You may have noticed, especially if you live in the same town as me, that stores and shops are popping up everywhere that profess to hold the answer to whatever struggles we are carrying. They offer crystals that are “conduits” to “spiritual connections” with “energy fields” of the human person meant to “align” what is off-kilter. They offer cards that claim to know our future, herbs to bring us enlightenment, and people who are “in touch” with the supernatural.
We all have huge questions about life, about our future, about the meaning of it all. We all struggle with stress, anxiety, difficult circumstances, and feelings of isolation. We experience suffering, trauma, and woundedness at the hands of others. Almost all of us agree, at bottom, that there has to be more to this world than what we can see and touch and hold in our hands.
The question – the hugely important question – is where ought we go looking for answers? Today, perhaps like never before, we are seeking to answer that question with something–anything– other than God. More specifically, we are seeking to answer that question with some supposed supernatural tangible experience or item that can be obtained to control reality, give us power, or get a window into the future.
According to the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, God has “set eternity into our hearts.” He has endowed us with a sense of the divine and we have been made in the very image of God. This explains our longing (indeed our obsession) for the transcendent. The desires we may have to control contingent realities, gain some supernatural power, or get a window into the future make a good amount of sense. Who doesn’t want these things, especially in times of hardship?
And yet, there is a fundamental difference between the way modern people are seeking answers to these questions and the way the Scriptures teach us to answer these questions. The two ways could not be more opposite to each other. The first way involves a suspicion of God and a subsequent grasping after control of reality and the future. At the heart of this approach is a fundamental distrust in the goodness and provision of God and his love for us. The second way involves the virtue of religion: to offer to God the homage demanded by His entirely singular excellence. We find peace not in usurping God’s authority or making room for magic and energies outside of what God has ordained. Rather we give all power, dominion, and authority (over our all reality) to the God who loves us and has demonstrated the perfection of his love for us in Christ. This involves a deep trust in God (even through life’s sufferings) and a humble surrender to God’s infinite majesty and goodness.
Feeling attracted to crystals, mediums, ouija boards, tarot cards, etc, and using them, or wanting to use them, does not make a person “bad” or somehow less-than. It’s natural and normal to hunger for the supernatural, but the solution of the occult and other new age practices intended to control reality by a kind of magic is bad for us because it opens up our souls to a darkness that actually wants to harm us.
There is no denying that there are powers out there that can control and manipulate reality and tap into supernatural forces. The problem is not that these powers are impotent (though they are nothing compared to the power of the creator), but that their powers are malevolent. That they promise us some good only to take away from us a more important good. They promise us knowledge of the future and steal our peace in the present. They promise us power and protection and they leave us dependent and enslaved to them for that power and protection. They promise us fortune and leave us spiritually broke.
Jesus on the other hand promises us trials and challenges in this life, but gives us His peace on the journey. Jesus readily acknowledges the agony of the cross, but promises us resurrection. Jesus invites us to give up our riches for others to find riches forevermore in being walking with the humble and homeless Christ.
C.S. Lewis said it best. “God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”
We were made for eternal glory. We were made by Infinite love, for Infinite love. We were created to endlessly receive the unending font of delight and joy that is the love of God, to behold His face, and to live in total freedom now and in eternity. This is why I exist; this is why you exist.
The occult, in all its forms, cannot meet the longing our hearts have for God because the occult is not of God. Rather it seeks to “play” God or to become a kind of god that can be manipulated.
God made rocks, and paper, and people, but He did not infuse His life and power into crystals, tarot cards, or “psychics.” There is a darkness at play here that has set itself up as a type of power and authority apart from the power and authority of God. The goal of this darkness, of the devil and his demons, is to destroy you.
How? By enticing us to seek power, knowledge, and authority apart from God that will ultimately lead us into terrifying emptiness and darkness.
The means? The occult. Crystals, horoscopes, ouija boards, tarot cards, wicca, mediums, psychics, etc, are prime weapons in satan’s arsenal meant to attract us to him and ultimately entrap us into bowing down to him instead of to God. (Granted, there are plenty of other ways that satan seeks to capture us that are not relevant here, but the common thread is that satan cannot create, he can only twist or pervert the good – be it rocks or herbs, food or sex.)
Why? Because satan hates us, and lending him a bit of our trust, our hope, and our desire will bring us ever closer to him – and eventually to our own destruction.
We Christians generally make one of two mistakes when it comes to the occult. We say, “it’s all just pretend, it isn’t really real, so what harm could it do to go to a party with a psychic, or buy some crystals for “good vibes”?” Or, alternatively, we say, “I’m a Christian, I believe in the supernatural, so what is wrong with this type of supernatural?” Regarding the first scenario, if the offerings of the occult aren’t real, why waste our time and money or encourage the confusion of others? In the second scenario, to dabble in the occult is to potentially submit ourselves to the authority of a demon who is using a person, or a rock, or some cards to convince us that they are real (they are) and to trust in their power – the consequences of which can lead to possession, intrusive thoughts, spiraling into depression, panic, and anxiety, and becoming overwhelmed by darkness. Opening the door – even a millimeter – to a power apart from the power of God is devastating to our souls. In either scenario we are putting our souls at great risk, while seeking answers to the right questions in all the wrong places.
Luckily, we can simply have nothing to do with it. The marvelous and beautiful truth is if we have Jesus, we have everything. Any sorrow can be healed in Him, any hunger can be fed in Him, any fear can be surrendered and conquered in Him. We simply have no need for anything else. Dabbling in the occult is like swinging by McDonald’s on our way to a banquet in a king’s palace; or sitting in piles of dirt when we could be sitting at the beach; or slurping water from a hot, scummy puddle when we could be plunging into a deep, glorious, rushing stream of crystal clear water. The offerings of the occult is the former. Life in Christ is the latter, and it is freely offered to every single one of us right now.
The message of Jesus to any who have dabbled in the occult and to any of us sinners (and every human person falls into one or both categories) is simple: He loves us. It is never too late to turn from the dark and walk into the Light. Jesus is waiting to give us all that we are looking for. Throw away the crystals, burn the tarot cards, refuse to return to a medium or psychic again, repent, talk to a priest or a pastor, and never look back. All life and freedom and peace await.
May we always seek the true God who died to save us – not the demons who live to destroy us.
Further resources
- Catechism on divination and superstition https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/514/
- Young Occultist comes to Christ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6w9NRQDJQ&pp=ygUkbWF0dCBmcmFkZCB2ZXNwZXIgc3RhbXBlciBjb252ZXJzaW9u
- The Temptation of Pagan Practices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j13sMNm0nN0
- What’s the difference between a prophet and a psychic? https://www.womenofgrace.com/blog/69321
All the Gifts 