Thoughts about “Re-enchantment”
Much talk of “enchantment” lately. Ought we not go to the roots of enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment, lest we get lost in the woods of empty words?!
First, this “enchantment” must be distinguished from Biblical enchantments of the Old Testament, which were associated with sorcery, the casting of spells, and the forbidden occult. The “enchantment” spoken of by various spiritual writers today is generally quite other, and not this “dark” aspect.
Put simply, I would call enchantment the experience of wonder, awe, and spontaneous worship at the beauty, majesty, and glory of God’s presence – while in God’s world – whether or not we fully comprehend what we are experiencing.
Even so, there are states of consciousness – I am thinking especially of Hindu gurus – which, with the aid of spirits, construct elaborate spiritual visions that deceive multitudes. Such “divine” phenomena are nonetheless the occult, and of the “darkness”, though purporting to be of the light – they are counterfeit “enchantments”.
Dis-enchantment happened to the world – and within human hearts and awareness – in the Garden of Eden when our parents spiritually died to God and became alive to the Devil. The glory and wonder of the “enchanted” Paradise garden was simply the wonder of the paradisiacal innocent richness of God’s presence experienced, in the glory that also filled His garden. That world is gone, not to be realized again until the new heavens and new earth are brought into being and this manifold toxic world done away with.
Tolkien in his works aims to convey this sort of thing. His entire world is an enchanted one, mythic in a profound sense – based in some measure on his Christian / Roman Catholic vision, and as literature it is successful. His is an enchanted world, richly filled with good and evil, profoundly simple in its beauties and terrors.
The so-called “enchantment” of the medieval era where we were in a state of pre-rationalist openness to the spirit world was so rife with superstition and false spirituality as to be but a room in the disenchanted house of the fallen Edenic world. The demonic realm is easily capable of counterfeiting phenomena that induce “holy wonder” and “awe” in the hearts and even the so-called “right brain” apprehension of some. Counterfeits of the divine are standard fare these days, especially since the advent of “recreational sorcery”, i.e., the wide-spread use of psychedelics, including grass and hash.
The psychedelics are famous for their ability to induce states of consciousness emulating enchantedness – paradisiacal innocent richness experienced – to the point that an entire generation in the U.S. and U.K. were seduced by the seeming spiritual glory produced with these sorcerous drugs. After a while, though, the demonic source of this potent deception became apparent. The “Woodstock generation” became profoundly disenchanted when reality set in, that is, the reality of the unregenerate human spirit – our self-centeredness.
As a Reformed Christian, one who avoids some in my camp’s seeming “allergy” to direct spiritual awareness (in lieu of the more supposed learnèd “intellectual” view), and knowing my own spiritual poverty (Matt 5:3), I have found that, while seeking my Lord’s presence, abiding in His word, “the experience of wonder, awe, and spontaneous worship at the beauty, majesty, and glory of [His] presence” manifests while meditating in that living word, and there is a momentary enchantment, but it is caused by His presence illumining the heart, and is not of and in the world, i.e., the surrounding world does not become enchanted.
Ephesians 1:2 reads, “Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” Respected Biblical commentator William Hendriksen in his work on the Epistle to the Ephesians writes:
“Grace refers to God’s spontaneous, unmerited favor in action, His freely bestowed loving-kindness in operation, bestowing salvation upon guilt-laden sinner . . . . Grace is the fountain. Peace belongs to the stream of spiritual blessings which issues from this fountain.
“So grace is more than only the glory, love, majesty, and power of the Lord’s presence – it is also the activity of His working in our environments and relationships, working all things for our ultimate good. Giving each of us His daily cup of loving providence to drink.” [emphases added]
Living in this world then, aware of His provid-ence in all things – His daily cup for me, and believers generally – I am aware of His presence and activity infusing everything with “wonder and awe”. He is everywhere working, everywhere present, the world no longer denuded of wonder, but rich again with His glory, wisdom, and love.
It is a spiritual discipline of sorts, learning to discern in the everyday minutiae of events and social interactions – His sovereign providences – the invisible hand of the Almighty always at work, bringing His eternal purposes into realization, as He works His wonders, answering prayers, bringing to pass even those things we did not think to ask for, but which construct the marvelous tapestry of our lives here and eternal lives to come — ending in Tolkien’s eucatastrophe, the reality of things ultimately going right when all hope seems lost.
I spoke above how there is a “momentary enchantment” in our awareness. It is neither permanent, as the world itself cannot be “enchanted”, plagued and overrun by the demonic as it is – and is only “the experience of wonder, awe, and reflexive worship at the beauty, majesty, and glory of God’s presence”. He is that which brings to us the awe and wonder of the presence of the holy, and that is usually while in prayer / communing with Him, or hearing His word, or praise in song, or somesuch. We have a foretaste of the wonder and glory, but its fulness awaits the final redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23) the day God the Son returns to collect His precious bride, and our bodies are united to Him in that union called “the Marriage supper of the Lamb”.
Until then, there is no permanent “re-enchantment”. This world has been given to be overrun by the evil hordes – both spiritually and physically – wreaking murder and mayhem, especially upon the camp of the saints, as they are the prime target of that one called the prince of darkness. It is a refining fire purifying the saints’ faith into pure gold.
I look forward to the uninterrupted enchantment of living in God’s cleansed, renewed, and vibrant earth.
THE AGE TO COME Time now to open your mouths with a new open speech.... Where are Whitman’s wild children, where the great voices speaking out.... –from Ferlinghetti’s “Populist Manifesto” In the age to come where the world is filled not with magic but the stronger enchantment of glory that is the natural life in a supernatural world – where God actually walks with us – to use plain speech in this realm is to fill it with wonders thought cliché in the dying creation of old, of robust sight denuded, whose language is a bucket with holes no living water in it. Yet this “age to come” is present now in the songs and vision of its poets who oddly are mocked – the blind seeing only death in their words, while those who see, joy at the “new open speech” cried for come, not from children of Whitman but on tongues of the singers of Christ who show the wonders of new heavens and earth, by God’s wisdom death, pain, tears gone – no more! – His daughters and sons of pristine light, in holy mirth.