We Fall Down...

While waiting for my usual magazine programme on TV this weekend, I happend to browse through to the end of a very charismatic church service on another channel.

You know - the part when people are healed of diseases, fall down by being breathed on, or start shaking uncontrollably.

Now, I grew up in a really conservative church environment, where moving during a song might be construed as "inappropriate" - even if you were just scratching an itch! :) So this kind of thing is not at all what I'm used to. I'm still rather skeptical and suspicious, and as such watch these goings-on as an "outside observer".

As the healings and casting-outs were happening, the camera panned the audience (packed) and the overflow outside (packed), focusing in on a few faces here and there. Most were rapt with attention, watching expectantly as events up front unfolded.

Thousands of people all waiting.

I wondered what they expected, why they came. Did they want to feel an overpowering spirit move deep inside them? Were they searching for some proof in their souls that God was there? Did they bring someone, hoping to find healing? Were they there for the "show", to see a real live miracle? Were they there because they genuinely belived, or because this was a Big Name in Faith Healing circles? What did they think they would get out of being there?

On another channel a leader in a traditional African religion was speaking about how he incorporated both the ancestors and God in his baptism. A white woman had gone through the "system" and was being baptized in a stream, along with a few black women. As they were dipped into the water they started to shake, cry out. They crawled out of the stream, up in the mud and threw a "demon come out!" fit on the dry grass. The pastor, left in the river, started to shake uncontrollably, his eyes rolled back to white, and he went into a trance.

Again, something I'm not used to, and as such a bit suspicious of...

They interviewed the white woman afterwards, who said she felt "something strong" happening, her demons were cast out at baptism, and now she feels more connected to the black than the white culture. She's heading toward leadership within that tradition.

I wonder what she went into that seeking - something deeply spiritual, or something else? Was she prepared for what she would find? Did she expect to fall down and grovel in the mud at baptism?

I wonder...