The Proof is in the Paralysis
God will sometimes ask us to set aside our understanding of how He does things in order to show us something we haven’t yet considered. When I first ran across this story three years ago it challenged my theology. I’ve taken some heat in the past for not standing against John Crowder, who is featured in today’s testimony. To be honest, I don’t know much about John. I’ve never been to one of his meetings and I don’t follow his teachings. But in one exchange about Crowder when I didn’t join people who were condemning him, a few people who believe he’s a false teacher became angry with me.
Okay, it was a little worse than that. They accused me of being deceived and one guy said he was going to start his own blog to proclaim the obvious truth that I refused to see. And that’s pretty much how these things usually go.
One of the troubling things I’ve experienced (though it seems to happen more to my friends than to me) is the tendency some Christians have to label anyone who doesn’t agree with them a false teacher or false prophet. Crowder is one of the biggest targets for this type of criticism. So I went to the Holy Spirit and asked what’s going on and this is what I heard:
People who reject ideas that conflict with their own, do so because their identity comes from what they believe to be true. They call themselves Christian, Calvinist, Atheist, Republican, Lutheran, etc. based on what ideas they believe to be true and to some degree what experiences they’ve had.
For many people, these labels become their identity. Instead of taking their identity from God, they form an identity based on philosophies, doctrines, morals and experiences. Because their theology is their identity, when they’re confronted with theological ideas, their identity comes into question. If they affirm a theological idea, it becomes part of their identity. If they reject it, they maintain their identity apart from the idea, and label the idea as false. For these people, every discussion about God or religion challenges their identity, and herein lies a problem:
If we tie our identity to our beliefs, every time we discuss something theological, our identity is at risk. If we don’t want to change our identity every day, we must reject all experiences and teachings that differ from our own. At the start, we must reject ideas. But if a particular individual confronts our identity often enough with “false” ideas, it’s easier to just label the person a false teacher and reject everything they say. This eliminates the need to evaluate each idea, and it reduces exposure of the identity to challenges.
There is a different type of person whose identity isn’t tied to what they believe to be true. They take their identity from what God has said about them. Some have heard Him say, “You are my beloved son (or daughter).” Once God declares their identity it never comes into question again. They believe what God said and that ends the identity debate.
People who take their identity from the Father can be challenged in their beliefs, because their identity isn’t at stake during theological discussions. Their beliefs are a bit more flexible and they change over time as experiences and revelation continually shape them. These people are free to disagree with one another without the need to label anyone a false teacher because they have little at stake personally in theological discussions.
Bearing these things in mind, I’d ask you to consider this rather amazing testimony from John Crowder and his friend concerning a spiritual revival at Walmart that began with the healing of a woman who was paralyzed.
For those who aren’t familiar with what it’s like to be drunk in the spirit, that is what they’re referring to when they talk about getting whacked, juiced, drunk, etc. They haven’t been drinking alcohol. It’s the same thing the apostle Peter defended when he said, “These are not drunk as you suppose…. but this is that which was spoken of by the the prophet Joel.” (Acts 2:15-16)
