Good Pharisee? or Bad Pharisee? A Dark Knight Rises understanding

Being a modern day "Teacher of the Law" (religious authority) is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it can cause one to actually get in the way of the Spirit of Christ moving unconventionally in how he saves the day. The Pharisees were basically the teachers of the law in Jesus' day. In our day, Christian teachers, whether emerging or established, (including those of us who go to seminary like myself) are the 21st century teachers of the law.

"The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." - John 3:8

The way the Spirit of Christ moves is, for the large part, pretty unconventional and "outside the box" of what we predict and plan. God's Spirit is creative, dynamic, and is not restricted to our ossified systems of doing things and is not afraid to work "outside the system". We'd better not dare to try to put the Holy Spirit on a leash. We can't really anyways. We should either colabour with him in overcoming demonic strongholds to save the day, or simply get out of the way. But we dare not try to stop him effectively doing his thing, which, according to Isaiah 61:1, includes:

"binding up the brokenhearted, proclaiming freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners"

In this Parable of the Dark Knight Rises clip, we see 4 types of Enforcers of the Law (metaphorical Pharisees):
1)newbie Christian religious authority not used to the Spirit of Christ moving unconventionally
2)experienced Christian religious authority open to the Spirit of Christ moving unconventionally
3)spirit-of-the-law-following young Christian religious authority
4) experienced Christian religious authority not open to the Spirit of Christ's unconventional movings

Just like how some Gotham City enforcers of the law (legal authorities) can sometimes get in the way of Batman effectively fighting crime "outside the established system" of doing things, modern day Christian religious teachers and leaders can sometimes get in the way of the Spirit of Christ effectively fighting demonic strongholds "outside the established system" of doing things.

0:05 - 0:20:
"what's going on with the environment?" -  newbie Christian religious authority not used to the Spirit of Christ moving unconventionally
*Spirit of Christ shows up on the scene*
"Oh boy, are you in for a show tonight son!" - experienced Christian religious authority open to the Spirit of Christ moving unconventionally

0:28 - 0:40:
The Spirit of Christ moving in "outside the system" to save the day

1:10-1:20 (Luke 13:10-17)
"I'm going to do what an experienced and open-to-the-Spirit Christian religious authority couldn't do." - experienced Christian religious authority not open to the Spirit of Christ's unconventional movings
"What's that?" - spirit-of-the-law-following young Christian religious authority
"I'm going to religiously take down the Spirit of Christ!" - experienced Christian religious authority not open to the Spirit of Christ's unconventional movings
"Sir, what about the spiritually armed demons?" - spirit-of-the-law-following young Christian religious authority

0:42 - 0:50:
*newbie Christian religious authority begins to try to use an extra-biblical law within his system to stop the Spirit of Christ* "sorry"
"Put that extra-biblical law away before you hurt yourself like in Luke 13:10-17!" - experienced Christian religious authority open to the Spirit of Christ moving unconventionally

3:10 - 3:29 (John 7:32-47)
*Spirit of Christ escapes away from those ordered to arrest him*
"We lost him" - Teachers of the law
"How could you lose him?" - experienced Christian religious authority not open to the Spirit of Christ's unconventional movings
"He has a lot of Supernatural explanatory power" - Teachers of the Law
"What?! And you don't?!" - experienced Christian religious authority not open to the Spirit of Christ's unconventional movings

4:13 - 4:32 (Matthew 22:15-22)
"Like a rat in a trap gentlemen" - experienced Christian religious authority not open to the Spirit of Christ's unconventional movings
*Spirit of Christ escapes out of a religious trap with wisdom*
"You might have the wrong theological animal there sir" - experienced Christian religious authority open to the Spirit of Christ moving unconventionally


Just like how Batman refuses to be domesticated by the established legal human authorities if they oppose his unconventional/outside-the-system effective crime fighting, so the Spirit of Christ refuses to be domesticated by the established Christian authorities if they oppose his unconventional/outside-the-system effective demonic stronghold demolishing.

The Church needs more Commissioner Gordons out there, who are there to colabour with the Spirit of Christ in fighting spiritual evil.

X-men meets The Matrix in Christian mysticism

The word "mystical" unfortunately has such a heretical connotation for modern day Christians. This is very unforunate! Of course the word mystical may have pretty weird and bad connotations, like engaging in some sort of spirituality that’s cultish and off the radar of established orthodoxy. I’m not talking about that type of mysticism. I'm talking about experiencing spiritual realities in the Jesus walk that transcend (but do not contradict) reason/rationality/logic/abstract systematic theology.

Biblical examples that come to my mind are experiencing a "love that surpasses knowledge" (Ephesians 3:19), a "peace of God that transcends all understanding" (Philippians 4:7), and an "inexpressible joy" (1 Peter 1:8), all within the theme of being experientially in union with Christ. Because God is spirit and we must worship him with our spirits (John 4:24), we have to first learn to detect the movings of our own spirit and God's Spirit and do our part in uniting the two, which is very mysterious, yet can be concretely sensed in one's consciousness. I am strongly convinced, after reading some non-Protestant Christian literature, that Paul had a strong mystical side to him. I don’t think he was someone who was purely rational/logical for the most part, then turned on his mystical attitude when he was writing 2 or 3 verses, then turned it off and turned back on his purely rational/logical personality. No, I think he was a mystic and good intellectual thinker combined.

With the exception of some Charismatic/Pentecostal spirituality in North American Evangelicalism, the North American church seems to be missing this mystical side of the Jesus life.

I think that although modern day Protestants may think that Christian mysticism is "weird", Paul and the early Church would have probably thought that the non-mystical "wooden spirituality” of a lot of modern day Protestants is "weird" indeed. If 2Pac and Biggie saw hip-hoppers in 2050 being “wooden” and “purely rational” in their hip-hop due to them being completely sucked dry of the urban-hipness of hip-hop in the late 1990s with its distinctive vibrancy and vivacious spirit of “hypeness” and “coolness” and “sickness”, they would be shocked out of their wits and find that hip-hopless-hip-hop dry and weird.

And yet, there is a difference between how North Americans Charismatic Christians seem to experience this biblical “love that surpasses knowledge”, “peace that passes understanding”, and “inexpressible joy” compared to how people who follow the Christian spirituality of medieval Catholic and Eastern Orthodox monks and nuns experience it.

(I do recognize that there is some overlap and that not all experiences fall neatly within only 1 category, and that there are distinctions amongst the experiences of medieval Catholic spirituality and Eastern Orthodox spirituality themselves. But for the sake of making a generalized observation, the following are my thoughts after dabbling, for a limited time, in both spiritualities)

North American "Charismatic" spirituality is, in my opinion, pretty "Western" in its mystical experiences of union with God. Although it is cool and friggin wicked, it is different from the Christian mysticism of awesome medieval catholics and wicked eastern orthodox monks. This Charismatic mystical stuff is more like Christian X-men with direct cause-and-effects experienced "in your face", where unexplainable yet undeniable events are unmistakably unfolding in your midst. The mystical stuff is localized in time and space somewhere in distinct events in certain times and places, whether it's how your Spirit-filled emotions feel at a given time, somebody's body parts getting supernaturally healed with resulting effects of divine warmth on the body parts, casting out demons in order to worship God and feeling "spiritual darkness leave" and "spiritual light entering" in one's spirit, speaking and praying in tongues, and tuning into the Spirit in a distinct time and place for a Spirit-filled worship session.

On the other hand, the mystical spirituality of medieval Catholics and Eastern Orthodox monks is like the Matrix, where your whole experiential interpretation of the whole of reality undergoes a subtle yet noticeable "tectonic shift" in how you understand the fundamental nature of things. It seems that rather than the focus of mystical experiences being really concentrated and localized in certain distinct events in time and space, there seems to be a whole settled transformation of the “wallpaper of one’s consciousness” and with the resulting metamorphosis of perceived reality, you use that contemplative lens of the soul to interpret reality in a permanently changed way for the rest of your life. The result of this is that one experiences subtle yet noticeable effects on the physical world while living from another reality, which is the Kingdom of God (John 3:8).

Both are friggin awesome. The "spiritual chemical reaction" of mixing the two approximates the spirituality of the Jesus walk of the New Testament baby.