What is a Charismatic™?

Every so often, TV evangelists come under scrutiny and by their sullied practices pull down the Name of Christ and cast dispersion upon all who would wear the label of Christianity.  Some would be more focused and just implicate "Charismatics" alone.

But the problem is that there are so many preconceptions of what "Charismatic" is—in addition to every arm-chair theologian's definition of *their* idea of what is a "Charismatic" and what makes them Wrong™ or Right®.

The chandelier-swinging, dawg-barking fools who trump Truth with his own version of Experience have hijacked the Biblically informed discussion.  There is no easy way to debate logic vs. emotion. But we can look to extremes and heretics across many denominations (including the modern Evangelicals in their push for divorcing Jesus as Lord from Jesus as Savior), so I would postulate that extremes are not the rule.

See this Adam4d comic on that point.

That the fools and charlatans behind most of the TV-christianity are patently wrong and leading people further away from God and probably even inoculating their listeners against the true gospel is a given. But it might be useful to examine what some consider Charismatic.

At its base, healthy, Biblical Charismata must be rooted in:

1. the Holy Scriptures and
2. the work of the Holy Spirit.

All of that MUST work to bring more HOLINESS into the individual's life. If the professing Charismatic has no experiential holiness—a profound sense of turning from past sins and an overwhelming sense of *Coram Deo*, living before the Face of God and in His presence—then this has nothing to do with the Holy Spirit and thus is not Charismatic in the traditional sense. 

There may also be other signs, including Gifts of the Spirit, but if the professing Charismatic only uses the Holy Spirit to "speak in tongues™" then he/she is like a huge train that gets a fire going to increase the pressure in the engine only to go "Toot-toot!" If the train doesn't go some place, it's a waste of power. Likewise, if the Christian doesn't progress in sanctification (holiness), it's a waste of the Holy Spirit's power and probably not really the Spirit of God in the first place.