Saving the best for last

The priest�s final weapon was powerful indeed. It involved the priests going around to bless people, and by the end of the session between a third to a half of the room had been felled and was out cold on the floor, and some people were running around the room chattering in tongues. I didn�t experience anything, though *shrug* I think I�m condemned :)


It's a miracle! Praise the Lord!

People love to look on the incidences of "miracles" as evidence of Divine touch and presence. In fact, many of them can be easily explained. Also, more than one religion has miracles - what are the implications of this for there being one True religion? Or none, even?

Further, it seems God has become less powerful in recent years. All the miracles attributed to him have been becoming steadily less powerful and observable. Coincidence, or conspiracy?


- Healing

This is a perennial favourite. Notice that most times, the miraculous healing is of a most subjective ailment - pain. Now, as all knows, pain is all in the mind. To a large extent, pain is psychosomatic - if you think you're going to hurt, you will. One could get a hypno-therapist to plant suggestions in your head, and a similar result would be achieved. The power of this placebo effect is recognised by scientists, which is why in drug trials, the control group is always given a placebo. Now, if the promise of a mere drug can dull and deaden pain, imagine what unshakable, firm faith in one's healing can bring?

As for the more visible types of healing, Bien Kiat told me that he saw a show exposing fake Healings, and it was rather shocking how the tricksters managed to fake the regeneration of a hand, gore and all. All in all, I will not totally dismiss this �miracle�, but I must make the observation that we hear so much about those who are healed - but what about those who aren't? Ah, it must be God's will that they are not healed. And that the people who go to faith healers, trusting in His Power and casting themselves at his feet but later sicken and die should die.

- Tongues

From time to time, people will begin spouting gibberish. They are said to have been given the �Gift of Tongues�.

A cursory analysis of the tongues spouted reveals that they follow a certain pattern, the tongues actually consist of a very few words (one I heard just consisted of �Lalalalala�) and that certain words and phrases occur very often. This makes me wonder what they are actually saying, and how extensive their vocabulary is. Perhaps it is just �Praise the Lord�, and if that is the case, this gift is not very good, for what good is a language if your vocabulary is limited? I might as well learn curse words from various languages and then proclaim that I know a million and one tongues!

Cases have been documented, I believe, of people suddenly speaking weird languages when they suffer brain damage. One case I am certain of is of this Chinese scientist who, when he suffered brain damage, suddenly lost the ability to speak in English and reverted to his native Mandarin. In any case, when someone is emotionally overwhelmed, it would not take too much for him to suddenly spout a few nonsensical words and imagine that he was speaking a new language.

Perhaps the simplest explanation for Tongues � possession by demons. Tada. So much for it being a divine gift.

- Slaying

I suppose people�s minds can become overwhelmed by everything, or they experience a sudden release of built-up tension. And they thus collapse when touched by the Priest but my choir junior - a non-believer - told me he got slain at the Festival of Praise at the Indoor Stadium, and my room mate Clarence told me he got slain before the retreat too, so I will accept that Slaying might not be due to personal, internal influences.

- Walking on Hot Coals

This is not a miracle attributed to Christianity, but can be used as an example showing how so-called miracles can actually have a rational explanation.

Basically, people can walk on hot coals yet not get injured because of the Leidenfrost effect. When liquids are placed onto surfaces at high temperatures, they do not vaporise as quickly as one might think because the part of the liquid in contact with the hot surface vaporises and acts as an insulator, protecting the liquid from the heat of the hot surface. Globules of water can thus remain on the surfaces of hot skillets for up to 3 minutes. Now when the coal walkers run across the hot coals, they either wet their feet or, because they are nervous, sweat around their foot area. Thus, when they run quickly across the hot coals, they can escape injury.

- Sights and Sounds during adoration

Nightly adoration was supposed to be the most powerful time of the retreat. People related being healed, feeling various sensations and smelling scents.

Now, adoration was held at odd hours during the night, when the retreatants were dazed, tired from a lack of sleep and disoriented after waking up. They�d have been psyched the day before, and all the proceeding days, and in the quiet of the adoration chamber, who knows what they might have thought they saw?

One woman claimed that, during mass adoration, she smelled roses around the Blessed Sacrament. Bah. The Sacrament was surrounded by bowls of scented oil!

Others claimed that they experienced many things during mass adoration. Perhaps they were short of oxygen, or affected by the mass hysteria and all the psyching. See below also for more on how we were emotionally and psychologically manipulated.


Praise the Lord, ye bright angelic choirs with Holy songs of joy...

During the retreat, there was much Praise and Worship. Most sessions started and ended with Praise & Worship. Indeed I sang so much my jaw hurt from all the unconscious dropping of it - a habit inculcated in my 4 years in the RI Choir.

I've never really liked Praise and Worship. For one, it is musically uninteresting. The simple melodies are short and all sound similar, most Praise and Worship songs sound like Country Music and the songs can be classified into one of 2 groups - happy and sad. All the songs end the same way - by repeating the last lines of the last stanza or chorus. Perhaps what's worse is the gestures - clapping, raising of hands, turning around and jumping (though there was none of the latter in Sabah, perhaps in deference to the Middle Aged people. The tunes were so boring that I started trying to harmonise with them (but not very well) � I never thought I would �degenerate� to the level of Zhuomin and friends!

The priest conducting the retreat scolded people who dislike Charismatic worship, lauding it, but everyone has their own way. What makes raising your hands and clapping to Country Music tunes more virtuous or pleasing to God than wearing hair shirts and standing in the middle of rivers like the Irish monks used to do, Gregorian Chant, sitting alone on a pillar in the middle of the Egyptian desert for 20 years, or flogging yourself like the people who, during the Black Death in the 14th Century, used to go from town to town practising self-flagellation?

I was thinking about the purpose of all the song singing, and the shouting the priest did from his pulpit. The former is meant, through the �fun�, loosening up and relaxation to break down your defences and inhibitions and make you more receptive to the messages preached, and to implant suggestions into your head which you will now be more susceptible to, and the latter is meant to wear your defences down and likewise plant suggestions. The shouting was nothing compared to BMT, though, so I have a degree of acquired immunity to this sort of thing and was happily unaffected (I think). Alternately, the songs and shouting were meant to prepare the retreatants spiritually, so it depends on how you look at it. Probably both answers are correct.