Extra-Human?

Post 258

Not wishing to mock or ridicule anyone for their various beliefs, it is useful to simply consider the real meaning behind the many different incantations performed by many of these world-class athletes just before embarking on their particular event.
It seems (for instance the foot races) that as each of them line up among the other greats with a comparatively equal ability to win, that they feel strongly their human limitations might not be sufficient to beat the others, and so they perform all sorts of various rituals apparently in the effort to call up any other additional aid they can get to give them that much more advantage.
Some appear to earnestly talk to themselves or unseen associates while others cross themselves in the familiar Catholic style, or similarly pray to Jesus to help them win while still others do a ritualistic jiggle of the muscles and/or variations of whatnot. My favorite oddities are the guy who repeatedly licks his thumb and then “pastes” it on each muscle as if anointing them individually, and the guy who seems to figure that crossing himself many, many times somehow multiplies the supernatural result (perhaps .002 seconds a cross?). Again, I am not mocking any of these athletes for their particular notion because whatever they are doing must work pretty good since they are indeed the world’s best, but let’s think about this beyond simply allowing it as meaningless religious beliefs.

What part do they really believe their special incantation plays in their success? Are they in fact adding to their physical being some extra-human ability to perform beyond their already great human potential? If we really believed this were true, the game regulation organization would forbid any such pre-race incantation as a form of cheating. Clearly no one takes these activities as anything more than mental exercises to help them get their mind and emotions fully engaged in the event. But if you asked the participant I think you would get another answer, yet I also think when pressed they would confess they themselves are not sure if it works and so “What can it hurt to add it just in case? The risk is too great to chance it”.

But let’s explore the potential validity that these incantations actually add something extra-human. As a quickly changing Christian age and the religion most safely abused, let’s first evaluate the Jesus factor: Lots of us around the world actually believe that Jesus is the Creator and has offered us a personal relationship with him in this present humanity, and so reach out to verses like “I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13) to mean that Jesus will empower me to succeed even when my human limitations would not be enough. Ok, fair enough.
But now what happens when two earnest and faithful believers in Jesus are both in the race and both ask his aid as they stand at the starting line? Apparently only one of them can do all things but the other must be happy with “I can almost do all things through Christ which strengthens me” as he wins the Silver. It seems in this case that the guy who crosses himself eleven times might be the guy who gets more help than the guy who does it just once. Now we add the thumb-lick anointer. Does his incantation work as good as the Jesus asker, or just better than the one-time asker but not as good as the eleven times asker? And do the race results lend proof for or against their particular summons?
I don’t want to drag this out any further; you get the whole idea. My point is that all these are classed as various degrees of harmless religion and allowed by the game administrators as no true aid.

Before we just move on, I would like to add one more athlete type to this list of those who attribute their success to some entity beyond their humanity. Among the several like Gabby Douglas and Allyson Felix, is Missy Franklin; multi-world-record holder and Olympic Gold Medalist.
We don’t see her perform any kind of pre-race supernatural invoking “whatever” but instead she has a balanced recognized connection between the Creator who made her the way he did, and her humanly hard-work tuning those natural gifts to her chosen endeavor. When discussing her “oversized” feet she joyfully responded; “God has blessed me with an excellent swimmer’s body.” (*1).
The difference between her type of perspective and the Jesus invokers is not even comparable, but the similarity between the Jesus invokers and the thumb-lick anointers is hardly distinguishable. It’s not that she doesn’t ask God’s aid (I don’t know if she does or doesn’t) it’s that she doesn’t present as if she’s calling on his supernatural manipulation of reality to give her an advantage. This is a perfect descriptive difference between religion and faith (and I don’t know anything more about her faith than you do). She openly recognizes the Creator and his role in her success but does not publicly add appeals for extra-human aid to win her race or praise him for his magic assistance to her success.

The reason why I want to make specific notation of this concept is because the earlier we can detect a cancer the better our chances are of surviving it. If a woman only a few years ago felt a lump under her skin, she might have found it curious but elected to “watch it” to see what happens, but today with knowledge we now know the potential risk of letting it go is literally life-threatening and so we act in immediate urgency to remove it or quickly determine if it’s harmless. Identification combined with knowledge allows and even promotes a different reaction to something that still appears insignificant. I have watched the growth of this invocation “lump” in our changing Christian culture, at first in our secularist religious thumb-lickers (superstition) and then in our Christian churches who imitate superstition with their own approved brand, but society is still not yet interested in “theory” regarding solutions and so ignores it as insignificant and irrelevant to the troubles of the times, much as was done with the cure for Pellagra (*2) in the early 1900s of the American South.

“There is a principle which is a bar against all information,
which is proof against all argument,
and which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting ignorance.
That principle is condemnation before investigation.” - Edmond Spencer

Today that cancer has spread into many parts of the Church and is just now showing significant signs of real pain to the point people are starting to ask "What’s wrong with my prayers?" The answer is a vast difference between religion and faith though they appear similarly harmless. The concept of their similar appearance but vastly different ends is the point that I am attempting to develop, for reasons that will become obvious in time.
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Benign lump or cancer?
Today it’s easy to understand the biological concept that two lumps looking identical can be of two very different natures and produce two very different end results. The same affect takes place in the spiritual life that this types. Asking God to bless your input and your efforts to his plan, can look very much like invoking God to help or “let” you win, but the spirit of them is of two different types altogether. While the one may or may not be benign, the other is a dangerous cancer intent on our spiritual destruction:

“Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” James 4:3.

The problem with cancer is that it appears to be a normal healthy part of the body and so the body has no inclination to defend itself against what is there to kill you. Invoking Jesus to benefit your pleasure in favor of others is just such a cancer. This is why while the apostles had great power with God through prayer for others we rarely read any of them asking for personal benefits even when facing death, yet we do read of others praying for them often to success (Acts 12:5+13-16)(*3). It seems evident in scripture that we are to accept from God in intelligent faith what he asks of us, but that others are encouraged to pray on our behalf in a mutual back-scratching kind of way (I Timothy 2:1=Philemon 1:4+Philemon 1:22), still, never for our selfish lusts. Do I really need to spell out the difference between selfish lusts and other appeals to God, which he loves to provide?

“Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God” Philippians 4:6

I am actually afraid that I do, but the explanation must come in dawning of concept, not in a single sentence.
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Disillusionment:
Why is it so cancerous to ask Jesus for aid in this way? The answer might be easiest to see in the incantations of those you don’t agree with. The thumb-licker should observe the Jesus-invoker and the Jesus-invokers the thumb-lickers. Since I am most often read by the Jesus-invokers I will address the other to show the error. Superstition is a very powerful trap of the entire being by a means we now intellectually identify as suggestion. By the very nature of superstition’s vagueness it cannot be plainly proved true or false but the suggestion focuses a fearful attention of observation onto anything that might be signs of its authenticity:

“Did this bad thing happen to me because I broke a known rule of superstition?" or "Did this good thing happen because I followed the rules?”
The Jesus-invokers fall squarely into this camp.

The Voodoo culture (a step beyond general superstition) thrives on these fears because they invoke the supernatural, which rules and authority are ignorantly unknown to the fearful and therefore are victim to whatever comes as sure signs the superstition has validity. This is a very powerful slide that once begun brings confusion directly to the spirit and so initiates the poison from the inside-out affecting the emotions, the mind and therefore even the body.
Invoking Jesus in the same way, through ignorant religion, produces the same results, and ignorance is the connecting element. But now the blood begins to boil as I challenge your “real” faith in this way, because you really, really believe your superstition is true. But think these same thoughts from the other’s perspective, which you so easily rejected as foolish, and you can see they are not so different. Even the game regulators have no problem rightly classing these all together as physically inconsequential. The seemingly benign cyst becomes life-threatening cancer when your particular longstanding incantation on which you trust, is shown to be powerless by logic and experience and so the faith is shattered in disillusionment:

“If Jesus didn’t help me win when I asked, maybe he has no actual power.”

At this point all “lumps” are identified as not belonging to the body and either harmful or at least inconsequential and therefore unnecessary, so they are all willfully and aggressively cut out in “revenge” as unwanted deceptions that once fooled you, or completely ignored as a waste of thought. Great. But along with “all lumps”, in further ignorance now assumed to be informed, we cut out lymph nodes which ironically were there to filter out cancerous cells and other harmful invaders (*4). These lumps are truly powerful and very significant! So for analogy sake let’s call these Prayer.

Practically speaking; the true and right supernatural, the true and wrong supernatural, the false and right supernatural, and the false and wrong supernatural, all look very much alike and it takes quite a bit of identification and information to rightly cipher them one from another. That’s why doctors do biopsies.
In short, by the very fallen nature of humanity we are naturally bent to gravitate toward the wrong answers and reject the right answers and we don’t want someone confusing us with the facts. The end result is that while our ignorant confused faith is weakened by evidence and facts of error, the uncomplicated self-glorifying self-made gods like Usain Bolt take the stage of attention and the world gravitates to it with eagerness: “Yes, I am a god!”
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It’s All About ME!
Whether it’s a self-made perspective or one asking for assistance, a key element that distinguishes right from wrong is; Who it’s all about. This seems like a no-brainer to regular Christians but I belabor this because it is a very easy trap to fall into. I dare say most earnest Christians struggle with the confusion of not knowing how to apply prayer in their lives:

If I ask and don’t get, did God answer “No”, or did he reject my request itself, do I need to keep asking in determined faith or accept no as the answer? Should I ask or not ask in this situation, and am I showing faith by not asking or showing faith by asking? Is God happy with me, and is this affecting the answers to my prayers or is it something else? How do I know?

These honest questions in confusion are evidences of a thumb-licker kind of faith that is based more in superstition than anything else. There never will be a clear answer to the confusion because that is the nature of superstition.
I have a personal interest in this topic because as a near life-long Christian, I spent most of it seriously and earnestly trying to be faithful to God but powerless to succeed in tangible victory. The result is very much a superstitious life of spiritual incantations to get God to help me serve him (*5) and being convinced that I was punished in all manner of strange ways when I failed, as I usually did. In essence I was an Olympian that was not physically able to reach the coveted stardom of the podium no matter how diligently I begged for aid, but was confident that God instructs us to win the Gold (I Corinthians 9:24). Did I need to put in more hours of practice, further fine-tune my spiritual diet, or get a different coach? I did all that and it was beneficial to a degree, but it didn’t seem to help any in reaching the elusive Gold (Hebrews 4:10).
After genuinely determining that the Gold was going to be my singular endeavor at the cost of everything else as it became necessary, the answer finally and slowly came clear that the podium I coveted so badly was not one allowing self-glory, it’s not an award for or about me. To win this Gold I needed a completely different focus, the glory of the Gold Medal is all about the Maker of him who runs. But why would I want to do that? It’s my life, isn’t it all about me? Don’t I add God into my life to make my life better? Don’t I obey his commandments because it’s good for me? These are the root questions that must be seriously examined if the end result is going to be different. This singularity concept is the all-encompassing issue that must be answered at the very foundation because of its importance; this question touches virtually everything in life, this is THE question to answer. Is it really all about me, or is it all about somebody else?

We might not yet understand the science behind how it works but true happiness is found in helping your spouse find true happiness. True happiness is found in extending yourself into the lives of others for their sake. True happiness is found when you forget yourself in preoccupation of investing in someone else. These are Jesus’ two greatest commandments; Love God with everything you’ve got, and Love your neighbor as if they were you. Yet in reaching that Gold we find ourselves tripping on ourselves in the way because it’s quite a laborious process to actually “get” that it’s really not all about me, especially when everything in our society promotes that it is. This is why I suggest that Cancer usually comes from an improper diet, which is a societal thing. This is the universal principle that our mothers taught us; “Bad friends corrupt good manners.” But what do you do when all of society is full of bad people from which to choose friends? Noah of all people seems to suggest the answer.
And with that, we are finally ready for the next post.
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(*1) Chron.com: (http://blog.chron.com/olympics/2012/08/missy-franklin-says-her-huge-feet-are-a-big-topic-in-london/) Houston Chronicle online Monday, August 6, 2012.

(*2) Pellagra: (http://history.nih.gov/exhibits/goldberger/) “Dr. Joseph Goldberger & the War on Pellagra” - Office of NIH history.

(*3) Cure for Cancer? This scriptural concept is so sound that it wouldn’t surprise me to see the cure for cancer found in the healthy cells of another part of the same body, somewhere intimately connected to where the healthy cells get their life.

(*4) Lymph Nodes:
“Lymph nodes are part of the immune system so when the body is fighting anything from a minor infection to cancer they will puff up like an animal ready to fight. When swelling or enlargement occur, it can be alarming because about the only time anyone talks about lymph nodes is when the topic is cancer” - (http://www.thelymphnodes.com/what-are-lymph-nodes/index.php).

(*5) Christian Superstition: Might this not be a distraction from the post but in addition to the coachless incantations of unprepared Christians begging Jesus to help them succeed by magic. When used at all, the law of God is also most often applied as another form of incantation and not as an instructing coach of race preparation that it was intended to be (Galatians 3:24, I Timothy 1:8, II Timothy 2:5, I Timothy 1:9-10). The race is to be run in the Power of Christ by an athlete well prepared (II Timothy 2:21).
We have not covered religious talismans in this post but they go along with superstition. A bible carried but unread, a rutine prayer said at specific points, faithful Sunday worship after a Saturday night on the town, etc., are all more often than not, Christian Talisamans that do nothing but offend God and confuse the user. The very Ark of God became just such a talisman to the Jews (I Samuel 4:1-3) and they were mystified that it didn’t work for them. And these were the faithful leaders of Israel!
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