Episode Details

Want to be perfectly safe? Want to guarantee your own life, foretell the future, and control your world? Want to … become a god? Then just follow this four-step method:

1. Believe a lie.
2. Practice some occult method that the real God forbids.
3. ????
4. Profit.

Of course, this kind of idolatrous witchcraft doesn’t work in reality. It also isn’t usually the same as reading a fantasy novel with “magic” people, practices, or things in it. But what if Christians can’t tell them apart? Or feel genuinely tempted by the association between occult magic God forbids, and fictional magic that you might enjoy?

Concession stand

• Repeated: “fictional magic” definition versus “occult magic” definition.
• In this series, we often cite examples of “white magic” from Christian circles.
• This isn’t because we Blame the Church first. It’s just based on familiarity.
• We don’t believe the Holy Spirit is useless. Most in Christ’s Church know better.
• More often, to be sure, it’s non-Christians who practice idolatrous “magic.”

1. Fictional magic may or may not provoke these temptations in readers.

• Again, it’s helpful to note what God doesn’t warn against in Deut. 18.
• Do imaginations or folklore ideas, such as flying brooms or magical “superpowers,” fit inside the Biblical category of actual witchcraft?
• Or do they come from popular culture, historic folklore, or story traditions?
• Reading and imagining these does not automatically count as doing divination or practicing idolatry.
• Things, in the Bible and in reality, do not always lead to automatic sin
• For some people, certain things do not automatically tempt us to sin.

2. Yes, many Christians would disagree on this. How do we respond to them?

• Some fantasy fans, and readers, seem truly tempted by stuff that doesn’t tempt us.
• Here we might run into some differences between generations, regions, and experiences.

Romans 14:1–6:

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions. One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand.

One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God, while the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

(Romans 14:1–6, ESV)

• These texts are about the “gray areas,” stuff that tempts some but not others.
• People tempted by a thing are “weaker,” and those who aren’t are “stronger.”
• Paul talks about “opinions” in Romans, and “association with idols” in 1 Corinthians 8.
• He doesn’t speak of stronger folks having convictions, versus compromisers.

1 Corinthians 8:

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet