Test the spirits to see whether they are from God

Originally posted Thursday, July 3, 2008 at 10:54pm

So it has come to my attention that tomorrow is the Fourth of July, which is the day that America told Britain we were tired of their rules and sick of being grounded every time we threw an awesome party in Boston Harbor. Fun fact: did you know there’s no such thing as July 4 in Britain? They call it July 3 ½ over there. OK, I made that up, but admit it, that sounds like something the British would do.
This reminds me of a movie promo I saw recently, from the makers of “Independence Day” and “The Day After Tomorrow.” It turns out the promo was for a movie called “10,000 B.C.” , which is too bad. I was really hoping for “The Day After Independence Day.”
Now, I’m no filmmaker, dear reader, but that’s the movie I’d make, if I became one. Let me paint you the picture: it’s mid-afternoon. All is quiet. The birds are chirping in the trees. The Founding Fathers wake up intensely hung over and realize they have a country to run.

***

I think it’s time for a story from earlier this summer, when I was in San Francisco. I was walking through Chinatown with my family when some random person approached me and gave me a newspaper flier about Falun Dafa, otherwise known as Falun Gong. I am sure he would have given me a lovely speech about how awesomely awesome Falun Gong is, except that I had to catch up with the rest of the tour.
Let me just pause this story and say that I am a rather suggestible person. I was recently talked into getting a trial subscription of The New York Times that I didn’t actually want by an overly enthusiastic telemarketer. I also once gave $2.00 to a solicitor who wanted money for some charity work being done by the quote-unquote “Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity.” As it turns out, that’s the Unification Church, which is a . . . cult.
I hope cults do actual charity work sometimes and don’t just spend all their time recruiting for their cult. Because I’m not going to lie, that’s what I’d do, you know, if I ever started a cult.
When I am 70 I am going to be one of those old people who gets talked into giving thousands of dollars to some friendly con man who wants to invest in the Brooklyn Bridge or something, so if any of you reading this don’t like me very much and decide to pursue a life of crime, give me a ring fifty years from now and I’ll put your grandchildren through college.
Because that’s what con men do with their money. They put their kids through college so that they can go to business school and become CEOs of large corporations and earn an honest living. I’ve just saved you valuable time in figuring out how to allocate your ill-gotten gains.
So really, give me a call. I don’t bite. It will be just like taking life savings from senior citizens.
Fortunately, when telemarketers call, half the time they hang up on me. See, they think they’re talking to a real person, and they launch into their whole spiel. Then two or three minutes later I tell them they’re talking to the wrong guy and I have no idea how many miles are on my house or what the mortgage rate on my car is, and they magically hang up.
So anyway, you’re probably wondering, what is Falun Gong already?! Well, as far as I understand it, it’s some sort of spiritual practice with yoga-like exercises which originated in China and is currently persecuted by the Chinese government. My handy flier tells me that Falun Gong goes back to ancient times (although the modern history of it begins in 1992). Truth, kindness, and forbearance are somehow involved. I’d tell you more about what its practitioners believe and teach, except every time I try to read about Eastern philosophy, I get really, really bored. But, dear reader, I can tell you this: the flier I was given contains pretty pictures of a blond woman wearing a Falun Gong t-shirt. And the Falun Gong logo contains a yellow swastika surrounded by yingyangs.

It is interesting how people can twist the meanings of language. Xinhua, a state-run Chinese newspaper, once declared that "the so-called 'truth, kindness and forbearance' principle preached by Li [Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong] has nothing in common with the socialist ethical and cultural progress we are striving to achieve."
If I were a Communist government, would I really want to tell the masses that truth is for the gullible, kindness is for sissies, and forbearance is for the weak? I’m not really sure if being anti-truth or pro-cruelty is a good platform. Yet when you put those three words into context as the central ethical teaching of Falun Gong, you come up with something that goes beyond the common meanings of those words, something that a government might disapprove of, or that I as a Christian might disagree with.
Look, I have no problem with the physical exercises qua physical exercises if they are healthy for the body and mind. I don't necessarily have a problem with other Eastern practices such as meditation. And of course we should be upset if practitioners are being mistreated or even tortured in other countries. I don’t mean to imply that Falun Gong is a cult (I don’t think it technically even qualifies as a religion), but of course we should be hesitant to accept any metaphysical or spiritual claims that it makes.
By the way, I apologize if it sounds as though I’m comparing Christianity with totalitarianism.

Scripture of the Week:

Titus 2:1 You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine.

1 John 4:10-11 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.