Are you an enthusiastic person?
Have you got interests that take you outside of yourself?
Hobbies or passions or projects that really get you up and going?
Most of us do have one or more interests like that.
It doesn't matter whether the interest is in friends, family.
Sport, social networking.
Church in real time communities, going to the library.
Walking, tramping, or on line gaming.
If you have enthusiasm for your hobby or project, then it's all good.
But enthusiasm once had a very bad press.
Churches especially once hated church enthusiasts.
Strange but true.
In particular, the peculiar mob called the Methodists were generally hated by others.
Precisely because they were branded as enthusiasts.
Enthusiast meant something quite obnoxious.
Why was that?
You have to go back to Plato the famous Greek philosopher.
So that's about 2,400 years ago.
Plato wasn't against enthusiasm at all.
He was totally for it.
In fact, he was the first to give the idea of enthusiasm proper attention.
That word enthusiasm comes from ancient Greek.
And it can be spilt into two little words en and theos.
En means in and theos means God.
What Plato meant by enthusiasm was how we intuit.
And discover the divine within us.
He argued that there were kinds of enthusiasts.
The prophet or seer.
The mystic or saint.
The poet and the philosopher.
Well being a philosopher.
He would make that claim about philosophers knowing the God within.
Not many philosophers believe that today.
Christian mystics have said from the start of the church.
That this indwelling of the Holy Spirit is at the heart of being Christian.
But over time the emphasis moved from experience or intuition of the divine.
Within to external forms, dogmas, imposition of beliefs and norms.
Of course we all know it's true.
That sometimes people can make all manner of extravagant claims.
About knowing exactly what God is or wants.
Any one can say the Holy Spirit directed me to do this or that.
When all they are actually doing is imagining something.
That was never there in the first place.
And that's why Methodists.
Who were and are most certainly enthusiasts.
Got a lot of bad publicity when Methodism all started up in the 18th century.
John Wesley and his Methodists were charged with being enthusiasts.
And by that his critics meant fanatics.
How dare anyone be enthusiastic about anything.
Sniffed the Anglicans and Presbyterians.
We don't want any of our good Christian beliefs tainted.
By crack-brained enthusiasts is what the church authorities said.
Those Methodists preach up unaccountable sensations.
Violent emotions and even boast of immediate inspirations.
Poor John Wesley and his early Methodists.
They were being shamed from every quarter.
But did that in any way stop their enthusiasm.
No not at all.
And here's why.
He wrote a sermon The Nature of Enthusiasm.
And it is a quite brilliant piece.
Almost more like satire than sermon.
He examines the claims of his critics from their perspectives.
And finally quite neatly and with little fuss.
Says that it is the critics who really know absolutely nothing of Christianity.
Being a religion of experience.
Here's a curious fact.
Wesley does make quite a big a mistake when talking about the origin of the word.
He didn't know what Plato had said.
But that doesn't make any difference.
To his turning around popular opinion about enthusiasm.
It was originally a positive word.
Denoting a positive quality.
And when it got turned around to mean something negative.
Wesley helped swing it back again.
So today enthusiasm is seen as a force for good.
And Methodists are enthusiasts for a particular way of being the church.
Of doing church activities, particularly around being inclusive.
And maybe without realizing it have modelled themselves on John Wesley.
Today, of course, we are not really interested in the denominational label.
But far more importantly are about helping anyone discover the enthusiasm within.
The God within as part of the lifelong spiritual journey.
Join us in 6senses.nz
To learn more about how as 21st century Christians wecan learn and apply enthusiasm into better
daily living.