What about people who can levitate?

‘What about people who can levitate or read minds?’... 

I like to think I am good on my feet and not easily shocked or taken by surprise when asked questions about spirituality. However when, during an Alpha course session on the Holy Spirit, a woman asked me this question I have to admit my eyes widened slightly and my mind emptied of any coherent thoughts to offer. 

I have been asked some pretty strange questions before but not even once has somebody ever mentioned levitation to me. A few days later I asked a friend of mine who has worked for Alpha for years if he has ever been asked this question and, as I suspected, he has indeed never been asked about people who have the ability to levitate. 

But it wasn’t just her question that surprised me. There was something else too… no one else seemed that surprised. Out of a group of around 20 people, one person chuckled. The rest were silent, completely unfazed by what she had just asked… 

Had they heard the question? Absolutely! Had they understood the question? Absolutely! So why were they not reacting? 

Now… let me preface the rest of this article by saying that I did not check with every single person what they were thinking following her question. However I do think I can make an educated guess on what was occurring at this moment. 

Of the 20 people in the group I was leading, all but 3 people were from Iran. I suspect that, had she asked this question in a group of people born and raised in the West, there would have been a few more chuckles and raised eyebrows. But this group was different. There was an openness to spiritual activity and a desire to know what is good spiritual activity and what is bad. 

I am not one for only speaking about western christianity in negative terms. God has and continues to work wonderfully through western Christians. However one of our weaknesses is that we have in large part lost our awareness that we are in a very real spiritual battle. We have fallen prey to a kind of mutant version of materialism which accepts the existence of God but everything else spiritual must be explainable rationally or it is complete nonsense. 

Praise God it is not so in other parts of His world. 

One way in which we see this ‘mutant materialism’ play out is in how we present the Gospel. 

In the West (and this is a gross generalisation) we respond to the individual call for our sins to be forgiven and our guilt to be dealt with. We also assume this is the be all and end all of the Gospel. You are guilty, you need forgiveness, Jesus provides it, boom! You’re a Christian!

We however tend to forget that on top of being sinners in need of forgiveness, we are also spiritual captives under power of the Devil and his demons and we are in need of liberation. Perhaps evidence of severe demonic activity in the West is not so much frightening unexplained phenomena but a blindness to the Devil’s activity. Indeed, an undetected enemy can do a lot of damage. 

I therefore strongly believe this woman’s question was both sobering and encouraging. It was sobering because it reminded me of the spiritual reality, both good and evil, that exists around and within me. It reminded me that I don’t simply have sin that needs to be dealt with but, without Jesus, I am actually a captive, a slave, a prisoner to spiritual forces and beings I cannot explain or overcome. 

But it was also encouraging because it opened my eyes to a greater vision of Jesus’ power and authority. When Jesus says He has all power and authority this is not just over my sin, but it is over the whole cosmos including the spiritual world to which we as western christians are so often blind. 

I believe this will be one of the blessings that people from other cultures and backgrounds having a voice in churches across Ireland will bring. These voices will wake us up to the spiritual battle the Bible so clearly tells us we are in but also ignite in us a greater love for and amazement at Jesus and all the authority and power He truly holds. 

So… to come back to the original question: What about people who can levitate? Well… this is where the interaction got stranger. One of the Northern Irish people spoke up and talked about their experience having been raised around people steeped in the occult. They had witnessed levitations and other dark spiritual practices. They unequivocally labelled levitation as demonic. And as I sat there I was even more taken aback as someone raised in a western, often rational and materialist culture, spoke boldly of the fact that the Devil is at work, demons are real, there are spiritual experiences we cannot explain which have destructive effects on those who practise them. 

This woke me up to another reality: the Church in Ireland is not only faced with people from other cultures who have experienced and have a strong belief in spiritual activities and practices of which we tend to be skeptical, but there are people in Northern Ireland hungry for something greater than themselves and they are looking for it in spirituality that is powerful and destructive. How can we as the Church respond with the good news of Jesus who fills our hunger for meaning, spiritual fulfilment, is infinitely more powerful than all other spiritual forces and, most importantly, is good?