Misguiding Spirits

What can you do with it?

Keep in mind the fundamentals of moral logic. Stated more expansively, I’m asking that you make that conscious effort to defer to your convictions, written on your heart by the finger of God. Keep in mind that the heart has its own “mind” with a different form of reasoning that rests entirely on moral accountability to the character of God. It’s written into Creation as well as on our hearts.

This has nothing to do with manifesting talents our Western heritage would prefer to ignore, or perhaps consider Satanic simply because it doesn’t fit in with the prevailing orthodoxy. God speaks; none of us fallen humans is authorized to decide for another how He will communicate. However, if your “message from God” conflicts with mine, it’s simply a reason to keep some distance so we don’t get in each other’s way. What we pursue here as a virtual parish would simply not work at all if you can’t humor me and the boundaries I must observe. But the grounds for pushing away from you is not too hard to understand if you have subjected your mind to your heart-mind.

In other words, I don’t care how you get your moral guidance, as long as it is bounced off conviction. I’ll bounce your declarations off my own convictions and decide from there how closely we can work. If it appears your deference to your heart produces comfortable results, we can at least be friends. It’s not a question of orthodoxy because I can’t write it all down in any detailed statement; I have to sense whether your proposal is going to cause trouble to my mission and calling. It’s a living thing, not something carved in stone.

The entire concept of spirit guides is dubious. The record of God’s work in Scripture excludes anything but angels, and we can easily characterize how they operate, because it’s very consistent within the ANE culture. Our culture is so completely alien to theirs that, just as with demons, so I must caution readers that we are ill prepared to deal with the very topic of angels, never mind the actual encounters. The whole thing is so foreign to us that it sounds like mere legend, a kind of mythology that can’t be anchored in our broader sense of what’s real. So when someone tells me they have had some kind of experience with some non-human guiding presence, I have no choice but to ask questions.

For now, there are two primary results that I would expect from any genuine encounter with God or His agents. One is that you will be humble and penitent. Not so much in terms of modeling yourself after any number of cultural models that bear such labeling, but that you will surely set aside arrogance and self-focus. I have no problem with serious self-confidence, by comparison. Two, you would be especially humble and accountable to the Bible. Not slavish bibliolatry, but evincing a sincere desire to avoid conflict with what it teaches. A failure can also manifest in the perverted legalism of proof-texting, too. It’s the message between the lines that is sacred, not the precise wording.

Now it follows naturally that no two of us will get the exact same ideas about how to implement the message of the Bible. If you tell me you reject some portion because you can’t take seriously the presumed author, then I can’t take your claim to faith seriously. That is, I cannot treat you as a brother or sister in the Lord. I can be friends with you, but you’ll be more like a visitor, maybe even an ally, but not a family member.

We have one consistent image of warning from the Bible about guiding spirits — the term in most English translations is “familiar spirit.” It’s a reference to demonic spirit guides, a manifestation of darkness that intends to deceive. It’s primary effect is to guide you in any direction possible except the one God wants you to go.

Go where your conscience directs; that’s the starting point. However, your sincerity of conviction is not binding on me, nor is mind binding on you. I have to obey my own heart.