Filling the Land with the Father's Glory Rather than with the Orphan Spirit!

 

Jesus said that the Holy Spirit is our Helper, but in what ways does He help us?  Looking at the context of the references in John 14-16 where Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as our Helper (John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7), we get some idea of the areas where we need help in our time of need.

1.  In a state of disconnection from our heavenly Father, the Holy Spirit helps us to cry out to "Abba!  Father!" so that we become aware of the reality that Jesus has not abandoned us as orphans.  John 14:18.

2.  The Helper enables us to experience God's peace in the midst of trials so that we do not let our heart be trouble, nor allow it to be afraid.  John 14:27.

3.  The Helper enables us to remember that we are not of the world when we are persecuted by the world as they persecuted Jesus, and hated Him without a cause.  John 15:18-25.

4.  The Helper enables and guides us into all truth when we are bombarded by voices that are speaking the lies of the enemy.  John 16:13.

5.  The Helper enables us to give birth to the things of God so that our sorrow and birth pangs are turned into joy and the fulfillment of what God has promised.  John 16:20-24.

6.  The Helper enables us to be of good cheer and to have peace in the midst of a world that has tribulation.  John 16:33.

7.  The Helper also helps us to pray when we do not know how to pray as we ought to pray in our vernacular language.  He helps us to pray with groanings too deep for words so that we give birth to what God has deposited in us.  Romans 8:26.

Various religions all over the world have "spirit helpers" that can become powerfully controlling, and while initially seen as helpers, there are times when a person that has looked to a spirit helper will need another stronger "helper" to hold that spirit down when it becomes hostile or oppressive.  And so one goes ever deeper into being controlled from without by these spirit helpers as one seeks ever more powerful spirits in order to be set free from fear and the insecure feelings that come with spiritual orphan-hood where there is no loving Father.

In the book, Inuit Shamanism and Christianity, Transitions and Transformations in the Twentieth Century, by Frederic B. Laugrand and Jarich G. Oosten, reference is made to Tungilik, an Inuit elder from Repulse Bay, Nunavut, who never doubted the power of shamanism, but he acknowledged that the power of the Holy Spirit as Helper was greater, and that the Tuurngaiit (helping spirits) of Inuit religion that were bad would actually hunt people like a carnivore.

Tuurngaiit (so-called helping spirits) could be sent to attack people.  Iqallijuq, an Inuit elder from Igloolik, described the practice.  "Sometimes shamans may have got mad with someone and hold a grudge against the individual.  Without other means of getting back at the individual, he will resort to his shamanistic helping spirit to get back at him, usually killing him.  This was known as popping the soul by hand squeezing it.  That is the way that some shamans used to kill."

Tuurngaiit (helping spirits) may attack people in other ways.  They can inspire fear, and also make people ill.  Tungilik, the Inuit elder from Repulse Bay related, "Whenever a person did something that displeased a helping spirit, the person would become sick.  There were some helping spirits that would make a person sick because they had the desire to kill."

Getting totally set free from a spirit of fear, whether it is through the church acting as a controlling religion, or through other fear-based religions, is a process that is going to take an agreement of the corporate Body of Christ with the HELP of the Holy Spirit to get totally set free from.  

Bringing this closer to home, I would now like to focus in the remainder of this article on a community that is a bit closer to home to those of us who live in the Canadian South.  I am referring to the community of Berens River, Manitoba, on the eastern shores of Lake Winnipeg.

At Berens River, and in other communities in the eastern corridor of Manitoba and over into North West Ontario, windigo was a powerfully controlling spirit that was seen as a helper, but there were times when one needed another stronger "helper" to hold that spirit down when it became hostile or oppressive.  It is clear to me that whether our background is inside or outside of the westernized, institutional church, that we all need the Help of the Holy Spirit to get set free from spirits of fear, hostility and oppression, not by the love of power, but by the power of a love that is greater than fear.

There were different types of windigos--cannibalistic beings who struck terror into the hearts of Cree and Ojibway people.  The windigo spirit is also associated with the fear of being lost in the bush.  Did the cannibalistic spirit of windigo carry over into the life of the denominational churches even after Christianity was introduced to the tribes in the eastern corridor of Manitoba?  I believe that it has, and so it is still a journey for which we, as the Body of Christ from both Native and Non-native backgrounds need the help of the Holy Spirit.  My belief is that "the Deliverer will come out of Zion" Romans 11:27), the people in whom the Spirit of God dwells, but we are going to need to get set free from that cannibalistic spirit ourselves wherever it has found a lodging place in our souls if we are truly going to see whole communities manifest a deliverance from this spirit of fear that devours other human beings with our words.  Words are important.  Spirits attach themselves to words.

I will now give something of a history of the coming of Christianity to Berens River, Manitoba, in order to thank God for the coming of the gospel to this region, but also to create an awareness of how the denominations themselves perpetrated the spirit of windigo when they fought like cats and dogs between the Methodists and the Oblate missionaries.

Jacob Berens (1832-1916) became the first Berens River Ojibwe to convert to Christianity.

His history runs deep on the eastern side of Lake Winnipeg.  He had a grandfather whose name was Yellow Legs, a widely known religious leader,  Both he and Bear, Jacob's father, conducted Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society) and shaking tent ceremonies, and were long remembered for their spiritual powers and abilities.  

In 1861, during a visit to the Methodist mission at Norway House at the north end of Lake Winnipeg, Jacob Berens not only converted to Christianity, but was baptized by missionary George McDougall.  There he also learned the Cree syllabic system that the Methodists were using to transcribe the scriptures.

Jacob was a leader in negotiating Treaty #5 with the Canadian Government which was signed at Berens River on September 20, 1875.  Subsequently, Jacob Berens became the chief at the Berens River band from 1875 until his death in 1916.  

Jacob Beren's son William Berens became chief at the Berens River First Nation from 1917 to 1947, so between Jacob and his son William, this father-son duo were chiefs at Berens River non-stop for 72 years!  One of the very best resources about this transition period at Berens River between shamanism and the beginnings of Christianity is a book written about William Berens and some of his recollections in Memories, Myths and Dreams of an Ojibwe Leader, by A. Irving Hallowell, an American anthropologist who taught for most of his life at the University of Pennsylvania.

I was made aware of this book by Nancy Whiteway when I had lunch with her and her husband along with Raymond McLean on January 10, 2010.  Nancy is a direct descendant of Chief William Berens, and is an exemplary leader in the community of Berens River as a school principal.

A few of the chapters of this book expose something of the windigo spirit that has continued to hold much of this region in captivity for so long.  I believe that windigo, is a principality, or a ruling principal spirit that has controlled many people who live in Manitoba and in North West Ontario with fear in a way that causes them to socially cannibalize others by way of reaction whenever they take offense.  One does not need to even be a believer to recognize that windigo is clearly a demonic spirit.

The deception of this demon is the false belief that the problem is out there with other people, especially with civil authorities, and with police officers, or with the judges, and so we bite and devour them with our words, and speak disrespectfully, not realizing that we cannot even see other people correctly as God sees them as long as this cannibalistic spirit is a stronghold within us that causes us to devour, to gossip, to attack, to accuse, to condemn, to put down, to demean, to curse and to demonize other human beings who are created in the image of God.

Although William Berens told A. Irving Hallowell only one story that specifically mentioned windigos, he told of his real-life experiences of hearing and seeing these beings and of encountering a human being at risk of becoming a windigo (pages 98-100).  There were different types of windigos—cannibalistic beings who struck terror into the hearts of Cree and Ojibwe people.  The windigo spirit is also associated with the fear of being lost in the bush.

A starving human could be driven to eat human flesh and would become insane.  Persons subjected to sustained cruelty reached a point when they could not tolerate any more abuse and might become windigo.  Some windigos were giants and others looked perfectly human, eating people at irregular intervals and going undetected for periods of time.  If powerful shamans became windigos, they could possess a great threat, as they possessed formidable powers to keep the people in fear, and to keep them silent (pages 232, 233). 

In wendigo legend, anyone possessed by this spirit can become a ravenous cannibal capable of killing and devouring their own family.  The best known way to become a wendigo is through cannibalism.  By eating another human being, even out of necessity for survival, a human can be overcome by these spirits and be transformed into one.  The fear of turning into this creature was so strong that it was preferable to kill one's self rather than resort to cannibalism.

In describing Chief Walter Beren’s experiences in Memories, Myths and Dreams of an Ojibwe Leader (McGill-Queen’s University Press), A. Irving Hallowell describes themes in First Nation’s history that highlighted the need for power just to survive, and so shamans became a part of that culture in the power struggle for control.   This resulted in a competition “for spiritual power, using and misusing it and competing to see who has greater power, since relative power is often difficult to determine except through competition.  Shifting balances of power are prominent in the narrative.” (p. 123).

“Powerful shamans could cause changes or turn themselves into something else to achieve good (attacking enemies, healing, finding out vital information, effecting a prophecy) or do evil.  Metamorphasis was a means to demonstrate the extent of their powers and the uses to which they were putting them.” (page 125)

At Berens River, and in the eastern corridor of Manitoba, windigo was a powerfully controlling spirit that was seen as a helper, but, as mentioned, there were times when one needed another stronger “helper” to hold that spirit down when it became hostile or oppressive.  Interestingly, Jesus called the Holy Spirit, not our Accuser or our Oppressor, but our “Helper,” or “the One called alongside to help.”  John 14:16, 26; 15:26; 16:7.

According to Hallowell, “If powerful shamans became windigos, they could pose a great threat, as they possessed formidable powers.” (page 233) The wendigo is described as a monster with some characteristics of a human or as a spirit who has possessed a human being and made them become monstrous.  Its influence is said to invoke acts of murder, insatiable greed, cannibalism and the cultural taboos against such behaviors.

In Ojibwe lore, wendigos are often described as giants that are many times larger than human beings.  Whenever a wendigo ate another person, it would grow in proportion to the meal it had just eaten, so it could never be full. Therefore, wendigos are portrayed as simultaneously gluttonous and extremely thin due to starvation.  The wendigo is seen as the embodiment of gluttony, greed, and excess, never satisfied after killing and consuming one person, they are constantly searching for new victims.

Chief William Berens had experienced frightening experiences, and there were times when he felt that he was going crazy, but he also experienced how that things would get brighter when he opened his Bible.  There were  times when he did not know what to do, but then would remember that he had a Bible in the house, and as soon as he opened it and read the word “God,” things seemed to get brighter.  (page 73)

On another occasion, according to Hallowell, Chief William Berens “met an old Indian man and he was trying to do something to me by his magic power—but I pulled through.  He asked for tobacco and a pipe in the store…Everybody was scared of this old man.”  (pages 73, 74)   

On still another occasion, when William Berens went to a camp, and “there was a man who had magic power there.  We went to his tent first.  He looked at me and said, ‘You’re alive yet—you came through a terrible night—lightning right at your tent.’  ‘My time was not come yet,’ I said.  That was the fourth time a shaman tried to do something to me and failed.’  This man killed two in a year—one in fall and one in spring.” (page 75).

Dr. Susan Elaine Gray, a research associate to the Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Peoples in an Urban and Regional Context at the University of Winnipeg,  wrote in her book, “I Will Fear No Evil”  Ojibwa-Missionary Encounters Along the Berens River, 1875-1940: 

“In her reminiscences of Berens River, Julia Asher wrote of living with her Indian agent father in the community between 1898 and 1900.  Julia remembered the Methodist church being full on Sundays and the friendly relations between her family and the Berenses.

“One evening, Jacob Berens told her a legend of the windigo, adding that most of the older Indians believed in windigos despite the church’s teaching against their existence.  

"‘Christianized as they were,’ she wrote, ‘this belief…lingered on, even in our time…We had two indications of it on our Reserve while I was there.’

“At Little Grand Rapids, the Ojibwa world view still prevailed widely.  Belief in medicine men, polygamy, and Saulteaux ceremonies abounded.  Writing about both Berens River and Little Grand Rapids in 1880, Rev. A. W. Ross lamented, ‘We…cannot speak encouragingly of these polygamous bands, and yet there is a longing to hear the Word’” (page 83).

“The fear of windigos was still tangible among Christian as well as non-Christian Ojibwa at Little Grand Rapids in the late 1920s” (page 141).

So the point needs to be strongly made that even though the coming of the missionaries suppressed the outward manifestations of the principality of windigo, this spirit continued to do its cannibalistic work among Christians and between churches as denominational churches started fighting among themselves, and instilled fear in the hearts of the people that who attended another denomination were going to hell.

Religious enmity between Protestants and Catholics did not become rampant in the Canadas until the 1840s and 1850s in denominational rivalry in Indian Residential Education.  The Methodists set up a mission at Berens River by 1873, but by 1912, the Oblates set up a mission there as well.  Award-winning scholar Susan Elaine Gray in 1999 said of the relationship between Roman Catholic Oblate and Methodist missionaries at Berens River that “They fought like just like a cat and a dog.”

I ask the question, was this the work of the Holy Spirit, or of a religious spirit?  The Holy Spirit gives Life!  The flesh counts for nothing.

The Holy Spirit is our Helper to birth the very life of Jesus that is already in our recreated spirit into the life of our soul, our personality, so that we will outwardly manifest the Life of Jesus!  Our calling is to be partakers of the divine nature (II Peter 1:4), partakers of Christ (Hebrews 3:14), not people who bite and devour other human beings.  It is the log in our own eye that prevents us from seeing Christ in others as our hope of a glorious destiny together as sons and daughters of the heavenly Father.

When I was with Raymond McLean at the Berens River First Nation from January 8 to 10, 2010, he preached on this very scripture in addressing the spirit of wendigo that was still at work in the community with brothers and sisters in Christ biting and devouring one another, blessing God on one side of the mouth, but cursing fellow human beings who are created in the image of God out of the other side of the mouth.

It has become clear that if the spirit of controlling fear was exercised by some shamans who used spiritual powers to put curses on people at times, while helping them at other times, that this same spirit of controlling fear, intimidation and social cannibalism has been practiced in the church as well, whenever church life is impersonally practiced as a religion rather than as a relationship with a good, good Father in whom we have found security as our Source of provision, protection, significance and belonging.

Contrast and compare the two statements given above:

1.       Religion is the man-made control to instill fear in the masses in order to exert better control of them.

2.       True unity and synergetic revival is marked by leaders that bless, encourage, labor and mobilize people in ministries, denominations and fellowships that they have no control over.

Why does religion keep trying to exert control over other human beings by fear?  It is because we have not fully experienced God’s security in a world that devours one another.  We have not really allowed Jesus to lead us to the Father who created all human beings, and who wants us to look to the Holy Spirit as our Helper to pray as we ought, even when we do not know how to express our hearts in a way that can be articulated in human speech, and so as infants we cry out, “Abba!  Father!  Daddy!  I need you Daddy!”  Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6.

The biggest enemy to the gospel is not atheism, but religion, because religion does not deny the existence of God, but it does misrepresent Him as One who rules by a fear that torments and accuses rather than by agape love, and this is what turns more people away from the God who was revealed in Jesus Christ, even more than atheists who simply say that God does not exist.  

Our problem is that the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has been misrepresented, distorted, caricaturized, skewed and falsified, resulting in hardness of heart setting in that becomes a veil of unbelief that prevents people from seeing the true image of God as it is revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.

I praise God that He is raising up mature believers in First Nations communities like Berens River today.  These are remote northern communities that are destined to see the Father's glory revealed.  They be believers like Nancy Whiteway who, back in 2010, showed me the very spot in her school where the letters I M manifested on one of her classroom walls where Karen Legett was the teacher.  A prophecy had been given that the Spirit of God was going to work in the school, and sure enough, the following Monday, the Presence of God showed up, and continued to be felt and sensed throughout the following week.

When Nancy Whiteway was running for chief in the Berens River First Nation back in December of 2015, she made the following statement: 

My main thoughts are about the people of Berens River.  Listening and talking with people, I hear so much frustration and see the hurt in their eyes. Oh how we need a healing in our land. 

Many look to today and tomorrow but not twenty years from now. We need to break the cycle of all forms of abuse by allowing ourselves to be healed. I want see a true healing for all of us. We need to admit that we have some form of hurt that needs healing.

If we really want to see a change for a healthier community then it's time to admit our hurts and deal with the painful issues we experienced as a child. If we really have a love for others then we need to allow God to heal us from the inside. Dealing with the inner hurt is not easy.  Believe me, I have been going through my own healing for a few years.

I honestly believe that we need to address this so we can really move onto a better tomorrow. This is about the future of our people. We can have all the money and material things in the world, but that won't heal us. 

Life is about others and to help others but we can't reach out to others until we first get healed.  As our people are healed, all the hate, jealousy, greed and all other negative things that impact the discord in our community will leave.  For the sake of our future generations, we must heal. I want a better tomorrow for those yet to be born.

I am tired of seeing our people being destroyed by the drugs, solvent and alcohol. I lived a great part of my life being dependent on drugs and alcohol not knowing why I was bound to that lifestyle. I thought it was to have fun but all along it was a way to bury my hurts.

The challenge of leadership is to be strong but not rude; be kind but not weak; be bold but not a bully; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor but without folly.

In the light of what has been shared, the book that has just been released that I have been talking about lately, could not be more timely.  I am of course referring to the book entitled, Are We All Cannibals Experiencing God’s Security in a World That Devours One Another by David Braun.

None of us have had perfect parents, and we have all been imperfect parents, and there is really only one Father who can meet all of our personal needs for provision, protection, belonging and significance.  Apart from encountering our heavenly Father, we have these unmet needs and start living with orphan shadows that leave us feeling exposed, anxious and defensive.

In this state of identity our automatic reaction is to resort to defensive posturing, avoidance of people, micromanaging others, offense-taking, and the list goes on.  I believe that it is truth that sets us free, and the truth in this book will go a long way in equipping the Body of Christ in Manitoba to come against that windigo spirit that has been at work to make us social cannibals instead of children who reflect what the Father and the true Origin of all of us is really and truly like.

I encourage you to order a copy of this book at this site.

So please allow me to finish with this closing challenge.  We need the Holy Spirit to help us to stop biting and devouring One another, and to instead edify, build up, encourage and exhort one another to walk in the Spirit, and to not fulfill the lust of the flesh.  The Holy Spirit helps us in our human weakness to cry out to "Abba!  Father!" so that His Presence on the inside of us can drive out that orphan spirit and those orphan shadows that leave us feeling exposed, anxious and defensive.

With an orphan identity, our automatic reaction is to resort to defensive posturing, avoidance of people, micromanaging others, offense-taking, and the list goes on!  When we truly know that we are a child of the heavenly Father, however, and that our security comes from Him alone and not from the people that we bite and devour and who also cannibalize us, we will reflect the Father's glory into the creation until our land is filled with that relational knowledge.  God's intent is not just to fill individuals, but to fill communities, regions, principalities and nations with the knowledge of His glory!  His intent is to use the church that He is building to fill all things!  Ephesians 1:22, 23; 4:10; 5:18.