Where’s the Magic?

After seeing the subtitle of my blog, a buddy commented that I should read one of Don Miller’s books. I hate reading. Really, I hate it. It feels like I’m reading something that someone wrote that’s old enough to have gone through the editing and publishing… and now I’m reading it. And it’s no longer fresh.

So, I’m reading Don Miller’s Blue Like Jazz. Actually for a while now because my wife had recommended the same book previously. And I really do like reading. I think that I just don’t like to begin reading.

—
When I was a kid, I used to go to the library at school to look for books. At some point I was told that I could just walk in there and borrow as many books as I wanted. So for about 4 months I borrowed as many books about magic as I could find. I was going to be a great magician and reading as many books as I could about magic was going to make me a great magician.

Occasionally these books would teach about doing weird spiritual chants and talking to dead people, but I didn’t want to really possess any supernatural power to make magic. I was just looking for some tricks to fool my sister and anyone else who I could get into my garage to watch. But I did want to be perceived as great. I only wanted to trick people into thinking that I had done something unnatural… mostly because I didn’t want to wind up a devil worshiper.

—
Growing up the son of a Southern Baptist preacher certainly didn’t give me much of a foundation for understanding the supernatural. I’m still trying to figure out what sustained my belief that there is a God and that supernatural power is real.

“Trevor” and I shared a locker in High School. He was a Pentecostal of some kind and I knew they believed in performing miracles and wonders, but they also babbled and went on in some language that they made up along the way. It was called “tongues.” It seemed they really believed that they were talking to God in a special language. I had heard about this, and it was considered a bit wacko, even mislead, in my church. But I really liked Trevor, and he liked me.

One night, Trevor and I were in Seattle’s Capital Hill neighborhood. I asked him if I was supposed to talk in “tongues.” The way I remember it, he got around to telling me that his church believed that speaking in tongues was the ultimate sign that you were a Christian. That in some way you really didn’t know if you were saved unless you spoke in tongues—or that’s at least how I heard it. I’ve heard of many churches actually teaching people how to do this. If I were going to agree with Trevor’s church, then it would mean believing that all of these years, reading the Bible and trying to understand God and live the way He wanted me to was pointless because I wasn’t even a Christian. At the least I would be a really weak Christian.
My church didn’t teach me that I had to speak weird to really talk to Jesus. I had been taught how to act like a Christian—even though I really both believed and didn’t believe the whole thing. I could convince almost anyone with my words, and a slight-of-hand friendship that I was skilled in the teachings of Jesus. But I really didn’t get that I was supposed to learn something supernatural—just the tricks to keep everyone, including Jesus, thinking that I was a Christian. A good Christian.

For the 16 years since my talk with Trevor, I’ve been asking Jesus to show me this other side of a relationship with Him. I want to know this power and for it to make me more real. I believe now that tongues can be real and meaningful somehow, but I’ve never done it. I’ve seen people healed through praying to Jesus, but have never spoken in another language while praying to Jesus. I suppose there are some classes or books that would teach me to speak with the tongues of angels—even my wife and many of my dear friends have spoken in tongues, and they seem to really like it.

I guess that I’ve always been interested in the supernatural—since I was a kid-magician in my garage. But now I think that some things just shouldn’t be taught.