My Journey from Anti-Intellectual Hyper-Charismatic to PhD Student in Biblical Studies

I often speak of my life in a calendrical fashion with a BC (before Christ) period and an AD period - my life prior to coming to Canada was very different to my life after I had arrived and chosen to stay in Canada. Even though I have been a Christian for my entire life and was raised in a Christian home, I had something of a conversion experience in the fall of 2009 at Catch the Fire Toronto's School of Ministry. Prior to coming to Toronto, I was a broken and hurting young man, and my School of Ministry was the start of my healing journey. Catch the Fire's emphasis on the idea that God wanted to have a close, personal relationship with me that was filled with love and connection was revolutionary for me, as was the tight-knit and loving community and the emphasis on allowing God to heal our broken minds and hearts from past hurts and traumas. As with most 18-year-olds, I was quite confident at that time that I was an independent and strong adult, fully capable of looking after myself in almost every way. I did not yet have the emotional or spiritual maturity to realize that most things in this fallen world, whether they be familys, organizations, theological systems, or churches, have both pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses. I was very aware of the strengths of the particular part of the body of Christ that I had found myself in, but almost totally unaware of the weaknesses, despite the fact that some of them posed an acute danger to my development as a still young adult.

            Despite the almost incalculable benefits that God had already brought into my life through this very charismatic church context, I did not realize that I was also imbibing a subtle set of biases which are often found in more charismatic/Pentecostal streams of Christianity, especially in North America. Although no one stood from the platform and preached 'theology, doctrine and critical thinking are not important', I was slowly being more and more carried along by a subtle undercurrent of anti-intellectualism which contained within it a particular suspicion of, even at times disdain for, anything smacking of formal theological training. I remember a very well-known, big name charismatic speaker poking fun at 'seminary-cemetery' and somewhat bemoaning his years spent in formal theological training as if they were some kind of misspent youth prior to his enlightenment within truly 'Spirit-filled Christianity'. I remember times of prayer accompanied by the Jason Upton lyrics which, in the context of deriding the supposed lifelessness of theology books on a bookshelf, say "Take us way beyond religion, Way beyond the minds of men, Way beyond our thinking" (see the song 'Into the Sky' on the album 'Between Earth and Sky' released in 2007).

            Then add to this the many comments peppered in sermons, prayers, testimonies and Bible studies about how it's not enough to know God just in our head, and how thinking alone won't get you anywhere, and about how Christianity is more about experience than it is doctrine, and what you have is a recipe for training a still very young and impressionable David to fear, reject and even disdain formal theological training or any Christian leader who seems too interested in theology and study. Consider too that all of this is happening in the context of a large group of young people at a pivotal point in their lives (right after high school) and that the main avenues for further work and training that are highlighted and encouraged are ministry internships and that the value of a university education is sometimes explicitly questioned, and you have a recipe for a form of Christianity that is filled with emotional experiences but almost completely lacking in theological, intellectual and historical depth. If young Christians are going to go the distance in life with Jesus, they do need real experiences of God's love for them, but they also need to develop the ability to understand the content of their faith, why it matters, how it can speak to all aspects of human life and how it can root them in the historical teachings of the church no matter the storms that come.

            I need at this point to mention one extremely important caveat which is and will forever be deeply lodged in my heart - despite the shortcomings of the Christianity which I was initially reared in after my conversion experience, the leaders, organizations and people who were around me at that time will always deserve immense credit, gratitude and respect for all that they did for me and others in that time and place. My critiques are intended by me to be the faithful wounds of a friend, not the ungrateful, bitter criticisms of an arrogant person on the other side of a nasty form of deconstruction. Hindsight is 20-20 as they say, and I would be being hopelessly naive if I did not think that the younger Christians I am now responsible for leading and disciplining will one day have some loving feedback for me - of course they will! I am attempting to do all of this with respect and orientated towards people who I see as my brothers and sisters in Christ. My goal is not to tear down, but to help all charismatics to work together to, by God's grace, build a better faith for ourselves and for one another.

            After my initial time in Catch the Fire contexts wherein I had absorbed this undercurrent of anti-intellectualism and fear and disdain for education in general, I somehow found myself taking classes at Alberta Bible College in Calgary, Alberta. I still remember sitting in Kelly Carter's intro to theology class just waiting for him to live up to my stereotype of academically and theologically inclined Christians - 'This guy loves his books more than his God and wouldn't know the Holy Spirit if He slapped him in the face'. I didn't actually think that - I'm not that mean! But I was deeply suspicious from the get-go. But lo-and-behold, Dr. Carter spent the first four weeks of the class (over 8 hours of lecture and class discussion!) focused on how the proper end of theology was discipleship to Jesus - walking in his ways and becoming more like him. Allowing myself to be mildly impressed, I proceeded to my next class ready for this exception to the general rule to be swiftly undone. And yet it wasn't. And it wasn't. And it wasn't. Little did still-young David know, but Alberta Bible College was but one little drop in the ocean of Christians over the 2000-year history of the church who have been committed to truly and genuinely loving God with their mind. My little moment of a life in a charismatic movement that only started 25 years earlier began to be situated in the wider story of God's work in and through his church over the full span of the last 2000 years. As I began to learn, for most of its history the church has been led by pastor-scholars just like Dr. Kelly Carter, many of whom did not deserve the suspicion with which I had been trained to approach them.

            I began at ABC intending to take one 6-week course and see what would happen. One 6-week course turned into a diploma, which turned into a degree, which turned into a masters and now I am in my third year of a PhD in New Testament. I have not lost any of my fiery love for God that I was first given by the Spirit at Catch the Fire back in 2009, nor have I deconstructed out of being a bona fide, Spirit-filled charismatic. The lesson for me has been simple but profound - we don't need to pit head against heart, or vice versa, claiming that one is more important to Jesus than the other. I think Jesus was pretty clear in Matthew 22:37-38 (NIV) "Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment." We are called to love God with all that we are, and we don't need to play one part of human life off against the other. Some are more inclined this way or that, but we need everyone's gifts and callings, none of which are better or more important to Jesus than the others.

            As much as I obviously agree with what I have written above, another caveat is now needed - it would at this point be very easy to swing the pendulum too far back in the other direction, which would be quite funny given that charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity is itself a reaction against overly dry, staid and genuinely lifeless, head-only Christianity that is suspicious of all things smacking of experience and the gifts of the Spirit! Ironically, I personally would never have been interested in academic theology if my heart had not first been healed and set on fire by God's Spirit at Catch the Fire Toronto's School of Ministry. In fact, I actually grew up back in Scotland in a church with a very gifted and theologically-inclined preacher/teacher style pastor. But his faithful, skilled and life-giving theology was not able to penetrate beneath the many layers of pain and trauma that were then separating me from God and his will for my life. The long and the short of it in my view is that we need both head and heart, and that though each of us may be inclined more towards one than the other, we all need each other, and all are equal under the lordship of Christ. And I for one am very excited to see how much more impactful the charismatic movement can become if we are able to maintain our strengths of intimacy with God and empowering in the Spirit and shore up our weakness of anti-intellectualism.