Articles
Superstition and False Anxiety - 1
A friend called me recently worried about something. She has gone through many struggles in life including domestic abuse, miscarriages, open heart surgery, a severe car accident and a mother who was cruel, deranged and a devotee of Rosicrucianism (“Rose Cross,” a secret society cult) and Edgar Cayce (a self-styled clairvoyant and proponent of reincarnation and other psychic phenomena). Someone had suggested to my friend that she had been “cursed” by her mother; that is, placed under a satanic curse that was the underlying cause of her suffering. She asked me if I thought this was possible.
This brings up the broader question of Satan’s power in this world. Can he work miracles? Does he have the power to physically harm people? Does he still forcibly possess people as is documented in the NT? Can one person place another under satanic curse and force misery and suffering upon them? We can’t explore all these angles in detail, but we will address it in a couple of articles.
Satan is clearly portrayed in Scripture as a real being, an adversary who “walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8). Jesus Himself styles Satan as the “ruler of this world” (Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), a reference to the power and influence he wields in this realm of material creation. Paul calls him the “prince of the power of the air” (Eph 2:5) and affirms that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12). But these passages do not specifically discuss Satan’s methodology or scope of power. Other scriptural teaching leads one away from the notion of forcible or physical manipulation and more in the direction of persuasion via deception and falsehood. In other words, Satan chiefly works on the mind through means we may never fully understand. But one element of winning this battle with the adversary is knowing how he does not operate.
There is no doubt that Satan is the root cause of much human pain and suffering. Jesus speaks of “evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies” which come from the heart and defile a man (Mt 15:17-20). These are things people inflict upon each other by free will actions, and that free will is influenced to disobey God. Satan is the one who, via temptation and stirring of our passions, encourages attitudes and behaviors that destroy godly elements such as love, truth, purity and mercy (cf. Jas 1:13-15). The end result? We become complicit with Satan in harming others, not through a hex or black magic but through actively sinning against them.
As I discussed this subject with my friend, she asked, “Why, then, did God tell the Israelites not to allow sorcery and witchcraft among them?” Good question. But does such prohibition suggest that real, harmful, miraculous power was available through Satan to afflict; i.e., from a distance via a secondary medium (i.e., sticking a pin in a voodoo doll)? Or does it refer to the things that occur even today (palm readers, tarot cards, séances, astrology, etc.) that are impotent but given credence by misguided beliefs?
God had warned the Israelites to not engage in occult practices: “Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God”; “The person who turns after mediums and familiar spirits, to prostitute himself with them, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from his people”; “A man or a woman who is a medium, or who has familiar spirits, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones …” (Lv 19:31; 20:6; 20:27).
King Saul had waged war against the occult which had infiltrated Israel despite God’s warnings. The witch of Endor balked at the request of the disguised king to call up Samuel: “Look, you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the spiritists from the land. Why then do you lay a snare for my life, to cause me to die?” (1 Sam 28:9). Saul sought out this charlatan after God had stopped talking to him (note her shock when Samuel actually appears; not the reaction of one accustomed to success in conjuring up the dead!). Saul’s life is nearing its end, and in response to God’s silence he turns to the occult for comfort and assurance. This reveals one attraction to occult practices. People reject God and His will only to find themselves desperate for knowledge and guidance, especially when circumstances become dire and threatening.
Wretched King Manasseh, however, revived such activity: “He made his son pass through the fire, practiced soothsaying, used witchcraft, and consulted spiritists and mediums. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger” (2 Kgs 21:6). (Note: Modern politicians are not the first ones to revive policies that have been proven disastrous failures). King Josiah then had to clean up Manasseh’s mess: “Josiah put away those who consulted mediums and spiritists, the household gods and idols, all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might perform the words of the law …” (2 Kgs 23:24).
In a subsequent article we will deal a bit more with the supposed miraculous element of the occult. But it is clear that such beliefs and practices arise in the vacuum of true knowledge from God. A key tenet of inspired revelation from God is that God provides us with all the information we need to know to live obedient lives of humble service and reverence. Dissatisfaction with the knowledge God has shared with us leads to many evils including esoteric movements such as the occult and secret societies.
The human imagination is creative. Fiction writers and philosophical speculators can dream up all kinds of counter-explanations for what is happening in the world. And they find a ready audience in the superstitious, ungrounded and fearful. Naivete, the power of suggestion, attraction to the mysterious, a restless dissatisfaction with the mundaneness of life makes people ripe for fraud. At present, there is a huge resurgence of curiosity and speculation over film from Navy jets that show objects seemingly violating laws of physics. Could this perhaps be … the Wicked Witch of the West? Or aliens? Or Sasquatch? Or the Loch Ness Monster? Or ghosts? We must take care to ground our beliefs in objective truth lest we scare ourselves to death over things that don’t actually exist.
(to be continued)
