First he says it is an extreme position to "reject out of hand the idea of experiencing God, or ... at least regard the proposition with excessive suspicion and distrust." P.40. Then when he writes about sudden conversion experiences he excludes baptism in the Holy Spirit which "may be authentic meetings with the divine, or they may be little more than well-intentioned emotional responses to the psychological effects of group prayer. Rather, I have in mind experiences that have no natural explanations." P.43 As though speaking in tongues had a natural explanation. Me being me I heard them in my head for 6 weeks before I had the courage to say them aloud.
And so many wonderful gifts, like pointing to something and saying in my heart grass or tree or bird or whatever it was, "Praise the Lord," and it would start moving or singing where before it was all still and silent. So baptism in the Spirit is real and not some emotion or those things would not have happened. And even in the times when I have been running from God He has still left me spiritual gifts more fitting to my lack of courage.
And of course every time I have had dry prayer I have looked around, noticed what I was doing wrong and stopped it, or asked God what I was doing wrong and He let me know. Once fixed the dryness stopped. So.
Thank you for sharing this. There are a lot of things that I don't know about. I think that on page 43 he does not particularly intend to imply that speaking in tongues has a natural explanation. Rather, when he begins to speak about conversion experiences, he divides conversion experiences into two categories:
1. Someone might *expect* something interesting to happen (e.g. if I go up to be prayed over by people, having seen interesting things happening to others, I have some expectation that something interesting will happen to me also) and then sometimes something interesting happens and someone is converted. Some of these experiences *are* supernatural, in whole or in part, but for his purposes (proving very briefly that supernatural things can happen that radically alter the course of someone's life) it would be tedious to demonstrate it to the kind of skeptical reader who would have said to St Padre Pio "maybe you got those stigmata by thinking about Jesus a lot" (and Padre Pio told them "go stare at a bull and see if you grow horns.") That kind of reader would say "yeah, well, it was self-hypnosis, they fell over because everyone else did, and then they imagined what they had been primed to imagine" even if there was a clear dividing line (conversion) in the person's life at that moment. For that kind of reader (who lurks in a fair number of us because we live in a *very* materialist time), this category will not work as proof, even though it includes some very interesting cases.
2. Cases where someone is in a situation where they certainly did not expect anything interesting to happen (*we* might have expected it, but *they* perhaps were brought up not to know anything about God), and something happens there that radically changes the course of their entire life. (A classic case would be an atheist who goes to Mass once because he is tagging along with friends on a trip, and fully expects to be bored there but instead is converted and called to the priesthood, which I saw in a documentary; or, an atheist who walks into adoration not knowing what is there and meets God, in the case of Andre Frossard.) For his purposes these cases can be used to very briefly prove that supernatural things happen (the person's life totally changed with a clear dividing line, and there is no natural explanation possible), and then he can move on with the rest of the chapter.
I understand how you feel, I think, though. Things have happened to us (the readers, generally) that the author does not know about (does not have personal experience of), and so he does not address those things as someone would who could speak of them; there are categories of people that he doesn't know as well, and it can seem dismissive to not discuss them, but in practice I think it is prudent for someone not to write (in a more than categorical way) about what they do not know, and of course it would not be satisfying to read something written in only a categorical way.
I can only speak for myself. I did not expect anything and it happened anyway. But I must admit I heard someone in a graduate theology program say approximately what you said one would say about stigmatization that the recipient somehow imagined themselves into it. Nobody fell over when they were praying over everybody so I went up too not expecting anything except to be prayed over for my intentions. God took the moment to do something major inside me.
But I think you are right that it is better for someone to write about what they know rather than what they don't know. He just gave me the impression he was dismissing charismatic experiences the way some people dismiss spiritual experiences in general.
Bridget, your title made me think of King Cake! 😉
First he says it is an extreme position to "reject out of hand the idea of experiencing God, or ... at least regard the proposition with excessive suspicion and distrust." P.40. Then when he writes about sudden conversion experiences he excludes baptism in the Holy Spirit which "may be authentic meetings with the divine, or they may be little more than well-intentioned emotional responses to the psychological effects of group prayer. Rather, I have in mind experiences that have no natural explanations." P.43 As though speaking in tongues had a natural explanation. Me being me I heard them in my head for 6 weeks before I had the courage to say them aloud.
And so many wonderful gifts, like pointing to something and saying in my heart grass or tree or bird or whatever it was, "Praise the Lord," and it would start moving or singing where before it was all still and silent. So baptism in the Spirit is real and not some emotion or those things would not have happened. And even in the times when I have been running from God He has still left me spiritual gifts more fitting to my lack of courage.
And of course every time I have had dry prayer I have looked around, noticed what I was doing wrong and stopped it, or asked God what I was doing wrong and He let me know. Once fixed the dryness stopped. So.
Thank you for sharing this. There are a lot of things that I don't know about. I think that on page 43 he does not particularly intend to imply that speaking in tongues has a natural explanation. Rather, when he begins to speak about conversion experiences, he divides conversion experiences into two categories:
1. Someone might *expect* something interesting to happen (e.g. if I go up to be prayed over by people, having seen interesting things happening to others, I have some expectation that something interesting will happen to me also) and then sometimes something interesting happens and someone is converted. Some of these experiences *are* supernatural, in whole or in part, but for his purposes (proving very briefly that supernatural things can happen that radically alter the course of someone's life) it would be tedious to demonstrate it to the kind of skeptical reader who would have said to St Padre Pio "maybe you got those stigmata by thinking about Jesus a lot" (and Padre Pio told them "go stare at a bull and see if you grow horns.") That kind of reader would say "yeah, well, it was self-hypnosis, they fell over because everyone else did, and then they imagined what they had been primed to imagine" even if there was a clear dividing line (conversion) in the person's life at that moment. For that kind of reader (who lurks in a fair number of us because we live in a *very* materialist time), this category will not work as proof, even though it includes some very interesting cases.
2. Cases where someone is in a situation where they certainly did not expect anything interesting to happen (*we* might have expected it, but *they* perhaps were brought up not to know anything about God), and something happens there that radically changes the course of their entire life. (A classic case would be an atheist who goes to Mass once because he is tagging along with friends on a trip, and fully expects to be bored there but instead is converted and called to the priesthood, which I saw in a documentary; or, an atheist who walks into adoration not knowing what is there and meets God, in the case of Andre Frossard.) For his purposes these cases can be used to very briefly prove that supernatural things happen (the person's life totally changed with a clear dividing line, and there is no natural explanation possible), and then he can move on with the rest of the chapter.
I understand how you feel, I think, though. Things have happened to us (the readers, generally) that the author does not know about (does not have personal experience of), and so he does not address those things as someone would who could speak of them; there are categories of people that he doesn't know as well, and it can seem dismissive to not discuss them, but in practice I think it is prudent for someone not to write (in a more than categorical way) about what they do not know, and of course it would not be satisfying to read something written in only a categorical way.
I can only speak for myself. I did not expect anything and it happened anyway. But I must admit I heard someone in a graduate theology program say approximately what you said one would say about stigmatization that the recipient somehow imagined themselves into it. Nobody fell over when they were praying over everybody so I went up too not expecting anything except to be prayed over for my intentions. God took the moment to do something major inside me.
But I think you are right that it is better for someone to write about what they know rather than what they don't know. He just gave me the impression he was dismissing charismatic experiences the way some people dismiss spiritual experiences in general.