Do you have any spiritual gifts, or super powers?
Yes, I like to think so--at least one or two anyway.
I mean, beyond simple Christian faith, there's nothing as great as the other stuff you might read about in the New Testament or see in snows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Heroes, but alas, we shine the light we have, right?
I believe that faith is a gift from God, but I had faith long before I ever thought of it as anything special, and it took me an inordinate amount of time to come around.
When I first got mixed up with other Christians, they said it was important to figure out which spiritual gifts you had, so I tried most of them. There was one called "discernment" that I seemed to have to a degree spooky enough to qualify as supernatural. I can pick out thieves, liars, and charlatans like they have yellow stripes painted down their backs or something, but I don't think this comes from the Holy Spirit as much as from having developed considerable skill in the areas of stealing, lying, and... charlataning, so it probably just seemed like a super power to those guys.
I was really confused about the gift of faith. I knew I had it, but my understanding of it made it more like something supernatural than what most of the Jesus people seemed to be talking about when they used the word. By their understanding, faith seemed to have a property of degree that mine lacked. They would say things like they wanted "more faith," or that someone had "wandered from the faith," or even that so-and-so had "LOST their faith," which puzzled me because my faith felt more like a racial distinction than a lifestyle choice.
Actually, sometimes my faith seemed more like a congenital Maori tattoo that started at the bones and grew out. I felt like someone who had just never realized they had a Maori tattoo until it was pointed out and maybe they had a general idea of the essential meaning behind the marks, but didn't really understand much more until they picked up a book on the history of the tribal people of New Zealand, and even then, they couldn't say how anything in the book explained why a white guy on the other side of the planet would pop up Maori. When I felt out of place, I could try to hide my mark, but I didn't really want to because the only thing I liked more than having it was seeing it on a fellow tribesman. The way I understood faith, I couldn't wander away from it any more than I could wander away from my own ass, and try as I might, I certainly couldn't lose it.
OK, I could beat this analogy to death if I haven't already, but it's probably not as great as I think it is right now, so I'll drop it after pointing out that even the most ardent modern ink junkies eschew the ta-moko.
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| Hey, don't run. I'm just trying to share my FAITH with you. |
I'm not questioning anybody's faith, but I sometimes wonder if it makes the same kind of sense to them as it does to me.
The Jesus people didn't emphasize it much. They just told me that faith was a sort of starter gift that you had to get before you could get any of the others. You would just know it if you had faith or not, but the only way you would find out if you had any of the others was to try them out, or in rare cases, you might find out early if the official discernment guy told you that you had one. Ironically enough, the discernment guy didn't seem to like me very much. I suspected it was because he got his discernment "gift" from the same palace I got mine and he knew I knew, or more likely, he really did have the real thing and knew what a pathetic excuse for a human being I couldn't help continuing to be even on the rare occasion I tried not to. In either case, it was probably for the best since it was a small fellowship and two discernment guys would have way overstaffed the office.
I was really hoping for the gift of miraculous healing because that seemed like the most useful one, but when I tried it I couldn't even take out a wart, let alone something more serious like a strong head cold, so I decided to let that one go because all I was doing was disappointing people.
For a while I thought maybe it was preaching and teaching, but that was only because I like to talk a lot and while I can be fairly persuasive, most people seem to find it easy to dismiss anything I tell them simply because they heard it from me. I knew it was spiritual, but in the opposite way that I think a spiritual gift is supposed to work, so I left that one on the table too.
I took a brief interest in the various "word of _____" offerings on the menu, but it seemed like those were only for prophets, and having read about a few of those guys in the book, I decided to check out the speaking in tongues thing first. I wasn't expecting much there either so I was surprised when I hit the jackpot.. At first I couldn't get the hang of it so I asked, and the other tongue people said to just pray silently and relax until my spirit language started to form itself in my mind, and then just say it out loud when it did.
When the flood gates first opened I discovered that I had a rich spirit language with an unlimited vocabulary and a structured grammar complete with phrasal verbs and gender rules. I just knew I was on the right track because everyone else's spirit languages sounded like baby talk compared to mine, and a few people even stood up and started translating for me; sadly however, after a few months of charismatic bliss, the flood slowed to a trickle, and then stopped altogether except for a single six word phrase that would just repeat in an infinite loop.
muhbeauh sode muhkaiyak en bode ahkhanu
Several of the Jesus people that had taken up the daunting task of interpreting the abundant flow of new revelations from my spirit language sessions usually got something that sounded like what a much more spiritual person than me might say, so I never had reason to doubt. This time though, they said all they knew was that it sounded important. Much to their consternation, and even more to mine, nobody had anything for this except for the discernment guy who didn't know either, but prophesied that it would change the life of whoever interpreted it.
I laid off gift seeking and redirected my efforts to helping out with the sound-system and filling in for the regular drummer when he couldn't make it to Church and the other back-up drummer wasn't available. We had a complicated sound system, and drummers are, well, you know---drummers, so that kept me so busy I all but forgot about finding my spiritual gift until one Sunday morning a few months later when I was having breakfast and a mouthful of cornflakes and milk exploded out of my mouth along with the following:
MAYBE I SOLD MY KAYAK AND BOUGHT A CANOE!
...dammit.
I never had a spirit language at all. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was probably all just a bunch of random speculations about trading native American water-craft wrapped up in everyday English and obscured by a contrived accent that my subconscious was generating in response to an unreasonable demand for something spiritual sounding. I felt totally disillusioned and shocked at how long it had taken me to figure out... HEY! WAIT.A.MINUTE!
The Prophecy!
Indeed! Had not the mystery message had been interpreted? Yes! Yes it had. I had interpreted it myself, and with the same absolute degree of confidence in the accuracy of the interpretation as I had in my only other spiritual gift--faith itself!
As if to vouchsafe the fulfillment of the prophecy, the change in my life was profound. For one thing, I gave up speaking in tongues, but then that's probably not all that miraculous considering how it had dried up, and that my personal feelings about being a speaker in tongues-er had caused my enthusiasm to wain considerably. Don't get me wrong, I don't doubt that it happened, but you have to admit it would be a tough gift to enjoy for long. I mean, the only way a Maori can be more out of place in modern American culture is if he suddenly starts giving a speech in his native language. I also called off my personal search for spiritual gifts.
The truly important and abiding change came when I was cleaning up the milk and cornflakes and I said to myself out loud (in plain English,) "Well, I guess faith is enough." and realized I had said it in an almost perfect intimation of Eeyore. It wasn't total sarcasm, but it sounded less enthusiastic than a kid that really needs socks getting a pair for his birthday. Sure, I have faith, so... so what? I guess I'd just have to use my faith to trust that God would give me any spiritual gift He wants me to have whenever he wants me to have it , and just not worry about... HEY! WAIT.ANOTHER.MINUTE! HOW DO I KNOW THAT?
Oh, right. That's pretty much what "faith" means.
I suddenly realized that not only is faith enough, it's so much more than enough that it eliminates the need for anything else! Which,on reflection, is pretty much the definition of "enough," but at the time it seemed like divine revelation.
Another lesser change was that I started consulting the dictionary more frequently.
I still see faith in pretty much the same way, but I hold it in much higher esteem. In spite of the social baggage, and even though I never asked for it, faith is unquestionably the best gift I have ever received, spiritual or otherwise, and I've come to understand that I was right about another thing: there's really nothing "natural" about it.
I think I have another spiritual gift, but it's one that's not really ever mentioned in the book unless the "do it cheerfully" part was meant to expand the meaning of the "showing mercy" gift at the end of the list in Romans twelve to include humor, but that's a wild stretch.
It's probably not worth mentioning, but I guess I still worry that I only have one string on my gift guitar, so: I have a sense of humor that even I might describe as overdeveloped, had I done anything to develop it. Like faith and opposable thumbs, it seems like something I didn't appreciate until long after I received it,and maybe more suspiciously, it's more complex than anything I could have come up with, so at least in that rearguard it's kind of spiritual I guess, but there is more to a spiritual gift than irriducable complexity and solid biblical reference, and I suspect most of that more is practical utility. Is it helpful? Does it serve others in some way? I think my sense of humor might qualify.
Not only can I usually find something amusing about any given situation, but I can almost always help others to see it as well, and when I do, they usually seem better off for it. It's not restoring sight to the blind exactly, but a few people have even gone so far as to thank me for cheering them up. Probably a lot more than you might think and way more than have yelled at me for not taking things seriously enough, so yeah, I'm going with qualifies.
Of course, I recognize there are some things so serious that there is absolutely nothing funny about them, but when I encounter those things I have learned to consult more serious men, and I know quite a few because most of them are the ones that confronted me for not taking things seriously enough.
N.B. New Zealand is a beautiful place with beautiful people that I would love to visit, but I've never fully eliminated the irrational urge to get an actual Maori face tattoo, so it's probably better if I don't risk it, besides---I hear Tahiti is a beautiful place too.
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