Who is My Enemy? Winter 2001

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Some people are wired for belief. They look at things that don't make sense—those that clash with common notions of divine justice or benevolence—and with enviable ease they say that when it comes to God, well, some things are mysterious; and they carry on as if no problem existed.

Others, of course, are born skeptics.

My own wires seem to have been crossed at birth. I have always found it easy to believe, or at least I have always been compelled to believe; and yet I have rarely fully believed. As long as my family attended the Pentecostal church of my childhood and early youth, I never doubted the efficacy of the gifts of the Spirit. Yes, I knew that God wanted some people to speak in tongues. Yes, some people were supposed to be slain in the Spirit. Yes, God healed people instantly. This I knew from personal experience, for I myself once instantly lost a searing earache at the touch of a local "prayer

warrior." An hour later I couldn't even remember which ear had been healed. It was a miracle.

Yet, all the while, I thought to myself that much that went on in that church was manufactured. One time a woman who got slain in the Spirit fell and cracked her head on a pew. If the Lord had really slain that lady, I thought, she wouldn't have banged her skull. Another time a man fell on top of

a woman already lying on the floor. He got |up and apologized, mumbling; she got up and left the church. The Lord wasn't in that, I thought. And if he wasn't in that, how much other faking was going on?

I had similar doubts when it came to the gift of tongues. Growing up where I did, I heard some sermons translated from Spanish and Indian languages into English. So I had a feel for how it sometimes took longer to say things in one language ...

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