Can Good Fruit Come From Bad Seed?

Just a little (very quick) research I did as part of a discussion on a Christian forum. Chiropractic seems to have become one of those widely accepted therapeutic practices that even Christians have no problem with.
But should we so easily accept its legitimacy and submit ourselves to it? I first had concerns about this in the mid-80s when I become interested in the widening influence of new age thought within the church.

In general reading about alternative therapies compatible with the “new age movement” I came across information about the origins of chiropractic.
I no longer have that 25 year old reference material, but in response to the forum discussion I took a look at Wikipedia and found the following information.

Daniel David Palmer or D.D. Palmer (March 7, 1845 – October 20, 1913) was the founder of chiropractic. Palmer was born in Pickering, near Toronto, Canada. While working as a magnetic healer in Davenport, Iowa, United States he encountered a janitor, Harvey Lillard, whose hearing was impaired. It was reported Palmer successfully restored the man's hearing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_David_Palmer

Palmer founded a school based on his work that would become the Palmer School of Chiropractic in 1897. He regarded chiropractic as partly religious in nature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_David_Palmer

D.D. Palmer was a man with subjective and personal religious beliefs. As an active spiritist, he said he "received chiropractic from the other world" from a deceased medical physician named Dr. Jim Atkinson. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_David_Palmer#Palmer.27s_fundamental_idea

D.D. Palmer founded chiropractic in the 1890s, and his son B.J. Palmer helped to expand it in the early 20th century. It has two main groups: "straights", now the minority, emphasize vitalism, innate intelligence and spinal adjustments, and consider vertebral subluxations to be the cause of all disease; "mixers", the majority, are more open to mainstream views and conventional medical techniques, such as exercise, massage, and ice therapy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic

Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: most traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in the vital energies that distinguish living from non-living matter. In the Western tradition founded by Hippocrates, these vital forces were associated with the four temperaments and humours; Eastern traditions posited similar forces such as qi and prana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism

Many involved with present day chiropractic try to distance themselves from the origins of their practice. But can anything good emerge from such a false foundation?  Can good fruit be produced by bad seed?

The divine "Mr Potato Head"?

I often wonder whether people are really interested in the truth about God. It seems we would rather create our own God with a form and nature that WE find suitable.

It makes me think about Mr Potato Head, a plastic toy with interchangeable parts that can be used to create a “person” with facial characteristics of our own choosing.

Instead of selecting from a choice of different facial features, we can choose from a selection of scripture verses to build our own preferred image of God. But just like the toys, we don’t need to stick with the basic package of original parts. We are also offered supplementary features through countless extra-biblical texts and teachings. There are accessories we can add to “improve” our chosen Divine image – until all authenticity has been either replaced or obscured.

Maybe we would benefit significantly from time spent reassessing our motives and desires. Do we genuinely want GOD’s Truth; do we want GOD as HE really is? – Or do we want to follow a "plastic" God we have created for ourselves?

It’s (Past) Time for a Charismatic Reformation, by Lee Grady.

There are some good points made in this article:

http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/32228-its-past-time-for-a-charismatic-reformation

Regarding recent events I’d like to highlight part of Grady's 14th point:

“Hold the prophets accountable. Those who refuse to take responsibility for inaccurate statements should not be given platforms.”

So many times people accept no accountability when words of "prophecy" fail. They do their best to sweep the failure under the carpet and hope it goes away without being noticed so they can move onto the next "prophetic" claim.


If it doesn't go away, all kinds of excuses will be made - or clarifications given - to explain why the word actually did come true (even if evidence shows otherwise) or why the outcome of the word was averted through intercession - and we could probably add a variety of other ways the prophet tries to cover their tracks.

How many prophecies of significant events have been made that have been proven to be false when the event did not happen? Have those "prophets" shown contrition and demonstrated repentance?

Or have they tried some way of justifying themselves and their predictions?



.