Sanity Test
June 3, 2010
A simple sanity and rationality test for you today.
Watch this video:
If you thought to yourself, “That is absolutely crazy. What is wrong with that guy?” and at various points of the video you found yourself desiring to go into a Tourette’s like swearing barrage and/or ground and pound the guy in the video until he never preaches again: Congratulations, you are sane!
If you watched the video all the way to the end you also have the patience of a saint or a slight masochistic bent. But still sane.
However, if the video seemed perfectly reasonable, and a viable form of Christianity then I have authored a book which I am offering here as a free download! Please read it and follow its directions precisely.
Via: UF
34 Comments
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scotteriology.wordpress.com 
Dear agathos, thanks for providing the above-referenced book free of charge. I will forward it to some of my friends who may benefit from its recommendations.
damn… horrific
“i wish more Christians were unspeakable” – took the words out of my mouth.
looks like they’ve got their own youtube channel…good times 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/user/fireitupministries#p/u/2/wBWw8QGlrqw
Jake votes “no” to sex noises in church.
Am I sane if I couldn’t stop laughing through the whole thing?
That guy out to do sounds for techno music or something. Good grief.
I was about to send this to Scotteriology, but apparently it was already posted.
This “preacher” is insane. I’d love for St. Paul to meet him… or St. Peter as he had less of a control of his temper.
The thing that makes this worse than the Crowder and Dunn videos is that this chap isn’t even able to convincingly fake the whole ‘drunken gloree’ schtick.
I am endlessly appalled that so many Christians, oh, I meant suckers, will fall under the sway of uneducated idiots with no accountability to higher authorities. Of course, I’m a seminary trained snob, but – come on folks! – do you believe anyone who is waving a Bible? The whole concept of Christian community includes accountability…
Did I hear right? Jesus was healing leprechauns? WTF? You know it is going to be quality stuff when you hear that… wow. Yeah, I stopped it when I started swearing cause I’m trying to not swear at my poor computer.
Jesus was healing leprechauns! This is a classic example of hermeneutical subtlety and exegetical vigor.
(I admit, I didn’t make it to the end of his exposition)
What you feel about this guy isn’t that far off what non-christians feel about christians. Come on… resurrection? virgin birth? The only difference is that standard christian beliefs are shared by so many others.
Hypocritical? Completely.
I shouldn’t feed the troll, but….
Are you saying that if a person has a belief in something that isn’t counted as accurate by you – then they are unable to be critical of any level of antics by anyone?
And since some have certain beliefs that you do not – then those people are immediately “hypocritical” and unable to judge or criticize anything they see? Interesting.
People sometimes deserve to be criticised if they are acting irrationally, like the man in this video. What you seem to be suggesting is a hierarchy of criticism, those higher up the chain criticise those, who are more irrational, below them. The hypocrisy arises because the writer, on one hand, will defend (I assume) his own irrational beliefs but on the other criticise those of others if they happen, in his judgement, to be more irrational. Or at least presented in a more irrational manner.
Therefore, by your argument, I am perfectly justified in being a troll. However, I am not a hypocrite because I do not feel I have an irrational belief system that I have to defend.
J, brace yourself, here comes a dichotomizing counter argument that will use the word “rational” a lot…
OK. Fair enough. I’m not really an aggressive atheist. Actually a follower of this blog, who enjoys watching these crazy vids. Though I do sometimes ask myself why I enjoy them……
Cause crazy be funny!
You introduced the “hierarchy of criticism” based on your belief systems, ie. those who have a belief system outside of yours are hypocrites if they criticize others who have belief systems that you do not.
I’m not sure there are any belief systems that seem “rational” to those who don’t share those beliefs, and I’m not sure that many even want to defend their beliefs.
I’ve been thinking about this video. Yeah I know. But the thing that bugs me more than the obvious insanity is that at one point, during the Toronto Blessing renewal, folks started using those sort of turrets type outbursts as a way of calling folks to pay attention. And I’m sure that it started in a way that was actually helpful. But at this point they have become the new southern accent, so to speak. Yes, a reference from my Pentecostal days when folks felt the southern accent was anointed speak – think Todd Bentley, he’s one I’ve heard justify this insane practice. Now the thing is that I’m sure there were anointed (whatever that means, lets say for argument sake that it means ‘worth listening to’) preachers. So rather than work on presentation skills or, heaven forbid, content – the southern accent became the source of anointedness in preaching. I grew to hate that about Pentecostal culture, it still gets my back up. But so does the stuff in this video. This idiot who has Jesus’ healing leprechauns is using the new anointed speak (turrets) to lend credibility to his poorly constructed sermon (which BTW I still can’t get more than 2 minutes into). I would wager though that there is a whole subculture out there that buys this new mark of anointedness, in fact the endless supply of such videos seems to prove that aptly. I’m thinking that fact is scarier than the sad demonstration that is going on in the video. He might even think that this is a genuine manifestation, no doubt brought on by how important he thinks his message is.
I guess why I’m ranting, besides the fact that it is late and I”m tired, is that I’m lamenting that there are so many Christians who would rather take such easily manufactured cues as evidence of a message’s merit than to actually reflect on the content of the message.
Hi Frank –
I presume you mean ‘Tourettes’ rather than ‘turret’? I also presume that when you say “I’m sure that it started in a way that was actually helpful” in reference to the same sorts of things at the Toronto blessing, I’m guessing you mean things like this:
Yes, I can surely see why you would call that helpful.
and this is even more helpful:
It’s Chicken Boy from The Forbidden Zone…
Tell me again how Christians were martyred from Nero on through the centuries? All so this guy could stagger around and make chicken noises about “Luke Chapter…two…one…KEEKEEREEKEE!”?
FWIW, that couple in the front at the right of the video at 0:00 – 0:02 (i.e., the first 2 seconds) – the blonde-haired lady and the overweight guy to her left (to your right) in the light blue shirt – are Carol and John Arnott, the pastors of Toronto Airport [Vineyard] Church.
Just being lazy with spelling. Actually what I was referring to is that there was a wisdom in some of the early manifestations that I found profound. But, and John White does a good job with this in When the Spirit Comes With Power, there is a shift in focus onto the manifestation that makes detracts from this wisdom. We used to tell folks that it is ok to shake, but if you are still shaking a year later and nothing else has changed (ie gotten better) in your life then maybe you need to rethink the shaking.
I struggle with this because I can’t discount all the craziness. Ecstatic expressions have a long history in Christianity and other world religions, I’m just not willing to throw it out as if the enlightenment notions of reason somehow invalidate this. That moves too quickly to an impotent and tame God. But I am also highly wary of the excesses.
BTW I am a Vineyard pastor and the Toronto Airport church was the first Vineyard I ever went to – back before the Toronto Blessing. So I have a bit of history tied up in this.
We used to tell folks that it is ok to shake, but if you are still shaking a year later and nothing else has changed (ie gotten better) in your life then maybe you need to rethink the shaking.
“Shake” as in Shaking Stacy, sidekick to Tatted Todd? There used to be this great YouTube mashup of Shakin’ Stacy as a music video to The Cars’ “Shake It Up”, but it got taken down a couple months ago…
Hi Frank –
Just replying here so my reply doesn’t become thinner and thinner:
I’d agree – to a degree – BUT i have a hard time seeing a lot of this as anything more than manufactured.
And one explanation is that half of these expressions are godly and the other half demonic, or it could simply be something universal, with very little connection with any sort of spirituality.
Definitely either explanation could be applied. Normally I would talk about ecstatic experiences from an embodied human perspective – really external sources require some degree of speculation. What I would say is that such things are certainly not without some form of inherent wisdom. However, that wisdom is devalued when ecstatic manifestations are manufactured (your term) either to deceive, to lend credibility to ones message, or to fit in with the crowd. All of these are dangers in environments where ecstatic expressions are encouraged.
This is why I’ve appreciated the Vineyard’s general practice of not encouraging nor discouraging ecstatic expressions. In fact Wimber could be downright clinical in his approach to such activities – in a way that I found quite healthy. If you are manufacturing something you will not welcome someone questioning you on that experience. “What was God doing with you while you were shaking like that?” But if it is a meaningful experience such questions allow the necessary processing to happen. The added benefit was that when Wimber (and those who took up this model) helped navigate moments when ecstatic manifestations occurred, everyone was put at ease. This is quite different from what happens in the original video – where the whole thing is meant to raise the message above questioning and processing.
Somebody tell Tokin-the-Ghost Crowder (Yoing! Yoing! Yoing!) that yet another guy’s stealing his shtick.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, you know. 🙂
I noticed they disabled the YouTube comments. I’m not surprised.
I’ve never heard of “drunken glory” until I started looking at some of the other samples on YouTube. Until then, as I was watching the video, I actually felt sorry for the guy as he was clearly suffering from Tourette syndrome.
“KOOROOPA! DING! DING! DING! DING! DING!”
I think Crazy Crowder (“YOING! YOING! YOING!”) has some serious competition.
But it was the picture behind and to the preacher’s left — the one with the megaton-range nuclear blast cloud — that really put it into Surrealism.
I tend to disagree, Crowder’s particular genius is that he makes it appear as if he is genuinely off his head, whereas a lot of the imitators – like this chap – seem rather studies
Dave Vaughan is nearly up there though.