Spiritual Mapping: A Misguided Focus on the Demonic

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For the last three decades we in PCM have had to deal with the extraordinarily grievous effects that misguided practices of spiritual warfare have had upon Christian leaders, communities, and families, and most particularly upon children growing up in homes where an all-consuming focus on the demonic has crippled the formation of their minds and imaginations. The dark myths out of which these ideologies and practices are spawned form the milieu in which fear, paranoia, and a tragic a sence of the good of what it means to e truly human is missing in their lives. These effects include even dissociative identity disorders as well as other emotional and spiritual illnesses. ! To see evangelical leaders such as C. Peter "agner and others dress up these unscriptural ideas and methods in pseudo-technical language and then give to them a universal platform has een and continues to e for us among the gravest of concerns. These ideas have een around and germinating in the #nited $tates chiefly through individual and group %deliverance% ministries that operated on the fringes of Charismatic renewal in the fifties and sixties. &y the early seventies the more confrontive and aggressive methods in focusing on %principalities and powers% 'i.e., demons perceived as ruling demonic spirits( were in place in these groups. These ideas and methods spread to the extent that ) first found it necessary to write and strictly warn of them from a pastoral perspective in *estoring the Christian $oul '!++!( and then again several years later in ,istening Prayer '!++-(. . /ow it is with thanksgiving that ) recommend to you a ook that ade0uately addresses these practices from the perspective of their very serious theological pro lems. "ritten y 1r. Chuck ,owe, it is entitled Territorial $pirits and "orld 2vangeli3ation4 1r. Max Turner, 5ice Principal and $enior ,ecturer in /ew Testament, ,ondon &i le College, provides a helpful overview of ,owe6s ook, stating that it is7 "... a methodologically clear, admirably lucid, and mission-hearted challenge; a challenge not merely to our theories about strategic-level spiritual warfare, but to our evangelical technocratic quest for successful 'method.' Lowe argues that the floodtide of confidence in this 'method' has swept away exegetical, historical and empirical caution, and that it has unwittingly produced a synthesis uncomfortably closer to he estament of !olomon "an intertestamental magical writing# and to animism than to any biblical understanding of demonology and spiritual warfare." "e can all e deeply grateful to 1r. Chuck ,owe for wading through the morass of writings that put forth what has come to e called %$piritual Mapping% and %$trategic-,evel $piritual "arfare%-now so widespread that it is referred to y the acronym $,$". The descriptive names attached to these ideas are sufficient warning that we are dealing with a neo-gnosticism, an extra- i lical and new spirituality that puts itself forward as Christian. )n his ook 1r. ,owe rightly laments the fact that evangelicalism 'unlike Catholicism( sets no re0uirement for prepu lication ideas. For us, unfortunately, the only court of truth is pu lic opinion. "e are democratic and entrepreneurial. )n the spirit of free enterprise, anyone can propagate any elief, no matter how a surd or heretical, provided a pu lisher is willing to take a chance on market demand 'p. !-(. 1r. ,owe patiently and thoroughly, from the 8ld and /ew Testaments as well as Church tradition, shows the teaching and practices of $,$" to e in error. 9e shows as well its links to animism and the magical intertestamental writing, The Testament of $olomon. )n order to fully ring the a ove home to his reader, ,owe 0uotes 1r. Clinton :rnold, who identifies six points at which the :postle Paul is silent, in contrast to the ;ewish magical intertestamental literature of the time7

!. Paul does not discuss the origin of the demons< .. Paul does not reconstruct spirit hierarchies< 4. Paul does not affirm territorial =urisdiction< -. Paul does not name the powers >. Paul does not list the functions of various spirits< ?. Paul does not teach techni0ues for thwarting demons.

Chuck ,owe follows up :rnold6s six points y saying7 %$trikingly, at each point where Paul is silent, $,$" speaks. )n short, $,$" has more in common with intertestamental ;udaism than with /ew Testament Christianity% 'p. @-(.

Spiritual Mapping and SLSW as Method and Technique

1r. ,owe6s ook concludes with an important indictment of evangelicals whose reliance on and fascination with methods and techni0ues have entrenched them in a thoroughgoing form of secularism. Procedures used to increase the productivity of machines on the factory floor are first rought into the front office to increase human efficiency7 Management science is orn. &ut if workers can e managed on the =o , worshippers can e managed in church7 *evivalism is orn. )f the conversion of individuals can e managed, so can their organi3ation into groups7 Church Arowth is orn. )f Aod can e managed, so can $atan7 $,$" is orn.'p. !-@(. This is painfully o vious as we see when, in the following, 1r. ,owe 0uotes C. Peter "agner7 "!o it is perfectly consistent with the worldview of mainstream evangelicalism to describe !L!$ as spiritual technology for completing the %reat &ommission in our generation" "p. '()#." The last section of ,owe6s ook shows how dangerously close evangelicals have come to eing themselves postmoderns7 "*s post-modernity supplants modernity, ob+ectivity gives way to sub+ectivity, rationalism to emotionalism, scientism to spiritism, mechanism to shamanism. ,n concrete terms, +ust as the &hurch %rowth -ovement was a manifestation of modernity's mechanistic worldview, so !L!$ is an embodiment of postmodernity's spiritistic worldview. * well-intentioned attempt to correct one error has directly precipitated another...conformity to the mechanistic technique of modernity is being replaced by conformity to the spiritistic technique of post-modernity "p. '.'#." Thus, ,owe warns evangelicals that their techni0ues and methods must e examined in order to see how it is they have ecome disillusioned y the succession of one failed missionary method after another to the degree that they have finally fallen 'many of them( into the spiritism of the postmodernist. :nother ook written on this su =ect is entitled 4 Crucial Buestions a out $piritual "arfare>, y Clinton 2. :rnold, an author Chuck ,owe 0uotes in the a ove. )t is another ook that faithfully exposes theological pro lems in the $piritual Mapping movement. :rnold does so, it seems, from having een within the movement. #nlike ,owe, however, :rnold either denies or does not reali3e that this is an issue that strikes at the very heart of the Christian faith. 9e, in fact, states that it does not 'see pp. !+?, !+C(, in the context of an appeal for unity in the Church and with the leaders of this movement. This failure seriously weakens the ook. These mistaken practices and ideologies are much more than merely peripheral issues. 2ven as ,owe points out, they participate in a spiritistic worldview. )n my opinion they involve a form of dualism that 'finally( skews even the way we see the Aodhead. This view is eginning to show up in the work of evangelical theologians such as Aregory :. &oyd, in his ook Aod at "ar7 The &i le and $piritual Conflict. : contention of this ook, one that should wake up the most passive Christian, is that we must go to the primitive cultures to learn what spiritual warfare is all a out. "e must, in other words, learn discernment from occult sources-shamans, witchdoctors, and the like. This is yet another example of what it looks like to tip over from scientism into spiritism, mechanism into shamanism. ? These pro lems are of a stunning magnitude and call for nothing less than a return to a Christian worldview, and to the wisdom and knowledge that come with the empowering of the 9oly $pirit. Mr. :rnold, strangely denying the seriousness of the ideas inherent within $,$", recommends yet another method to fix the pro lem, one that he finds superior to $,$". )n this, of course, he is missing the crucial thing that ,owe notes, the tendency that has made evangelicals suscepti le to this whole pro lem to egin with-dependence upon techni0ue and methods. '9ere again we see the pro lem impinging on the way we see the Aodhead7 The true power and work of the 9oly $pirit are eschewed.( These are indeed ig foxes, foxes that ruin our vineyards and our very lives with them. 1r. 1onald &loesch, in his recent volume on the 9oly $pirit, provides a clear and lucid picture of the dangerous rationalism encompassing the evangelical church today, the sort of rationalism that :rnold himself fails to recogni3e in his diagnosis of the pro lems of $,$". &loesch6s ook, along with 1r. Chuck ,owe6s, will e a help to leaders struggling with these issues. &oth these evangelical theologians reali3e the paradoxical end of such rationalism-that of su =ectivism ending finally in spiritism.
!. .. "hen people start focusing on demons, naming them, placing them in hierarchies, aggressively attacking them, listening to them, and forming fanciful mythologies a out what they %hear% and %see% them doing, they egin to %speak out% an unreality that is far from Christian. This has an a solutely deleterious effect upon the growing minds and imaginations of children. $ee *estoring the Christian $oul on wrong ways of doing spiritual attle, especially chapter !-, and ,istening Prayer, chapter - on )ntercession, and chapters !- and !> on the related pro lem of neo-gnostic ways of prayer.

4. -.

Pu lished y MentorD8MF )nternational, !++@, )$&/ ! @>C +. 4++>. The adherents of %$piritual Mapping% practice these things through personal %revelation%, what they refer to as the gift of prophecy. The spiritual mapping movement is shot through with what )6ve descri ed in ,istening Prayer as neo-gnostic listening. Pu lished y &aker &ook 9ouse, !++C, )$&/ E @E!E >C@- !. This is exactly what we find in the neo-gnosticism of Carl A. ;ung and throughout the /ew :ge. )n my work 'see especially The 9ealing Presence(, )6ve descri ed the effects on Christians of this gnosticism as it hails, so to speak, out of the li eral far left. /ow, out of the fringe Charismatic world and its misguided %prophetic movement%, we see in their practices the emergence of a full- lown gnosticism, this time from the far right.

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