Charismania

This title is no doubt going to provoke some people...that is if anyone actually reads this. But if you're offended, keep reading.

I just saw one of those videos that someone made splicing a song over some other video footage. This one was of a famous televangelist that like to knock people over set to an awesome agrorock song about Columbinesque feelings. It was extremely well done. It almost seems like the song could have been the original sound track for the video.

But it got me thinking about the nature of such events. I am not knocking spiritual gifts. I've had enough weird experiences in my life to keep me from condemning anyone else's. But I've got to be honest that most of the "charismatic" events I've been at were highly influenced by textbook mass hysteria, worked up through music, a charismatic speaker (to use the term correctly, not in the denominational sense), and a willing audience...or they were just plain faked, even if the faker actually had deceived herself into believing it was real. More likely, she had seen it in others and wanted something authentic bad enough that she self-fulfilled. How do I know it's fake? Because no communicative language uses the word, "shamshala" to mean no less that 5 different unrelated words in translation...I counted. That word would have to have at least related meanings, or tenses, or something, there couldn't possibly be a language with that few sounds and that many meanings. No one would know what anyone was saying!

Nevertheless, what struck me most about the video was that I was more disturbed by the evangelist and his convulsing victims?proselytes? than the song. It was like some orgiastic pagan ritual...just add some blood-letting and we've gone full circle!

But the song, I get. The way people can be marginalized and made to feel hopeless and freakish. I've seen this firsthand. It breeds anger and if left to itself this anger can fester into rage until it twists all sense from a poor soul's grasp and heinous evils occur. The song, by speaking to it, draws attention to it, helps prevent it by letting many know they are not alone and by giving an outlet in the music, in the thrashing dance. I've seen the therapeutic nature of this kind of music firsthand as well. It has saved many.

Don't get me wrong, I have had more than my share of the weird and creepy. The crazy spiritual experience. There are truly dark forces that seek to corrupt and devour what they can. there are also awesome, terrifying holy forces (again in the true senses of the words) that can rip us from our perceived reality and torque our three dimensional bodies and minds in all kinds of ways. Sometimes, either side abounds in places that wouldn't seem likely. Honestly, if you pinned me down and forced me to choose between the evangelist and the rockers, I'd say the rockers in their honest examination of human conditions are far closer to the holy, while the god-like evangelist with his cultic orgies more likely a feeding ground for the dark eldila.

God correct me if I'm wrong...after all, what do I know.