it’s a few weeks since we ran the dekhomai stand at the london mind body spirit festival and i’ve had questions buzzing around my head since then but not enough time to reflect on them. we had a get together of everyone involved on the team last week – the stories people shared of their encounters with visitors to the stand were so encouraging. god was clearly present with us and very gracious to us and those that came to us. stories of encouragement, insights (words of knowledge) into people lives that guided how to pray for them, and physical healing, and just the power of offering a free welcome and blessing were all part of our experience.
i guess what i am interested in is how can insights from cross cultural mission inform how we interact with spiritual seekers and some of the practices on stands at the festival. one of the areas that was particularly intriguing was energy healing (reike seemed the most popular). i am a complete novice in all of this but the impression you get is that there is a sense of a universal life force (which is what reike means) or spirit and the healers by meditating and holding hands over particular areas (energy centres) of the body expect the energy to flow into that area to bring healing. of course there is a lot more to it than that and a google search on reike will lead you to many sites of explanation…
but how do we react to this as christians. at a gut level i had two responses – one is this looks like prayer with the laying on of hands and the second is that this is some sort of dodgy couterfeit healing. this sort of polarisation is probably a pretty typical surface response that we need to quickly get beyond. fortunately others have been doing and thinking about mission in these environments for several years and have loads to teach plebs like me. john drane has been an inspiration and i have recently come across phil johnson and matt stone from downunder who have been offering us some encouragement. sadly i don’t seem to have enough time to digest all the stuff that is around on this but i hope to be more clued up by next year anyway.
but on the subject of energy healing phil is really helpful. he wrote an article back in 99 (word file) that i think is excellent, and moves beyond the polarisation (it works so is good or is demonic and therefore bad). he suggests a missional take could be that the life force is the spirit of god present in creation and that we could follow paul in acts 17 by suggesting that christ is the fulfillment of the pagan quest – in other words naming the unknown healer as the spirit of god. i like the instincts here though i need to chew over it some more. reike healers came to our stand to receive healing and several were surprised how strong the energy was in our stand – this was precisely the moment in which we were able point to christ our healer and the spirit of god present to heal.
There is an old book by a 20th century Chinese Christian named Watchman Nee you might want to seek out. The book is called “Latent Power of the Soul” or “The Latent Power of the Soul”. This book was critical in my spiritual formation and helped me to understand the difference between birthing/ministering in the soul and what truly spiritual birthing looks like. Watchman Nee would contend that the “energy healing” probably is a manifestation of soul power, similar to the soul power exhibited by the magicians of Egypt when Moses first starts performing signs and is something to be rejected by the spirit filled christian who is moving toward flesh and soul being under the full submission of the spirit.
Anyway, I would encourage you to get the book if you can find it. Ah, better yet, the entire manuscript can be read at the following URL http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/nee/5f00.0634/5f00.0634.02.htm
May you recognize the constant blessing of your Gracious Father,
drybones
sallie mcfague, in Models of God, says that her fundamental belief about God is that “there’s a power at work in the universe on the side of life and all its fulfillment”.
my starting point in thinking about all this is that i believe God will use all the ways God possibly can to bring life to its wholeness…
Jonny
Its certainly encouraging that the Reiki healers felt comfortable with your stand.
As part of the process of rethinking healing in these different contexts I think we also need to do a serious rethink of spiritual warfare, again moving beyond the recieved polarizations that plague discussions about ‘the powers’ and ‘deliverance’. You may be interested in this recent post of mine in that respect.
http://mattstone.blogs.com/eclectic_itchings/2006/06/paranoia_perple.html
Its some thinking in progress, not all that polished yet, but it links in with healing prayer and the stances we adopt. It’s come out of thinking about goddess worshippers, herbal healing and earth magic but I think many of the issues are probably true to one degree or another for reiki healers too.
The synopsis is I think we need to be open to the posibility that the Spirit of God is actively working in alternate healing, that we should not assume its all demonic a priori, even if they have not given God/Jesus his due.
Well you have got me thinking on the subject. I have posted a more detailed response on my own blog (http://daniel.shouldbe.net/?p=470), but in summary I think Reiki is an imitation, a distortion of the truth. It’s primary flaws are that it is based upon foundations other than God and that it promotes wholeness apart from God. The danger is that many lies look like the truth, but they are still lies and lead us away from God, Reiki is one such thing.
Tried to leave a comment but got thrown off maybe it was too long- will blog on it later.
Great post Jonny, not least through the questions you ask.
I’ve given a fuller response to Daniel’s concerns on the same blog he mentions. But for the readers here, lest it be misunderstood that I am advocating uncautious Christian adoption of Reiki, let me just say that nothing could be further from the truth.
Let me be explicit then. Whilst I am cautioning against labelling it demonic, I am still calling it idolatrous. As per Paul’s teaching on meat offered to idols, the meat (in this case the healing) is a gift from God, but when it’s being used in an idolatrous way Christians should tread carefully.
In meeting Reiki practitioners where they are at I am not saying we should sanction everything that they are doing. What I am suggesting is that we take the risky step of, instead of condemning everything about Reiki, we show them how Reiki can be brought to fulfillment through reorientating their practice in the light of Christ’s reurrection.
In critically contextualizing Christianity for Reiki practitioners we should be observant of their gestures, dress, customs, understandings, symbols, language and re-examine them all in the light of scripture.
We should them examine our own approaches to healing. It may be that we have a few unpaid bills that we need to pay in terms of Christian practice. It may be that observing them reminds us of some ancient Christian practices we have forgotten about, or there may be some culturally neutral dimentions to what they do which we may even adopt with a little tweeking. We should be wary of ‘circumcising gentiles’ after all. But sure as hell there will be other things which we need to pass by. So it calls for discernment.
This is messy stuff. There are no simple answers. But when has cross-cultural contextualisation ever been simple? My concern is, if we’re too concerned about purity, about keeping our hands clean, how are we ever going to connect. And consider, maybe, just maybe, God is already paving the way ahead of our rough efforts.
Hello Jonny,
I have had many good experiences with healing. I am a reiki teacher myself and teaching this wonderful knowledge is a gift of itself. / Elsa
I am a massage and bodywork instructor at a local college. I am married to a minister (22 years) and am a Spirit-filled christian. I have had to teach energy theory on several occasions. I have studied reiki and other energy techniques extensively. While the theory sounds good, it is a counterfeit or misunderstanding of the true healing power. There are many “inner-healing” movements and methods popping up all the time. I really believe this is to counter the new age method of healing. Upon seeing the power behind energy healing, many christians are realizing that they have had access to the ‘true’ power all along and are now beginning to exercise their faith more radically. The world is looking for healing of body, soul, and spirit. This is the time for us to be real christians and fulfill the mandate to heal the sick. (Just a scattered thought from an insider)
This is quite an interesting and comprehensive posting on energy healing. Energy healing really helps a lot at times.