I believe it was the work of Charles H. Kraft and or C. Peter Wagner that introduced me to the concept of spiritual mapping in the 1990’s. This was a methodology of spiritual warfare that sought to represent the discernment of spiritual realities of non-human evil active in the geography of a city or region. It was thought of as intelligence work, discerning and documenting the spirits at work behind the social, financial, political, and religious activities of human relationships.
As a new believer in Jesus Christ, a trained geographer, and a former Roman Catholic turned Reformed person exploring the charismatic movement the concept fascinated me. However, I never invested much time or energy in producing such maps. I did participate and even instigate a few prayer walks where we sought to be responsive to the Holy Spirit giving insight into the spatial aspects of the cultural milieu around us.
And while it intrigued me, and while I believe in an invisible spirit realm that includes various levels of non-human evil spirits, it did strike me that seeking out and geographically recording all that negativity really paid undue attention to the unseen enemy rather than the Lord of Glory, Jesus, who has defeated that enemy.
This concern is confirmed in literature. John Paul Jackson, in his Needless Casualties of War, cautions about the knowledge sought through spiritual mapping techniques precisely because it leads to an unbalanced concentration on spiritual evil rather than the presence and work of the Creator. Jackson does not concern himself with territorial spirits at any level. When he goes to a city He asks Jesus what Jesus is doing in that city and goes from there in his consultation with local Christians.
This caution and advice from Jackson that I’ve been re reading in pursuit of my political philosophy project gets me thinking again about mapping. What if spiritual mapping worked from a point of view of the hope that Jesus is working rather than the ‘threat’ posed by spiritual evil in unseen places. Instead of sniffing out evil, prayer walks could seek the Holy Spirit’s insight into what Jesus is doing so that the fellowship of believers in the local area can get in step with the season of the Lord’s work in particular geographic areas. This insight of hope focused on Jesus and responsive to His Spirit leading according the the text of canon could be recorded for community discernment in a variety of formats including notes, narratives, poems, maps, visual art and even performance art like music and dance.
I don’t have the energy to make this a ‘thing’ or to propose yet another fad to the people of God. But as an armchair geographer the thought of a Jesus centered map of hope is interesting.
In musing on this I came across an academic dissertation by a Dutch former ‘missionary’ to Mali.
Observing my wife’s journey towards a Ph.D. I doubt that I will submit myself to pursuing an advanced research degree but I remain intellectually curious about a number of things and have always had a certain professor-ish obsession with my scholarly interests, complex sentences, jargon laden vocabulary and ability to continue lecturing long after the audience has fallen asleep or cleared out of the room. If I were to do an advanced degree it would probably be in the area of missiology or Christ centred political philosophy that takes the reality of the spirit realm seriously.
Leave a Reply