L
LatinCat
Guest
I am in my twenties and I was raised amongst the charismatic movement. Both my parents and my grandmother used to “speak in tongues” and they sang lively worship songs at mass and at “worship services”. My early spirtual life was very much engulfed in all things charismatic and I can honestly say that there is much good that came from my exposure to the charismatic movement. It was at a charismatic youth conference that my conversion to Christ began. I experience a very intesense feeling of the love of God for me at this conference. I also had a very powereful experience that confirmed the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Over time, I learned of many great things that the charismatic movement has to offer. Such things include a real zeal for evangelism, a call to a solid and personal relationship with Christ, a love of scripture reading, and a lively faith experience that draws many in. That being said, I no longer consider myself for charismatic anymore because I believe that the Charismatic movement is filled with many errors that tend to be damaging to the faithful. The first error is an over emphasis on an emotional experience rather than on love of Christ. There are so many tears and “being slain in the spirit” experiences that It often removes the focus from our Lord and Savior and puts it on how we “feel”. Which leads me to the second error. All though the movement does not explicitly teach this, it is often comes with the territory of the charismatic movement; this error is the idea that our faith is to be based on feelings. We “feel” the love of Christ, and feel “high on God” (whatever that means). I for one can attest to this. When the intial feelings of my conversion expereince wore off, my faith was almost shipwrecked because my foundation was an emotional experience that I had. I should have founded my faith on God’s word and Reason (Fides et Ratio), but I didn’t and I almost lost my faith. Now, as a volunteer youth minister, I see this problem among the youth alot. The teens have a great emotional experience during some charismatic night of “adoration” and make a great change in their life, but as soon as the emotions wear off, they are back to their old ways. This is always the danger when we base our faith on emotion, rather than on Christ. The third error that I find with the Charismatic movement is abandonment of the traditions of the Church. Charismatics tend to scoff at the Trindentine mass, treating it as if it is outdated. They often ignore traditional expressions of the faith in a sort of “Nothing ever happened before Vatican II” mentality. The fourth error that I see among Charismatics is a sort of eliteism. They behave and sometimes even speak as if the only spirituality in the Church is the Charismatic one. They sometimes think that if you are not a charismatic, that you don’t reall know Jesus. The fourth error that find among the Charismatics is a lack of Orthodoxy. They come dangerously close to ideas like sola fide and absolute assurance of salvation, ideas that come from the Protestants. Fith, they have developed this erroneous idea of “baptism in the spirit”, that is the laying on of hands that they treat as a psuedo-sacrament. It is their sort of rite of initiation into the Charismatic movement. Rather, from the scriptures and the Fathers we learn that “Baptism in the Spirit” is simply baptism and confirmation/chrismation. Sixth, there is way too much “private revelation”. You have heard it before. They start saying things like, “The LORD is telling me that you have this problem because…blah, blah, blah”. I am sorry, but not everyone gets private revelation. If you look at history, it is very rare. Seventh, they misinterprate scripture to support “speaking in tongues” which the bible shows as speaking in other human languanges, not in mumbles. In the end I think that their is much danger to one’s spiritual life in the charismatic movement.
