Review: Miracles for Sale

Miracles for Sale, Channel 4
Monday 25th April 2011

Derren Brown is a TV hypnotist.  He makes entertainment out of manipulating people's emotions and perceptions: but he is essentially open about this.

The premiss of this documentary is two-fold: firstly, that faith healers (every faith healer? Brown thinks so) are simply manipulative showmen who are out to make money; secondly, that Brown can train anyone to be a faith healer.  He's quite exercised about this - and particularly concerned about those who suffer depression when their healing does not appear (or doesn't last), or throw away medication and become ill.

So he recruits a scuba-diving instructor, trains him over a few months, then takes him to Texas.  There they see some faith healers at work, and learn a few tricks along the way - the best being the old favourite of leg-lengthening.   He practices preaching, teams up with a worship group, does a bit of on-street 'healing', and then runs a public event and does the whole thing for real. At the end, he does a 'reveal' in front of the whole audience - telling people that faith isn't about handing over money to rich evangelists.

Throughout, he's eager to underline that he has no quarrel here with genuine faith, and doesn't wish to undermine it.  He wants only to expose charlatans.  He and his scuba-diving protégé are also very exercised about doing right by those they work with - to the extent of cutting ties with a Christian PR company which might have got them  a much bigger audience, for fear that said company would crash when the truth was revealed.  They suffer angst from the deceit they engage in, but remind themselves "we must be hypocrites for a while so that the reality may be shown".

All in all, the presentation struck me as thoroughly responsible and worthy. There are many "faith healers" who are plainly manipulative fraudsters, and the more they are exposed, the better.

But it's rather close to home, too.  I've certainly encountered many within my branch of faith who will talk eagerly and in a convinced way about miraculous healing.  Long ago, I even encountered people who'd experienced the leg-lengthening thing, though I haven't heard of that stuff for quite a while.  But miraculous healing almost never seems to stand up to scrutiny.  You'd expect the medical profession to be sceptical, of course, but given how many people believe in healing, you'd have thought that there would be at least a few well-attested, incontrovertible cases.  But there aren't.  As far as I know, the medical literature has none whatsoever.  None at all.  Even though there are plenty of Christian doctors - even plenty of Evangelical and Charismatic ones.  None at all.  None whatsoever.  Isn't that odd?

Christian GP Peter May evidently set out some time ago some characteristics of biblical healing miracles, arguing that these form something of a "gold standard" for evaluating whether a miracle has happened.

• The conditions were obvious examples of gross physical disease
• They were at that time incurable and most remain so today
• Jesus almost never used physical means
• The cures were immediate
• Restoration was complete and therefore obvious
• There were no recorded relapses
• Miracles regularly elicited faith

Miracles today?  They remain widely discussed in Christian circles.  Should we move on?

is Love Winning?

This is the space where I might have reviewed Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins.  But it has lit up the blogosphere so successfully (who'd have thought a book on heaven and hell would be a trending topic on twitter?!) that there doesn't seem to be a need.  Countless reviews will tell you whatever you want to hear - that Bell is a heretic, a theological lightweight, a wise pastor, an opportunist self-publicist, or a fresh interpreter of sometimes-lost truth.  Instead, these are my incoherent rambling comments on the brouhaha that has followed.

If you want to be outraged, the book will oblige.  But being outraged at a refreshing look at God's grace seems inappropriate. Some purple passages have been widely quoted (and misquoted), such as:

A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and that to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.

But Rob always loves to be a little enigmatic, so people don't get to pin him down on "what he really believes": of course the result is that you can read it as "really" saying he's a heretic, or "really" saying he's presenting the historic Christian message in a a fresher way.  But that dichotomy misses the point.  I don't think he's interested in playing that game.  His style is questioning: some love it, and some find it destructive.  Many have an inherent distrust of a fresh hermeneutic approach.  I have to say that the way that some have rushed in to defend their favourite doctrines makes them sound more like the dogmas of a faith community they would want to distance themselves from.

I think this is really quite an important book.  Bell has an immense following.  People know he's not entirely "safe" but he is a great communicator, and most would have said that his heart was in the right place.  But writing as he has done here, he does move people forward towards a point of decision.  Not because he wants to create division,  I think, but because it is time to tell the Jesus story in a new way.

The theme of  the book, of course, is that Love Wins: that God's way of dealing with us is radical and full of grace.  What's very noticeable is that Love isn't the word that springs to mind when you look at the way Bell's critics would wish to deal with him.  John Piper's by-now infamous tweet is a mark of something very much awry - perhaps it was just a rash off-the-cuff remark, but a wise many said we should be slow to speak.  "Conversation ...full of grace, seasoned with salt" doesn't seem to cover it, for me.

Doubtless those who want to disagree with Bell - and with Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and all the rest - would say that what they are doing is calling out false teachers.  Does that relieve them of an obligation to grace?  If you want a hint of the stress that the last few weeks have caused the man and those close to him, listen to the first few minutes of his sermon from Mars Hill last Sunday.

Thank you for continuing to remember that the gospel is known by its fruit, and that we can get all of the words right and we can have all the best doctrines and dogmas and we can actually be a clanging cymbal, and that love is what Jesus said is the greatest commandment.

If the media storm was not foreseen - as he implies - perhaps that was naive.  But it's more generous to think of that than to suggest there was a cynical sales drive going on.

God is love.  Love is the strongest thing imaginable.  Of course love wins.