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SIGNS AND WONDERS: BELIEVE THEM OR NOT?

Sometimes people who have grown up in non-charismatic traditions find themselves involved in strikingly new experiences that challenge their previous understanding of their faith. The undeniable impact and power of the experiences often leave participants (and their families, fellow church members, or pastors) at a loss for ways to understand or evaluate the validity of what has happened. 

A student goes to college, for example. He is befriended by a group of Christians who meet in a rented building downtown. The services there rock with excitement. People swoon under the power of "the Spirit"; fall down, laughing with joy; lay hands on one another to convey a spiritual anointing; speak in tongues; maybe even heal an illness or cure an affliction. It seems strange at first, but it also seems much more real than the traditional worship he grew up with. After a while, the unusual occurrences seem to be signs and wonders of true faith, signs and wonders that come to those who are grasped by the Spirit of God. He feels as if he has now really met his savior for the first time. He comes home different, excited about his faith, talking of the strange but wonderful things he has seen and done. Family and friends hear the stories, generally with some confusion and dismay, or perhaps with outright rejection and anger. Pastors are called in to advise how to tell if these experiences are real, or maybe "to come over here and set my child straight." 

Suddenly, for the advising pastor, the Gospel miracle stories take on a new edge. The stories in Acts about healings, exorcisms, cloven tongues of fire descending on the apostles, radical conversions, and visions of the risen Lord become two-edged swords. The Corinthian passages on the gifts of the Spirit take on all the problematic elements they had for Paul when he wrote them. Is every vision real? How can you tell? Is this instance of speaking in tongues from God? How can you say Yes or No? Real conversion and real commitment to Christ are our goal, but how can we determine when powerful conversion experiences have led someone astray? 

Pastors (and Christians in general) need a perspective from which to discern true and false spiritual experiences. This need for discernment does not only arise with regard to newly awakened college students. All kinds of people in all sorts of ways can unexpectedly challenge the status-quo faith of a congregation, a family, or a pastor on the basis of vividly real and profoundly transforming spiritual experiences. Some of those experiences come from God. Some do not. Some can be the basis for personal or congregational rebirth and renewal. Some can be the basis for personal or congregational division and destruction. 

The pastoral quandaries are heightened by the fact that on the surface true and false spiritual experiences often look the same. Something has happened. A person’s commitment seems more tangibly real. A drive toward the power of God has become an urgent topic of conversation and an urgent focus for action. But, in the Sermon on the Mount, one reads that "on that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers’" (NRSV, Matt 7:22-23). Unfortunately, an experience of spiritual power that might be clearly false to the Son of God might look exactly like true signs and wonders to everyone else. 

The Scriptures provide guidance in such situations. As one explores what Scripture has to say, however, one should keep in mind that the guidelines usually will not provide immediate, indisputable answers. Although we can know true and false prophets by their fruits, sometimes it takes time for the fruits to germinate, develop, and reveal their quality. 

One explicit scriptural guide lies in 1 John 4:1-3a: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God" (NRSV). In one sense, this admonition might have been more immediately helpful in a first-century context, when Christianity was still new. One might have been less likely to invoke the name of Christ back then as to invoke it in a twentieth-century American context where the Christian gospel is a familiar element of the culture. People can confess deceptively that Jesus has come in the flesh, just as they can deceptively perform the signs and wonders mentioned in the Sermon on the Mount. True confession comes only from God. But that leaves us back where we started. 

The passage does offer one dependable guide and one clear criterion for discernment, however. We are obliged to test the spirits. In our current cultural context, we often hesitate to judge someone else’s profession of faith or to evaluate the validity of others’ spiritual experiences. However, some experiences push people to the point of radical change and into conflict with other believers around them who do not experience the power of God in the same ways. True resolution can be found only when all people concerned open up their own understanding of faith and lay it out for testing. Of course, one should not underestimate the threat this might pose and the resistance one can meet when one proposes to test the spirits. However, one could say on the basis of this scriptural text that resistance to evaluation can itself be a sign of a false spirit. At the same time, those among the status quo might observe resistance on the part of those with new and unusual experiences while being oblivious to their own unwillingness to have established views put to a genuine test. Real testing and discernment come only when all parties genuinely offer themselves up to God’s own guidance. But, once again, despite this crucial first step toward discernment, we are back where we started. Once everyone genuinely offers him- or herself up to God’s guidance, how can we know what is truly from God and what is not? 

The apostle Paul helps at this point. In 1 Corinthians 12-14, he addresses the conflicts generated by the Corinthians’ intense and conflicting experiences and expressions of the power of the Spirit. Throughout his discussion, Paul repeats that all things should be done "for the common good" (12:7) or for the "building up" of the church (14:4, 5, 26). Fortunately, if all parties trying to discern true from false experiences have offered themselves up to God’s own guidance, then they have already gone a long way toward contributing to the building up of the church. That very willingness and orientation is the primary purpose of the Spirit’s activity among believers and is itself the Spirit’s gift (12:4-7). 

Even after this first step has been taken, it will take time to sort out which experiences are true and which ways are the right ways for individuals and congregations to go. In that regard, one could say that this first step is not actually one step, but is, instead, an ongoing walk with the Spirit. This walk requires an ongoing sifting and sorting out of true from false, which will be painful at times to various people. But, in the meantime, churches, families, or individuals who fundamentally direct their beliefs and actions toward benefiting the body of Christ, will eventually experience genuine expressions of the love of Christ (1 Cor 12:27-13:13). It will require people to keep their faith open to testing, but out of a community’s ongoing desire to discern God’s guidance, genuine faith and love will emerge. It sounds idealistic to put it that way, but it is the way that Scripture advises us to go. And, as long as people continue to open themselves to testing and to building up the church, resistance to new experiences of the power of God and to the wisdom of old can both fall away—for the genuine benefit of the church. 

Which leaves one final issue. What happens when people discern that their vivid, transforming spiritual experiences have led them astray? Such a discernment leaves one disoriented, uncertain where to put those experiences, unclear how to integrate them into an ongoing life of faith. If those signs and wonders were not real, was any part of the experience real? 

One might best address that question by affirming the desire to know God that led to the experiences in the first place. One can always build on a willingness to offer all one has to the guidance of God’s Spirit. One can continue to encourage an openness to God as an essential element of one’s journey of faith. And, one can acknowledge that the church grows when people’s lives are driven by the desire to know and experience the power and love of God. That desire must always be tested. The test might last for a long time. The test might involve the discernment of the whole church. But the desire to be grasped by the power of God lies behind all that is good for the church, behind all that builds up the church, and behind all that leads the church truly to be made up of people who are people from God. 

By Dr. Frank Crouch, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Moravian Theological Seminary and an ordained minister of the Moravian Church.