A Religion of Giants, Witches, Magic, and Other Supernatural Things

Christianity is a bizarre, insanely primitive, and intellectually unsophisticated religion. It's also true, and beautiful. Don't wreck it.

Imagine a beautiful, contemporary church design. In your mind’s eye, picture an austere building, with well-manicured lawns. Everything is prim, proper, and in its place. At the door, is polite security (to keep everyone safe). At the front, is a receptionist’s desk, courteously giving you directions. On the inside are beautiful, white walls and adequate lighting. Everyone you meet, smiles approvingly. A sign asks you to silent or put away your mobile devices. There’s a lounge area for guests to visit. There’s a dining hall, for people to fellowship over a meal. There’s even a recreational space, for organized games and racketball.

Of course, I just described for you the picture of an insane asylum. It’s almost identical to a picturesque church, except here, people wear straight jackets rather than Brooks Brothers.

What is, or is not, “crazy” is often a matter of perspective. There was a time not long ago, when a man who thought himself a woman, or a teenage girl who thought herself a cat, would be carted off to a nice farm somewhere, where they can count flower petals and pet therapy goats. But now, Corporal Klinger has been given protective status and a litter box has been placed in the high school hallway.

Consider the changing opinions of what is, and what is not, nuts. We live in a time when if you want just water in your water supply, you’re a kook. If you don’t believe that cow flatulence somehow causes hurricanes and heatwaves, you’re nutty. And if you don’t think we evolved from monkeys, inexplicably leaving all the other monkeys behind, you’re a quack. If you’re unconvinced that by the power of one’s imagination, they can transition their age, race, or gender, you’re just a primitive fool.

For most of us, we’ve learned to adjust and remind ourselves that crazy people have no business diagnosing craziness. While it’s true that “it takes one to know one,” we feel that the world around us has largely lost touch with what is observably true, or demonstrably false.

NO ONE WANTS TO BE CRAZY

I’ve always had a heart for crazy people, and enjoyed their company. My neighbor is a schizophrenic nudist, who introduced himself by demanding to know if I was flying drones over his house. Recognizing schizophrenia when I see it, I just gave him a box of drone ammo and told him to shoot it down on my behalf. Every few weeks, so long as he’s wearing pants, I go help him look for drones (there are no drones, but it’s good exercise and I like him).

And I’ve always been perplexed at people denouncing others for being crazy, which as a Christian, I feel is no more compassionate than denouncing people for being retarded, as though it was some kind of moral failure. It was Spurgeon who said, “We are all a little bit crazy. Some of us, to various degrees.” And as every Baptist knows, Spurgeon can’t be wrong, and I’d go one step further and confess that, “We are all a little bit retarded. Some of us, to various degrees.”

Nonetheless, we pine for the respect granted to intelligent, totally non-crazy people. Over the years, I was able to diagnose that feeling in the pit of my gut just prior to open-air preaching. Standing on a sidewalk somewhere, about to raise my voice to a crowd, always gave me that sinking feeling in my stomach, the type and kind a man gets right before he throws the first punch. It was in Palo Alto, California, my malady was finally diagnosed by my spirit; these were all extremely successful, wealthy, intelligent, and pretty people who in about 5 seconds are going to think I’m an ignorant and crazy hillbilly.

And this is all a fine survival mechanism that God gave us. The difference between a man thought to be reasonable, and a man thought to be insane, is that a reasonable man shares his conspiracies after an extended period of male bonding around a campfire, after the untrustworthy types have already gone to sleep. The insane man blurts out his real thoughts whenever the cashier says hello. It is a survival mechanism to feel awkward about sharing too much that might make others think less of you.

RELIGION, ADVERTISED TO BRING SANITY, IS INSANE

As I lay out this treatise of why must “embrace the crazy” in Christianity, it’s important to define what I mean by “crazy.” I am speaking of perceptible craziness, and the adjective there is important. I speak of that which is perceived as crazy. Ultimately, there is nothing in our religion that’s crazy because craziness is anything that is objectively divergent from truth, but believed anyway.

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For example, Colonel Klinger is crazy because he’s objectively not a woman. In this definition, Christianity is not crazy at all because it is truth, and it is the religion of truth, as laid out in Scripture, and embodied in the person, Jesus Christ. But to a world that considers Colonel Klinger sane, it’s no surprise they consider Christians crazy.

But often, the theologian-caste aids and abets the perception that Christianity is little more than sanitized sanity. We take doctrines as thoroughly complicated in the details, like salvation, and turn it into a formulaic science. Consider, for example, the gospel prophecy given in Ezekiel 37.

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, and caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry. And he said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, thou knowest. Again he said unto me, Prophesy upon these bones, and say unto them, O ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones; Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and ye shall live: And I will lay sinews upon you, and will bring up flesh upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and ye shall live; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.

Called the Son of Man (a prophetic reference to Christ), God the Father demands that Ezekiel preach to a valley of bones. I so admire Ezekiel’s diplomatic whit when, upon being asked if those dry bones could live, responded, “God, you know.” This was Ezekiel’s way of wondering aloud if that was a trick question, because clearly, nothing in Ezekiel’s frame of reference would indicate it was possible.

But God demands the Son of Man to preach to bones which, the last time I knew, don’t have ears. Skulls don’t have rational minds, or any minds, because they’re turned into goo already and have been licked up by scavenging critters. How could they possibly hear the Son of Man and live?

No idea. You thought I could tell you, ha.

But, in come the TheoBros with their neckties and Starbucks thermoses, powering up their Mac to display a power-point presentation they drafted on the Ordo Salutis. Each part of the Ordo Salutis (the order of salvation) has its own slide, if the term slide is still used for powerpoint presentations. And the Nerd King will then describe election, predestination, regeneration, justification, sanctification, and justification.

Somewhere, down the hall, another clergy member from the Diocese of Dork is straightening his pocket protector like a knight, scabbarding his sword, ready to do battle on the Ordo of the Salutis, and he insists that faith precedes regeneration, and not the other way around. Twenty-six years, four books, and three diss-tracks later, and they’re still arguing about it.

But most of the time, neither side explains anything by saying simply, “it is a miracle and God did it.” They prefer to take unknowable things, extrapolate them into understandable marginal notes, and then reveal the glorious mysteries of the Bible in an altogether unimpressive way. And at the end, when arguing about how dead bones might be given ears, they have overlooked the reality that the bones have also been given sinews and ligaments, received breath, and are now standing upright.

I’m going to put this in bold, lest someone think I’ve sold my soul: The Perspecuity of Scripture is indeed real, and it’s meant to be adequately understood. Study is valuable. Grasping doctrine is godly. The Ordo Salutis should be studied (and the first man is right, that regeneration precedes faith).

No, I don’t mean to diminish the importance of doctrinal or intellectual explanations. Rather, I’m arguing that if an explanation doesn’t make you awe at salvation more than before, or if it makes that miracles seem like less of a miracle, you’re doing it wrong.

I once attended a magic show in Las Vegas, and let me tell you, do not sit on the front row. You’ll see all the tricks. It’s best to just sit a few rows back, so you’re not eye-rolling at magic that no longer seems magical. The miracles of God are no magic trickery, but they are indeed divine magic, and it’s better to have a third or even third row seat if what you’re doing is ruining to beauty of it.

Magic is the “power of influencing events by the use of mysterious or supernatural forces.” The difference between magic and miracles is that the former has an unfortunate connotation of being fake, and miracles, true. But that’s pure semantics. God indeed influences events by the use of mysterious or supernatural forces, worked out by his providential will. Daniel, after all, was Prince of the Magi (an office in Persia for magicians and “wise men” who later showed up, honoring the Christ Child).

And frankly, one can describe the nuts and bolts of the process God uses to save men, but that doesn’t change the reality that what happened, is that dead men rose up and walked, only because someone preached to them.

THE INSANE CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY

Cults, because they are of Satan, deceive, because Satan deceives and they are of their father, the Devil (John 8:44). Ergo, when the Mormons come to your door, they’re not going to tell you that they prophesied that Jackson County, Missouri is the Promised Land, especially as they just sold off 1,800 hundred acres there, apparently giving up on the promise and subsequently making bank. And if you want to hear about their Holy Underpants, they won’t lay that one on you until way after you signed up.

Every cult is this way. With Free Masonry, the best craziness is reserved for the 32nd Degree. In Scientology, the best craziness is reserved for those finally reaching Operating Thetan #8. You get the point. Cults do this because truth doesn’t resonate with the soul, so they have to get somebody good and brainwashed before the come out with all their craziness.

But as Christians, we have “renounced sneaky, underhanded ways” (2 Corinthians 4:2). As Christians - partially because we believe faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17) - much like those dead, dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision, we throw out all the crazy from day 1. In fact, it’s best you know the crazy before you enlist. We are convinced, unlike the cultists, that if the Holy Ghost is doing miracles, our crazy will resonate with the soul.

So consider our crazy (which I eluded to previously in a recent article, so please bear with me again):

We believe God made the world in six actual 24-hour days, and say to heck with carbon dating. We believe God breathed life into a sculpture of dirt and made man, and took from him a rib and made woman. We believe a serpent possessed by a Spirit talked the woman, Eve. We believe God flooded the word and put every animal species on the boat that he wanted to stick around. We believe David killed Goliath, that Moses split the Read Sea, and that Jonah got swallowed by a whale. We also believe God sent his son into the world - who also is God - and he became a man, taking on flesh, and died on behalf of sinners. We believe he arose from the dead three days later, and is returning to destroy his enemies and set up a literal reign on Earth for a thousand years.

Yup. That’s all pretty crazy.

But, it gets even crazier. We believe in giants (Galatians 6:4). We believe in sea monsters (Isaiah 27:1). We believed God beamed up Enoch into Heaven, like Scotty in Star Trek (Genesis 5:24). We believe that at least in some places, mediums can conjure the dead (1 Samuel 28). We believe that witches are real (Deuteronomy 18:11-12). We believe the magic performed by sorcerers can be real (Exodus 7-8). We believe that disembodied evil spirits can possess people (Mark 3:15). We believe objects can talk (Revelation 13:15).

All of these are very real, very serious, very literal claims given us in the Scripture to believe.

And yet, despite all of these crazy things, we believe them. Why? It’s because God has given us faith, and not only to believe in the Resurrection. We believe all of the Scripture’s claims of supernaturality. After all, we have a supernatural God who gave us a supernatural religion.

The Christian Academy, its seminarians, have little affection for such things, and speak of them little. None of them are explained with their charts and graphs. one of them can be understood from a lecture. They cannot be expounded upon, exposited, or extrapolated. For all of these things, it is a matter of saying, “God said it, so it is true.”

Too often, I have mentioned one of these crazy, supernatural things, and a well-meaning Christian looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. But if I believe Jesus arose from the dead, every other Scriptural claim is a small miracle by comparison.

The world, today, largely affirms supernatural things. Most believe in aliens, after all. They believe in multiverses and imagination-based gender. Transgenderism in general - the belief that you are someone inside different than you are outside, presupposes the existence of a metaphysical spirit unattached to your body. That’s a supernatural claim, not a medical or scientific one.

The world, as I’ve been saying lately, is about to get weirder and perceptively more insane. We don’t need to be afraid to stare the crazy in the face, or wear it like a badge. In the next few years, evangelical believers in the West will need to be firmly resolved not to commit the sins of Socinianism, and attempt to explain away the supernatural.

Rather, we must embrace it.