Being like Christ is occultic?

A short overview of themes that I plan to revisit in more detail:

When you become a born again Christian you grow to become more Christ-like, you DO NOT become like Christ or a Christ or anything Divine for that matter. However in Charismatic churches you do; you become a little god - ‘Faith’ becomes an actual force that you wield at your command as you speak things into existence. This is totally and utterly occult.

 The article that declares this is going out of its way to purge God's church from anything vaguely New Age.  The question remains whether they are also purging it of the New Covenant as well. 

To be fair, most sites that are trying to ensure that we steal none of Jesus' special glory don't state their position so poorly, but I think these words are worth looking at because they seem to express very directly the problem that many anti-heresy groups have with the Word of Faith influence on charismatic doctrine.

"New Age" faith?

Sure, you become Christ-like, but DO NOT THINK for a moment that you are anything like Christ...?  Huh?  I think this typifies the attitude of this particular anti-heresy "movement."  If God can't make me like Jesus, how can I be expected to become the least bit Christ-like?  The New Testament is filled with admonitions to be like Christ, to be like God -- how is that Christ-likeness any less miraculous or any less reliant on the power and grace of God.  In this kind of thinking, if you believe it's possible to do what Jesus said was within the power of any believer, you are stealing glory from God, and yet you are not anything like Christ when you are manifesting the fruit of the Spirit in the power of God?

Paul says that just like a physical body/organism is not just a single part/member, so is the Anointed/Christ.  That sounds suspiciously like saying that the Christ is not just Jesus Himself.  Throughout Paul's letters are references to the mystery that we being "one spirit with" Jesus and being in some sense "in him," we are part of the corporate Anointed, and collectively we are in some sense Christ.  Which is Paul's revelation beginning on the way to Damascus:

"Who are you, Lord?"
"I am Jesus, Who you are persecuting."

But Jesus wasn't around for Paul to persecute.  There was only the church...

It is a more lengthy discussion to explore why and how, as children of God, we are partakers of the Divine nature.  But let's look briefly at the second part of this anti-heresy statement:  

‘Faith’ becomes an actual force that you wield at your command as you speak things into existence. This is totally and utterly occult.

I think there is too much teaching about faith that leaves out the role of the Holy Spirit.  However, taking these statements (and the many similar statements out there) at face value, these same people would have to correct Jesus for giving unsound teaching at times.  The disciples marvel at the fig tree withering at Jesus command, and Jesus does something we should all find very odd.  He doesn't talk about how he can do these things because he is God, or even because he is the Messiah or the Son of God.  Jesus claims that when the meagerest faith is unencumbered with doubt, a believer could command the Mount of Olives to throw itself into the sea and it would obey.  If we look to the words of Jesus, He seems to be saying things that are "utterly occult."  There are teachings in the New Testament (and the Old Testament) that provide a relational context for faith--and those teachings appear as well in charismatic circles.

Many critics of the charismatic movement ridicule the distinction of revelation knowledge from mere mental knowledge, treating all scripture as immediately comprehensible, able to be taken at face value, and yet they are unable to take this scripture at face value.  Jesus doesn't talk about this sort of faith as a sign of an apostle.  This is something Jesus speaks of as being within the realm of possibility for any believer, and he doesn't qualify it in that passage at all.  He speaks of people's faith making them whole (what! more heresy!), rather than telling them that either he or the Father has made them whole, which seems like an odd choice of words, given how jealous God is of sharing His glory...  Where were these people 2000 years ago, when Jesus needed correction? 

Is there a way of understanding Jesus' words about faith that makes faith a less relational thing and a more operational thing like magic and spell-casting?  Sure.  And this is something that people in the Word of Faith movement has often failed to grasp.  But the larger truth of not being able to do anything of real eternal value, anything spiritual, apart from the power and grace of God is something that every denomination and movement has failed to completely embrace, and this is a much more insidious failure.   There have been numerous generations of Christians who are being "good" and "holy" in their own power, and they cover over this sin by seeing "real" heretical dangers everywhere but the foundation.  They strain out the gnat and swallow the camel.