Devotional Doodling

RELIGION IN THE NEWS

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from Christianity Today, March 28, 2008, with a headline: Doodling With Devotion. The following are excerpts: Sybil McBeth, a mathematics instructors by profession, doodler and dancer by avocation, has written and doodled a daring devotional. Praying in color: drawing a new path to God. About 3 years ago, a litany of cancers struck among family, friends and colleagues.McBeth possessed what she calls, a critical prayer list. Going to the back porch she doodled a random shape and wrote the name of someone on her prayer list in it’s center, added detail and color to the drawing, each dot, each line and each stroke of color became another moment of time spent with a person in the center. Then she drew another shape and put another name in it’s middle, she embellished it with lines, dots, colors. She continued drawing until her friends and family formed a colorful community of designs. “To my surprise,” she writes, “I had not just doodled—I had prayed.” McBeth has been leading workshops about praying in color for two years. She recommends fifteen to thirty minutes, half spent in drawing and the other half in carrying the visual memories throughout the day. She trusts herself enough to experiment, mess up and try again in prayer. She trusts God enough to guide her as she falters, succeeds and grows stronger.

Tom:

Dave, you know well how we feel about prayer here at The Berean Call, we pray about everything, we have morning devotions and so on. So, you know, in one sense I’d say, Hey, whatever it takes to get you to pray, we would encourage that, but you have to draw the line with this, no pun intended. This is very similar, whether she realizes it or not, this woman, to a mandala, all right, the thing that we just talked about in our earlier segment. We have now a methodology, a technique that she is trying to develop through her imagination. The question you would ask: Did Paul ever do this? Was it good for Paul and Silas? This, I believe, again, it’s a technique that is going to create problems for whoever gets involved in it, it’s a distraction. I mean, what is prayer? Isn’t it communication one to one between a person and God?

Dave:

Well, Tom, let me explain about technique, because there are a lot of techniques and a lot of people promoting them. What’s wrong? Well what’s wrong is you don’t manipulate God with a technique. That’s what all of these things are about; the mandala; this kind of praying. Somehow or—I don’t want to offend our listeners anymore than we have done in the past, but, the Catholic church has a lot of this, dare I say hocus pocus?

Tom:

Well, that’s a variation on the uh, on the Latin. Go ahead.

Dave:

Right. So, the robes, the candles, I mean who says that lighting a candle will help the dead person? I was in Notre Dame in Paris, it shocked me, there were more candles in front of Joan of Arc’s statue than before the virgin Mary’s, that was a shocker. But how does that help you? And you go to Lourdes, this is what it’s all about; candles, and cash registers are ringing. I mean, it is a big money maker. You’ve got plastic bottles shaped like the virgin Mary with holy water. What about holy water? You know, you’ve been there. This holy water, how did it get to be holy? And is God impressed by this sort of thing? I don’t think God is impressed at all. Jesus said, Those who worship the Father must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Never do we find, as you just said, Paul didn’t do this, Jesus certainly didn’t recommend it. Never do you find anything like this in the Bible!

Tom:

Mmhmm. You know, Dave, it’s amazing how the Evangelical church—now they wouldn’t connect this with Catholicism. Or this person, she wouldn’t connect it with the mandola, as we’ve mentioned, but there really is very little difference. Even though she may have a sincere heart, a sincere mind of trying to encourage people to pray. But again, this is methodology, this is technique, it’s no different than the word-faith people coming up with a way that you have to approach God, and it’s a manipulation of God, and so on. It’s just not biblical, and I think it’s very dangerous because it now encourages people to do things that are not biblical to try and communicate with the Lord.

Dave:

Tom, let me make it a little more shocking, it’s witchcraft! It’s the idea that when the witchdoctor slits the rooster’s throat, sprinkles the blood in a certain pattern, mumbles a certain formula: boom! Spirits have to come through. They can be manipulated by techniques. God cannot be manipulated by techniques. Technique has nothing to do with truth. It has nothing to do with salvation, has nothing to do with God. Is He impressed? I don’t think He is, in fact, I know He isn’t, according to His Word.

Tom:

Well, one more verse, Dave. This is really, although she talks about the imagination, this is a fleshly work, and the scripture says, The flesh profits nothing!