Full Contact Christianity

Some while back, a friend asked me about energy work. Isn’t it all some new age mumbo-jumbo, after all? Or is there more to it than that? This was my answer.

Moving into bodywork was…well, it was a surprise. I expected to spend the rest of my life in the study and classroom, doing exegetical work more or less full-time. But God has an infinite capacity to surprise.

I remain a theologian, and I want to be able to offer a theological account of what’s going on as I work with a client in my new capacity. Doing that work has proven to be an adjustment. By comparison with the exegete’s calling, stepping out to theologize about what happens on the massage table felt a lot like walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon with no net. Being an exegete by training and inclination, I was not much given to wandering out into areas that the text of Scripture didn’t explicitly address. Or so I thought…  But as I have come to grips with my new calling, I have begun to notice all the ways in which I was already plowing the fertile fields of general revelation, ways I was blind to because I just thought of them as “the way things are done.”

As a teacher, I had no qualms about showing a new preacher how to set up a 3-point topical sermon. That’s certainly not a particularly biblical structure; it’s just something that works well, and gives newbies a starting point. There’s nothing unbiblical about it, of course. It’s craft knowledge, discovered by working in my calling in God’s world, and paying attention to what works and what does not. There are any number of other teacher tricks — use of slides and visual aids, intelligent use of assignments, questions, discussion, and so on — that are likewise discovered in the doing, and then passed from master to apprentice, down the generations. I learned many of them from my teachers, discovered some on my own, and I pass them on to my students in their turn, which is all as it should be.

The same dynamic of craft knowledge applies to everything. Scripture tells us much, and it is authoritative. But in most fields of endeavor, special revelation walks us right up to the edge of the field, legitimizing the inquiry — and there it leaves us to explore. Scripture teaches us that the physical creation is real, and good, and worthy of our study, and then leaves us to study it. It doesn’t tell us that the oak tree has several different kinds of tissue in it, nor that all those tissues are composed of complex molecules, nor that those molecules are composed of atoms, nor that the atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, nor that those particles break down into still more elemental particles, and so on. All that, we have to find out by examining the oak tree. Scripture gives us warrant for the examination, but it doesn’t tell us what we’re going to find.

And so it is with my work. Scripture tells me that the body is real, that it can be ill or healthy, but precious little about how to get it from the former state to the latter. That, we have to learn by exploring the fertile fields of God’s general revelation in the world. And by consistent and careful examination, by honest experiment, we have learned a whole lot — and we have a lot more to learn. Likewise, Scripture tells me that the spirit is real, which brings me to your question about energy work.

For pretty much any subject, I find the best way to begin is at the beginning, which is to say, in Genesis. The foundations of biblical anthropology are in those first few chapters. We first learn that we are designed to be God’s miniature self-portrait, His signature on the work of art that is the universe, which means we — male and female as a married team — are responsible to cultivate and guard the world. Thus far the first chapter. In the second chapter, we discover our composition: God compounded man from dust and breath. Dust is the material part that returns to the earth when we die. Breath is the immaterial part, the spirit that returns to God who gave it. But crucially, in the expression “dust and breath,” what is meant by “and”? In the complex interaction between physical and spiritual, there’s a lot we don’t really understand.

Our exploration of general revelation helps here, but it only takes us so far. We are learning that cells respond to very subtle influences — magnetic fields long thought to be so weak as to be indistinguishable from background noise, for example, or inputs as small as a single photon. It turns out that the human hands generate magnetic fields and electromagnetic radiation that is certainly strong enough for a body to respond at the cellular level. (See Oschman’s Energy Medicine: The Scientific Basis, 2nd ed., for a treatment of the physical science. Thanks to Flexner and his blinkered minions, we are a century behind on really exploring the field, so it’s maddening in spots, but it’s also really intriguing. The Healing Touch Program also maintains a research archive at healingtouchresearch.com, and they’re pretty good about keeping it up to date.) So that’s one thing we might end up meaning by “energy work:” instinctive manipulation of very subtle physical electrical, magnetic, and photonic inputs. 

But as a Christian, I see no reason to stop there. The things which are seen are not made of things which are visible, and we’re not just talking about subatomic particles here — electrons are visible in principle; it just takes a really expensive set of glasses to see them. But behind all that, behind the physical matter and energy, is something…other. Something spiritual in nature, that manifests in physical reality, but is prior to it and cannot be reduced to it.

In the language of the Eastern Church, everything that exists is made of God’s divine energies. Not His essence — that way lies pantheism or panentheism — but His energies, which flow from His being. There was no pre-existing material; it is all made by Him, and it all exists in Him — in Him we live and move and have our being, as both the pagans and Paul affirm. All that is, is the spoken word of God. He spoke, and it is, and He upholds all things by the word of His power.

And so when there is a person on my massage table, there is dust and breath, body and spirit. Following the biblical anthropology, I can use my body to work on their body, relaxing hypertonic muscles, releasing trigger points, and so on. Could I also use my spirit to work on their spirit? It seemed a hypothesis worth exploring, and upon experimentation, I find that it works. Moreover, when I set to work with that intention, and invite God to enter into the work and accomplish His will for my client’s well-being, I find that He shows up, and very interesting things happen. With some clients, it all happens quietly (because they’re not ready to be prayed over out loud), and with others, I come all the way out of the closet. We pray together, and God moves. I’ve seen everything from physical healings to spiritual turnarounds on my table. In all modesty, I’m good at what I do, but I’ve seen God do things that go way beyond anything I could accomplish.

So this is a very long way round to answering your question. As best I can tell, my energy work is partly manipulation of subtle physical energies that we’re only beginning to study, partly my spirit working on my client’s spirit in much the same way that my body works on his body, and partly the Holy Spirit (or whatever delegated angelic powers may be at work) responding to my prayer of invitation to do what the client and I are unable to do on our own.

I need to emphasize that the above is a description of my energy work. I make no guarantees about someone else’s work. Certainly the process is open to demonic manipulation, and some energy workers directly invite it. Others address their requests to “the universe,” which is sending your request into the spirit world addressed “To Whom It May Concern” — a dangerous practice if ever there were one. Lots of entities out there that might answer that request, and not all of them friendly. Some seem to address their requests to God without quite knowing who they’re talking to — “to the unknown god,” as it were. It is my pleasure, in that instance, to make the introductions. As with Paul’s experience in Athens, I find that most people aren’t too excited to have the veil of divine anonymity ripped away. But some want to hear more, and they’re the ones I came for.

The possibility of demonic intervention makes a lot of Christians nervous, and they want to be able to set up some kind of wall to separate our work from the bad stuff. A lot of people want that separation to be a matter of technique, as if you could photograph the difference between us and them — but no. There are doctrines of demons, but we don’t differentiate our teachers from theirs by their teaching techniques; we discern the content and results of the teaching. You don’t tell the difference between Moses and Jambres by technique — they both threw a staff on the ground that became a snake, both poured out water that became blood. It’s not the technique that distinguishes us; it’s which outlet your power cord is plugged into. We are made to live in partnership with God; nothing could be more natural than a human being seeking spiritual help in an endeavor. We shouldn’t be frightened by partnership with spiritual power. That admittedly leaves us with no escape from the task of actual discernment. But in my experience, the difference between God and a demon is not particularly subtle.

In my practice, I work spirit-to-spirit under God’s authority, and by His leading. The Scriptures lead me to expect that this might be a fruitful endeavor, practiced in service to Christ and under His Lordship, and I find that it is. I have seen wounded bodies restored and broken hearts healed. Some of that work was a stunning demonstration of human possibility. Some of it was plainly beyond my ability — and yet it happened nonetheless, thanks be to God. As with physical healing, not everything I try works — so I remember what does, and what doesn’t, and I try to do more of what does next time.

I look forward to growing in craft knowledge as I go. I already have a fairly good stock of knowledge that I couldn’t back up with a verse, any more than I could put a verse behind quenching O1 tool steel at 1475 degrees. But O1 hardens best when quenched at that temperature all the same, and likewise for what I’ve learned about energy work.

Well, I had better stop. I’m sure this was far thicker of an answer than you were really asking for, but I didn’t think I could do your question justice with less. Perhaps as I grow, I’ll be able to make it simpler.