Embracing the Darkness
A Personal Testimony

I was barely aware of touch therapies before I became a chaplain. I had heard of Healing Touch and knew there was something wrong with it innately. But it was only when I became a chaplain that I began to see the emergence of a new kind of spirituality creeping into chaplaincy which was traditionally a Christian vocation.

I began working in hospice where for the first time I encountered a new "medical modality" or alternative therapy called "Reiki". Reiki, I discovered, was founded by a Japanese man who had been a former Bible College professor, forsook his Christian faith and returned to Buddhism. In that context, he received a vision that gave him the power to heal.

Hospice not only encouraged the practice of Reiki, but the supervisory staff strongly encouraged all disciplines to take Reiki training and use it in the treatment of their patients. As a chaplain, I was also encouraged to take Reiki training but decided not to participate. I knew that the practice of Reiki encouraged contact with "spirit guides", energy therapy, and a Buddhist world view which I wanted nothing to do with as a believer in Christ Jesus. As a believer in Christ, I knew that Reiki stood in opposition to my faith.

The horrible difficulty that I encountered was with was when the organization I worked for differentiated between the "pastoral care" and "spiritual care". Pastoral care they said, "included all the rite, rituals and practices of organized religion (or the church). Spiritual Care on the other hand was "tolerant" of all faith and appealed to the spirit of the individual through the means of stressing the blessing of family, the transcendence of nature, the values and particular path one took to God (all being equally valid), or in not being religious at all one could still be spiritual.

It was my duty as a chaplain to leave the premises of ante-dated pastoral care and embrace the practice of the new spirituality. In fact, the new spirituality was valued so greatly by management that I was prohibited to share my faith in Christ upon pains of being called "judgmental" and being fired from my job. I knew that by doing so, I was embracing the darkness of Eastern religion, a religion whose goal is annihilation and a religion without hope and without Christ. I found that in good conscience I could not embrace the new spirituality.

 As my workplace got deeper into the realms of the new spirituality they introduced other alternative therapies such as Therapeutic Touch and Healing Touch, both branches of Eastern Religion and a nice mix of cult and occult practices. I found that I could no longer work in such an environment. Daily, I felt "pricked in my heart" by the voice of the Holy Spirit that I needed leave this environment. Not only did my job environment require me to embrace the new spirituality but it forced me to deny my faith in Christ and embrace a spirituality that was contradictory to the integrity of my own beliefs. It also forced me to mislead and misguide those who were near death with a gospel other than the gospel of Christ. I found this intolerable and am happy to day to be able to declare the name of our Living Lord, Jesus Christ without impunity.