The Shaman

There are religious experts of all kinds in every generation: pastors or reverends, priests, in Jesus' day his disciples and afterwards his apostles, or any member of clergy. In the days of the hunter-gatherers it was the Shaman or "one who knows."

Shaman have different "powers" depending on which people group you are talking about. In North America they were believed to be possessed by spirits that spoke through them. Another way the spirits would communicate with shaman would be through visions or dreams. Shaman had the power to let their spirits wander and go wherever they wanted or become whoever they please.

It was believed by the Amazonians that their shamans were able to become jaguars and they would growl, pant, and strike the air with claw-like fingers. Shaman paid special attention to illness, the weather, predators, and prey and focused their powers on postponing the inevitable. Scholar Mircea Eliade wrote, "What is fundamental and universal is the shaman's struggle against what we could call 'the powers of evil.' It is consoling and comforting to know that a member of the community is able to see what is hidden and invisible to the rest and to bring back direct and reliable information from the supernatural worlds."

To become a Shaman you had to become a master of num, a spiritual healing energy. In the !Kung San to become a master of num you had to participate in all-night curing dances and enter into a "trancelike state." If they were able to cure the sick or "call down" rain they became more credible as a shaman.

They shaman used their social status to become wealthy. If they were called to cure a fellow hunter-gatherer they would do so only in exchange for an item of their choosing. The Gitskan shaman from western Canada had the dignity to return the gifts if his patient died.

As a whole, shamans were experts at trickery. They used ventriloquism to help spirits speak and performed sleight of hand when curing patients. They would watch their fellow shaman for trickery to expose a rival as a fraud or to simply learn his trick. If a shaman was found to be a fraud it didn't shake the belief of the people in the shaman group as a whole.

Why is it that we believe in trickery and deception without question but we can't see the truth that's right in front of us? Jesus didn't use magic when performing miracles. Jesus wasn't a fraud.

Jesus heals. Jesus protects. Jesus loves.

If you had a choice to put your trust in a shaman or Christ who would you choose?

I choose Christ.

Matthew 9:35 says, "Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness."