ritual washing, they called βάπτισμα/váptisma, “immersion.” Yep, it’s where we get our word baptism.

If you were a new Pharisee, your very first baptism would be when you joined the synagogue. And that’s where John the baptist got the idea for his form of baptism: If you were repentant, and wanted to turn from your sins to follow God, start with baptism.

Since Jesus (though he personally had no sins to repent of) submitted to John’s baptism, and instructed his students to baptize any new students, Mt 28.19 baptism has thereby become the rite of Christian initiation. You’ve decided to follow Jesus? Great! Now get baptized in water. Get forgiven. Receive the Holy Spirit. Ac 2.38

There’s another form of baptism, called baptism of the Holy Spirit, which I discuss elsewhere.

Like every sacrament, we Christians get obsessed with doing it “properly,” and believing all the correct things about it. Sacraments, you recall, represent something God’s doing. Not so much us. We do the ritual, but God does the spiritual reality behind it, and that’s the relevant part. Still, you know how self-centered we humans get: “Oh, if you did it that way, it doesn’t count.” As if God’s not gonna embrace a new follower because we used a bottle of water instead of the nearest river.

Proud heretics.

Some months ago a coworker asked me what “heretic” meant. Apparently there’s a brand of wine called Heretic, and a northern California microbrewery called Heretic Brewery, and she wanted to know whether it’s a liquor term.

I was kinda curious about that myself later, so I looked it up. It’s not. But my internet search led me to a company called Heretic Spirits, who had this on their website:

HER·E·TIC /'herəˌtik/ a person holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.

Heretics are driven by new ideas and experiences. They possess a soul that yearns for the nourishment of new and exciting sensory experiences. We call this the Ravenous Soul and it represents the core of all that we do.

Okay, you will find their definition in a typical dictionary. But it’ll be the second definition; the one developed much later than the original definition, which is “a person or belief which differs from established religious orthodoxy.”

The word descends from the Latin hæreticus and the Greek αἱρετικός/eretikós, “able to choose.” Over time, Christians used it to describe those who’d chosen poorly. Wrongly. Incorrectly. Dangerously so, ’cause if you believed some of the junk Christian heretics taught, you could profoundly undermine your relationship with God, if not destroy it.

But to be succinct, I usually refer to heretics as people who are wrong. And that’s what I told my coworker “heretic” means: Wrong.

“Wrong?” she said. “Why would you name your wine ‘wrong’?”

Because heretics don’t think they are wrong.

Prayer in the Abraham and Abimelech story.

The first time we ever read the word “pray” in the bible—the first time holy scriptures were even written which use the word פָּלַל/palál, “praying”—it’s in Genesis 20, in the middle of an odd little story which goes like so.

Genesis 20.1-18 NLT

1 Abraham moved south to the Negev and lived for a while between Kadesh and Shur, and then he moved on to Gerar. While living there as a foreigner, 2 Abraham introduced his wife, Sarah, by saying, “She is my sister.” So King Abimelech of Gerar sent for Sarah and had her brought to him at his palace.

3 But that night God came to Abimelech in a dream and told him, “You are a dead man, for that woman you have taken is already married!”

4 But Abimelech had not slept with her yet, so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation? 5 Didn’t Abraham tell me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘Yes, he is my brother.’ I acted in complete innocence! My hands are clean.”

6 In the dream God responded, “Yes, I know you are innocent. That’s why I kept you from sinning against me, and why I did not let you touch her. 7 Now return the woman to her husband, and he will pray for you, for he is a prophet. Then you will live. But if you don’t return her to him, you can be sure that you and all your people will die.”

8 Abimelech got up early the next morning and quickly called all his servants together. When he told them what had happened, his men were terrified. 9 Then Abimelech called for Abraham. “What have you done to us?” he demanded. “What crime have I committed that deserves treatment like this, making me and my kingdom guilty of this great sin? No one should ever do what you have done! 10 Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?”

11 Abraham replied, “I thought, ‘This is a godless place. They will want my wife and will kill me to get her.’ 12 And she really is my sister, for we both have the same father, but different mothers. And I married her. 13 When God called me to leave my father’s home and to travel from place to place, I told her, ‘Do me a favor. Wherever we go, tell the people that I am your brother.’ ”

14 Then Abimelech took some of his sheep and goats, cattle, and male and female servants, and he presented them to Abraham. He also returned his wife, Sarah, to him. 15 Then Abimelech said, “Look over my land and choose any place where you would like to live.” 16 And he said to Sarah, “Look, I am giving your ‘brother’ 1,000 pieces of silver in the presence of all these witnesses. This is to compensate you for any wrong I may have done to you. This will settle any claim against me, and your reputation is cleared.”

17 Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife, and his female servants, so they could have children. 18 For the LORD had caused all the women to be infertile because of what happened with Abraham’s wife, Sarah.

Some weird cultural things I gotta unpack for you now.