#wherethekiteflies

I left Church the better part of a decade ago now because I had to sort through the difference between the human trauma that I experienced and what is actually God's will for my life.

Interestingly, intending to reckon and wrestle with my false beliefs that so clearly broke my world view, I arrived at a more firm belief in the prosperity gospel instead of moving away from it.

The reason people are frustrated with the Christian experience and its suffering, not being able to answer difficult questions and struggling with the dichotomy between what the Bible promises and what their reality actually looks like, is because they're denying the charismatic, living out half-stuff like tithing which is interpreted as timeless but ignoring the command to heal the sick etc which is considered temporally limited, inaccessible today or something similar.

When it's not.

Except I get the hesitancy to engage with the spiritual realm. I get it. To the core. To navigate it is to rely fully on the Holy Spirit, and it can be way too exhausting to navigate, let alone to LEARN what's there, then to attempt to navigate in a healthy way. It's exhausting to always try to define what's extrabiblical vs. what's unbiblical, to stretch the constraints of what's Written Text vs. Lived, On Fire Experience. It's too easy to get it wrong. It's hard to come by people who can teach it right. The Holy Spirit often invites to observe and experience but does not easily explain to the satisfaction of the human desire, except in group settings of people, who again can hear wrong, be flawed, whatever. We are not comfortable with the wide error margin and with the vulnerability this constantly requires. Have I mentioned that the vulnerability and the ability to listen are draining to maintain?

Except the spiritual stuff will show up. Not 'it can if you want to see it', it WILL, whether we are willing to recognize it for what it is or not, and as I also already said, it can mean the difference between life and death for someone, and so I consider it important. And when it shows up, I'd rather not be helpless. It's currently not something I want, but rather something which I consider a necessity.

Example. Roughly a decade ago, I had just moved and was sleeping for the first time in the new place. It was a beautiful room, south-facing, nothing out of the ordinary. I loved it. At night, suddenly terror gripped me. I was alone, yet realized I was not alone in the room. I sensed at least two other malicious presences there with me, and the anxiety was spiking so high it basically paralyzed me. I was laying under the blankets and did not dare to get up to turn on a light and grab my Bible. I tried whispering the name of Jesus and it didn't work. HOW does the name of Jesus not work, I thought to myself. I didn't know. Eventually, I hid under the blankets all up until even my face was covered, and went to sleep.

The following day was ordinary. The next night, the same thing happened. I was gripped with terrible fear. This time, I thought naw. I somehow reached out, turned on a light, grabbed my Bible, and out of habit flipped to the last passage God had spoken to me, which was his promise for that place for me. And I read it out loud into the room. And gone was the fear. And the creatures I sensed. It was calm, clean and quiet, peaceful from then on. This never happened again.

My takeaway was that a spiritual attack had wanted to intimidate me because the enemy didn't want me moving there. This experience just happened. It was out of my control until I took control. This is why I think it's important that I had at least a faint notion of what I was dealing with there in the first place, and a small inkling of how I might combat it. Otherwise, this terror would have continued unchecked.

A more recent example. The very day my sister moved out from our shared apartment, the oven and the freezer broke on their own even though none of us had touched them. The oven light went out and all of the settings broke, and I had ripped off a previously solid freezer door after encountering an unusual resistance that wasn't normally there. I didn't want to read too much into it and so moved to ignore it, but I was frustrated because it happened and, again, exhausted from the very thought of having to replace both appliances. So I went out on a leg and dared call it a spiritual attack. I went to God and said "look, Lord, I neither have the money nor the energy to replace these things right now. Can't you make them work again please?" Shortly after, the oven light turned back on on its own. And my new roomie discovered that one setting worked again. I can't help but feel that my oven continued running by the mercy of God and on the work of an angel placed beside it to keep it functioning. This thing was running on a bare thread. It was not electrically sound, it was spiritually kept alive. It is of course my choosing to believe it happened this way. But I do have peace about it, and I do not need to know the details as long as the oven worked again.

But stuff happens. I'm arriving more and more at a point where I begin to start calling it 'ignorant' to not live out these uncomfortable parts of the Bible, instead of merely 'uneducated'. We get exactly as much of God as we want. This means, I nowadays have complex thoughts such as 'if a loved one dies of cancer, that's on us because we were too cushy and cowardly to try to act out spiritual warfare for them'. Yet Paul (Paul of all people) says that we do not fight physical things, but spiritual powers. And as uncomfortable and inadequate as I am MYSELF about this, how can we keep ignoring this as believing, new-born Christians?

So there's this tension here which I hope is allowed to stand. I am appalled by the life we miss out by being overwhelmed, by being uncomfortable, by being uneducated, by having to slowly learn and discover truths at our own pace, while people suffer and die all around us, and families are in debt, and children grow up orphaned, and relationships are strained from hearts too stubborn to let themselves be softened.

This is LIFE OR DEATH. If you wanna know where I'm currently at, I have begun to cautiously approach the topic of curses, WILDLY not being ok with the concept and the implications, but it seems naive to always want blessings and to believe in their power while refusing to acknowledge that their counterpart might also exist and be of an active role in our lives. It's objectively STUPID to crave the one and ignore the other. That doesn't mean we should be afraid - we have the victory - merely aware. As a firm believer in God's ultimate victory, I do not know why we are not set free of everything bad in our lives as soon as we become children of God. It may have something to do with our ability to receive. Can't deal with something that we do not believe exists or is relevant. Also God seems to be such a huge fan of graduality, and learning. I do not know why he is willing to take so many losses along the way though, which happen left and right while we are still learning.

What about the people we failed? That we are still failing as we learn? What about the lost years of life, and the destruction we left in our wake? I can't really deal with that as I discover keys to positive, lasting change. Such as repenting for ancestors' sins, and expelling the consequences of those from my life. Such as demanding back out loud what the enemy stole, and receiving money back, peace, to suddenly live much more happy and guilt-free than before. Addictions gone. Intrusive thoughts kept out. Depression left. Day-to-day functionality majorly improved. But how can I ever catch it all? I don't know.

And how do I gently approach the topic with suicidal people? With people who have survived some stuff? Years of chronic illnesses? That what I see is not their bodies betraying them, or 'imbalances in their brain', or behaviors, but them being RAVAGED by generational curses? 'It runs in the family' it sure DOES. Curses are generational to the 3rd and 4th generation, sometimes even to the 10th, according to the Old Testament. It might not be your own fault, but some stranger's who didn't like your family, or somebody's who lived before the World Wars. I feel so much more free, and content, and satisfied after breaking some of that stuff off of myself. And upon blessing myself and those around me, I am doing it for 1000 generations now.

I just don't want to get hung up on these things, and base my faith around them. And yes, I admit, there is a real danger to that. So how do I navigate? How do I ever hope to serve when it takes such a lengthy, complicated introduction and shift of mind? Man, uh... I've stopped trying to sort it out to the point where a system or a pattern will emerge from the mystery. A shattered worldview where you have to keep going despite not knowing who or what to believe in will do that. To just keep going in the now, today, trusting in grace for each sunrise, without questioning my observations too much. I'm simultaneously worse and better off than ever before. I'm taking better care of myself than before the hell years, but I am also not a good person (anymore). I'm cynical, bitter, prideful, a coward. Not ready to live out Acts because it is in many aspects still so frightening and alien to me. But I'm at least no longer living an illusion of the perfect Christian life that had sooo many skeletons buried in the closet. At least I'm sort of 'authenticating' it out now. There is no solid foundation other than the Word and the Now.