When I was a boy the condition of my bedroom was usually somewhere between death and destruction. It was messy. My mom often told me to clean it up, but since those warnings were never enforced, the state of my sleeping space never changed. My dad never looked into my bedroom, so all was well on that front.

One day, a day when my dad took a rare weekday off from work, I came home from school to have my mom bemoan to me that my dad was up in my room cleaning. This was bad news. In the boredom of his atypical day off, he wandered upstairs, saw my shame, and in an act of pure fury, proceeded to decontaminate it. I ran up to my room to find my dad on all fours haphazardly tossing whatever was on my closet floor over his back toward the waiting giant sized garbage bag, already half full with my precious valuables. The vacuum cleaner was busy devouring, and whatever was too small for my dad’s fingers was sucked up into its dark belly. All my things, which I had successfully categorized as junk and treasure, were seen as rubbish to my dad and were treated that way.

I learned a valuable lesson that day: if I don’t clean my own room, someone else will, and he’ll do it more harshly than I.

I’m reminded of this dark day of my childhood as I read about all the business and controversy over John MacArthur’s “Strange Fire” conference. MacArthur has basically taken the entire Charismatic Movement and thrown it into the hellfire. Very harsh. Too harsh. I disagree with MacArthur as I do believe that certain charismatic spiritual gifts are for believers today. But there is a line. Some charismatics cross that line, some charismatics don’t know where the line is. As a result there is a lot of stupid stuff that goes on in the Charismatic Movement which never gets addressed by Bible believing charismatics. Charismatics don’t clean their own house, and because of that, someone else is doing it for them, and he is harsh.

A “smalltime”Christian like me living on the backside of the desert in Cambodia writing a blog that nobody reads isn’t going to have much of an impact. But there are respected “continuationists” known to the public eye who have the ability to expose and depose the kooky charismaniacs. They need to speak up.