> Anyway, since Sam is obviously tired of this, does anybody *else* have an opinion?
>
> -- Dave

I've been away for a few days, but I suppose I'm willing to go out on a limb, open another can of worms, and use a few more tired cliches.

The things that I can communicate about my faith are the experiences. The problem with most of my experiences is that a good skeptic will happily explain them away as some sort of delusion or mental disorder. I can certainly understand that; it took me a long time to fully accept the things that I now believe, because I was a skeptic and a scientist, and I would not accept a supernatural explanation so long as there was a natural one available.

In case you didn't know, I attend a charismatic church. People speak in tongues, lay hands on each other, fall down slain in the spirit, and all sorts of other things that have earned us the label "crazymatics". The general tendencey of people to not want to believe in this sort of thing is only reinforced by the people who are out there who claim to be charismatic Christians but are faking it; people who physically push down others and claim that the others were overcome by the power of God, and various other bits of fakery.

I have two experiences that I can tell you about that I believe are much more verifiable than most anecdotal evidence. I'll start with the more compelling of the two, and then go to bed. If you want to hear the other, you'll have to reply and request it.

The story in question took place one Friday night while I was out on one of my church's weekly homeless outreach ministries, Heart to Heart (H2H). A group of people, usually around twenty of us, load food, drinks, and clothing onto an old school bus, pile on board, and drive down to the Calgary Drop-In Centre, a local homeless shelter. We hand everything out and spend time talking and praying with anyone present who is willing. Often, small groups of people will head out with pockets full of sandwiches to feed and talk to people in the surrounding neighbourhood.

On the Friday in question, I had gone out on one of these walkarounds with seven other people. At the end of the night, we ended up talking with one Native American man who told us his name was Elvis.

Elvis was very angry when we started talking to him. He went on and on about how we (the white men) had oppressed him, and how he couldn't ever accept a god who would give the white people power over his people. I do not have the skill to convey in words the anger that he was expressing.

The short version of the story is that after about half an hour of talking to him, walking with him, and sharing our views on the equality of all men and women, he agreed to let us pray for him. Most (maybe all) of us laid hands on him and prayed, and the reaction was simple, but something I will probably never forget. Elvis, who had clearly never been to charismatic church, and possibly not any church, reacted to our prayers in the EXACT same way that I see people react all the time at our services. He moaned in a way that was familiar to me, and his mood and words changed instantly. Skeptics may say that people in the church react to prayer and the laying of hands in that particular way because they know that it is what is expected of them, but I don't think Elvis could have possibly had any idea of what was expected of him.

After we were done praying, Elvis was very different. He smiled constantly, and talked to us like old friends, rather than bitter enemies.

I need to get to bed now, but I hope that this anecdote helps you to see why I would accept my faith as Truth. There are numerous other experiences that I have had which could be explained with "I have a mental disorder" or "My subconscious did it", but there are experiences like this one, where I can't see any other probable explanation. The sum total of these experiences is, to me, the knowledge that Sam referred to as the result of faith; I would never be in a position to have these experiences without faith, and as my faith grows, I have more and more experiences like this.

I look forward to further discussion on this subject. Please feel free to ask any skeptical questions you might have; I won't be offended, and I probably have answers for a lot of them anyway, and just don't feel that I have the time to type them all out now.

Don Monkey