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181: Spiritual Paths in Contrast Christianity and Modern-Day Witchcraft
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In this special Halloween episode, Pastor Maxx Fisher joins Jill Devine to discuss modern day witchcraft and how prevalent it is in our everyday lives.
Highlights from the episode include:
- Neopaganism
- Witches
- Wicca
- The term monad
- The use of Magic
- Christian Discipleship
If you have questions or would like to chat through some of the items discussed, please reach out to Maxx via email: mfisher@mlslions.org
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Transcript
Introduction to Halloween Edition
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill dev Divine Media production.
00:00:20
Speaker
We have a special Halloween edition of Normal Goes a Long Way. I'm your host, Jill Devine, and joining me, Pastor Max Fisher. Let me first set this up that you are connected to Messiah in the way of father-in-law.
00:00:35
Speaker
As many listeners of this podcast know, we have Pastor Chuck Schley, who is a pastor at Messiah St. Charles, where I work, where I attend, where you now work and attend.
00:00:47
Speaker
um And that's your father-in-law. You married his daughter, Janie.
Max's Journey to Pastorship and Family Life
00:00:51
Speaker
Can you tell us about that? hey know It was a good process. it's ah it's ah It's a holy family. And no, yeah, Chuck's been, ah he's an interesting character.
00:01:03
Speaker
And he's been very influential on on my ministry. And me and Janie enjoy being back in Missouri to hang out with them. So, yeah. Yeah, did you... become a pastor after you met Janie or before you met Janie?
00:01:18
Speaker
I was becoming a pastor. So and Janie met at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. And she had just started her deaconess program and I was staying extra for some extra stuff because school versus work. I had to make some tough decisions. So um no, we met at school and the rest is history. yeah And now you guys have a baby boy, baby James. James, four months old, going on five.
00:01:44
Speaker
It's so exciting.
Role as School Chaplain
00:01:46
Speaker
It's so cool to see the whole story unfolds and to see that you are now here on our school side and also the church side, but your official role is you're the school chaplain. Can you explain what that means and what that entails? Yeah. Absolutely. Well, first of all, too, Messiah is just awesome.
00:02:07
Speaker
And having worked with Messiah and worked with people who were from Messiah on on various ministry projects that are even outside of Messiah's umbrella just for the sake of the kingdom is always just a lot of fun and and a lot of good stuff. So I've been recently hired on as the school chaplain. And essentially, that's pastor guy for the school, um praying for kids, hanging out with the kids, encouraging the students.
00:02:32
Speaker
being there to support them spiritually for the things that they might have going on, answering questions they might have, being a resource for the teachers. So a lot of ministry of presence, and hopefully we'll have more opportunities to find ways to serve our community together and learn more about Jesus together.
00:02:47
Speaker
As a parent to two girls who go to school here, it's nice to have that option or availability. So I'm really excited about that as well. Okay.
00:02:58
Speaker
The thing that we have here at Messiah, we call them community groups. And these are groups where people get together some... maybe consider them Bible studies, some call them small groups, some call life groups, but specifically at Messiah, we call community groups.
00:03:14
Speaker
And what our goal for these groups, for them to connect relationally and grow spiritually. And we have this one group that's for guys only, and it's called Theological Pub.
00:03:27
Speaker
And I often get a little jealous on the speakers and that I am not able to go. And then i found out about you and i was told that i had to have you on the podcast, especially for Halloween, especially because as a mother to two young girls,
00:03:49
Speaker
This is going to be something where I was told I will have a million questions. I teed it up for you, Max.
Introduction to Modern Witchcraft
00:03:57
Speaker
Would you like to tell us what we're going to talk about? Sure. Yeah. and and And this could go a number of directions and that's okay because it's a really broad topic, broad subject. But essentially what I talked about at the Theological Pub,
00:04:12
Speaker
was modern day witchcraft and what undergirds what kind of belief systems worldviews and practices kind of make up what it means to be a modern day witch uh if there are any modern day witches listening i am not an expert and i am going to be covering in broad strokes so i don't mean to ah say something that may not apply to everybody or everything, but in the general, some concepts about modern day witchcraft. and Okay.
00:04:43
Speaker
Okay. So why this topic? Yeah. So I'm part of why I stayed to ah that extra year to meet Janie actually at the seminary. I was looking for ah direction for my my master's work.
00:04:58
Speaker
And a potential thesis. And I learned you could take a test and I didn't do the thesis. I could just test out. So that's what I did. But I did learn a lot along the way. And along the way, I learned a lot about a subject called neo-paganism.
00:05:10
Speaker
which is a fancy term that means new paganism, but we have to make it sound cool, which essentially just ah the concept of new non-Christian religious movements, especially ones that seek to reappropriate old pagan sort of religions from from ancient times and from yesteryear.
Neo-Pagan Practices and Cultural Rise
00:05:36
Speaker
What would... you classify besides witchcraft would be another pagan. yeah i Yeah. I wouldn't even know where I'm sure once you start talking, I'm like, Oh yeah, I've heard of that. Sure. Um, you know, it can be as, as deep and dark as, as some stuff in the occult. But ah I think for us, especially in terms of the conversation about witchcraft, it's, uh, modern practice and common practice are things like crystal use,
00:06:05
Speaker
Things like burning sage and other sorts of things and doing cleansing rituals, chakras and energy, ah new age sort of things, horoscopes, that kind of stuff.
00:06:16
Speaker
A few of those things are present in my life. Okay. what does that mean? Well, we'd have to talk about it. oh so am I a bad Christian that I have some crystals in my house?
00:06:28
Speaker
Uh, no. I don't know if I believe in bad Christians, but we're all on a discipleship walk. And I think why I was interested in this conversation was because the influx of of neopagan or new age or even specifically witchcraft practices and concepts and rituals and symbols is becoming commonplace in our culture and our society to the point where it's hard to differentiate.
00:06:55
Speaker
ah what we are talking about and what we're doing and how we're using them and what belief systems we're promulgating when we do those things. I'm specifically thinking about the crystals.
00:07:06
Speaker
Not only have I had somebody give me a crystal because they said that this particular crystal is supposed to help if you've lost something,
00:07:17
Speaker
This crystal is is designed to whatever energy to find that. And then I've read about crystals that will help you sleep. I will say my oldest daughter is fascinated with crystals.
00:07:31
Speaker
She bought a crystal book at the book fair and is... really interested in that. So now I'm, I'm confused. Well, and and and to be clear, I'm not an expert on crystal use either. Like I said, a lot of my work is in the broad strokes and more ah specifically the undergirding philosophies that lead to some of the practices or that undergird some of the practices. So, you know, there are going to be instances where I'm sure there are some people who are participating in certain practices that don't necessarily share the undergirding philosophies, but in a world where it seems in ah in a culture where it seems things are getting blended together so much, it's hard to differentiate and discern, uh, what's beneficial to our actual discipleship and our, faith and our deepening of faith.
Reappropriation and Historical Context of Witchcraft
00:08:26
Speaker
And that's where i really began the journey on this topic. I was at a a store called Anthropologie. Yeah, very familiar. Yeah, super familiar. that's My wife shops there, and so I was in there. And, of course, they don't have anything for dudes, so I'm looking around and like doing what any normal guy would do. I'm starting to theologically assess the stuff they have. What normal? Yeah, like I'm a normal thing to do. um And so I get to like the the knickknack section. Yeah, love those. And they got like knickknacks and books and they got all sorts of interesting stuff there. And I noticed there was something on witchcraft, but it wasn't like a, you know, history of witchcraft or, ah you know, kids fantasy book about witchcraft. It was a honest to goodness spell book.
00:09:15
Speaker
And I was like, whoa, that's like, well, I'm in a mall. I'm in a mainstream store. Like the whole shelf was filled with these sorts of things. These, these new age ritualistic items, spell books, how to be a witch, like that kind of stuff. And I'm like, well, that's, that's interesting that that's just here on the shelf. But then after I saw that I was at some, some bookstores, even here in St. Charles, you can probably see it at target. You can see it online.
00:09:42
Speaker
Uh, The proliferation of ah very specific, real witchcraft spellcasting, either books or how-tos or kits, things of that nature.
00:09:57
Speaker
And I started looking around. I'm like, you know, the the image and the character of the witch, it's really being prominently used more and more and more in our society in a way where I was like, hey, this is something.
00:10:08
Speaker
Like, this is ah not like kids talking about that old lady who lives down the street might be dabbling in witchcraft or don't go in the woods because you'll it's it's like, hey, we got young people practicing witchcraft. We have people who are able to buy it at the store they buy their favorite T-shirts from.
00:10:25
Speaker
ah it's It's at Target. It's at Walmart. It's mainstream. It's normal. When you talk about witchcraft, is this something where we have to go back in time and talk about what that was in the ancient days? Like what exactly a witch was designed for and what she believed? I mean, is that a thing?
00:10:47
Speaker
Well, yes and no. When I say a reappropriation, that's what neo-paganism and witchcraft practitioners are are doing. The history of witches is really long and personally, I think, complicated. i don't, again, I'm not the expert on the history of witchcraft, ah but it goes back to the term itself gets its origins in like 8th or ninth century history.
00:11:11
Speaker
what What you get with the witch is less so about what ancient pagan magic users, even the term magic didn't come around for ah quite a long time. I think it was a medieval term.
00:11:24
Speaker
You're not going to get the same sort of paganism where there's a local paganism where you believe like, hey, this This mountain is the mountain where our spirit people live, or this tree is is you know ah as a personal divine being in our local wooded area that our village lives in.
Empowerment in Modern Witchcraft
00:11:47
Speaker
And you're not going to get the sort of paganism like you think in terms of like Greek mythology or ah like Egyptian mythology. So it's it's not a one for one. We're going to relive those things, even if we could. It's it's so far, so far past. And there's so many different ways of looking at it.
00:12:05
Speaker
But you're seeing people take elements of it and reappropriating them for their own modern day practices. So it's like any kind of practice of of some kind of spiritual worldview.
00:12:18
Speaker
that is just being reappropriated for monotone. So i don't I don't know what a witch would have believed, quote unquote, back in those times. I know what myth and legend and folklore and story has told us what witches think.
00:12:31
Speaker
And it's been somewhat dominated by Christian narratives. Like you get like the brides of Satan and the warty, mean, green people who are are doing sorts of things.
00:12:43
Speaker
That becomes part and parcel of why it's so used. Because it's an image of women that is oftentimes derogatory and used against women and and historically has been used to oppress women. Let's just be real. um And so in modern times, what we're seeing is a reappropriation of that that character, that image of the witch, to be something that is used over and against what has been perceived as forms of oppression, like ah things like Christian institutions, burning witches, and ah patriarchy kind of conversations. Whether you believe in any of that kind of stuff or not is irrelevant. It's just why people are using this image.
00:13:24
Speaker
Because the witch now can be used as a sign of women empowerment, female empowerment, um being able to have something that's deep and rooted and feminine.
00:13:36
Speaker
that is puts the the practitioner in control of their surroundings, of their narrative, of of their life. And that's why I think it's prominent, especially amongst women, but it's not necessarily the same as what it's been accused of being in the past or or any kind of actual pagan practice in the past.
00:13:55
Speaker
I got a stat. It was from AI, so don't double-check it too harshly, but I do think it tracks that it's, you know, in the 90s, we had documented like maybe 9,000 witchcraft practitioners, and now we're up to almost two million in the United States alone. And that's people who would probably say, I'm explicitly practicing witchcraft, right? So the amount of people who are doing ah rituals or things that would fall under that umbrella is probably even more. it's it's It's mainstream. It's normalized. At one point, Wicca, which is a a formal and specific type of witchcraft practice, was one of the fastest growing religions, if not the fastest in the United States.
00:14:33
Speaker
what did Wicca want to do or what was its goal? What's its goal? That's, that's a good question. i don't know if I'm qualified to answer that as well as someone else could, but, uh, essentially it's for, I think it's primarily focused on nature.
00:14:49
Speaker
It's a nature based witchcraft religion and it's essentially reappropriating what people believe to be ancient sorts of rituals to empower individuals to be able to, uh,
00:15:02
Speaker
fulfill find self-fulfillment, to exercise control over the material world around them, which is usually what magic is seeking to do. ah Its goal is to find unity and oneness with but the divine, which is usually considered to be nature and the self. And and and we can talk a little bit about more what that religious worldview looks like. yeah Yeah, it's called a monism.
00:15:27
Speaker
Essentially, there's a ah monad, which means reality is one. What does that mean? it it can vary. ah But there's only one thing, and we're all a part of it, but we are that one thing.
00:15:41
Speaker
So some could say everything is just material, we're all a part of the material oneness. Or there's one undergirding way of reality playing out, and we're all a part of that. Or there's one divine, and the divine can be spiritual and material, but it's one. It's going to be one thing.
00:15:58
Speaker
And so nature is God. You're God. I'm God. That's God. This is God is one version of a monad. And so some would, you know, that's that's usually commonplace with witchcraft or at least witchcraft views.
00:16:12
Speaker
But is the word God actually used? Depends on the witch. So that's the other hard thing with witchcraft. Why I said that little thing at the beginning was because there's so many different religious paths.
00:16:24
Speaker
When you have ah which witchcraft practitioners or or witches, they're going to do they're gonna have different worldviews. To the point where, and this is something that people don't realize, is a lot of times in our modern view of witchcraft, it's not so much that they even believe that there's a spiritual
Self-Empowerment vs. Christian Views
00:16:40
Speaker
realm. There's a lot of atheistic witchcraft.
00:16:42
Speaker
Because at the at the end, at the at the foundations of what witchcraft is doing, what magic use is doing, is the individual seeking to ritualistically affect the world around them.
00:16:56
Speaker
They're trying to to act ascertain control over the world around them or affect the world around them. And it could be for good or for bad, depending on what their view of morality is. But it starts actually first with with the self, to change yourself. It's the power to change yourself.
00:17:12
Speaker
um So a lot of my research and into this field talked about how witchcraft and spell work was inherently a psychotherapy.
00:17:25
Speaker
It's a self-help in a lot of ways. And that's where that gets associated with like female empowerment and seeking to to find power and meaning and enchantment in a world that otherwise is meaningless and otherwise doesn't offer a lot of control or power to individuals, especially you can, and that's where the the feminist icon piece comes into play, especially for a disenfranchised young lady.
00:17:53
Speaker
As a female, what would you say female empowerment should look like from your perspective? That's a tough question because I'm not female. I know. So I don't want to be, but theologically, there's some ways to look at I would like to hear that.
00:18:10
Speaker
Yeah. So actually, I'll start with this. i want to touch on a little of it and I think it's part of answering the question. Another element of the witch story, witch icon or image in in witchcraft use being proliferated in our culture ah has to do in some part with the the advent of of teen witch lit.
00:18:30
Speaker
um And I'm not saying burn your Harry Potters. I'm not saying that at all, actually. And I don't i don't know how much Harry Potter even fits into the category that we're talking about. but And I'm also not saying, like, if you had a story about a girl witch who's doing something, that it's inherently bad for your child. But I am saying consider what narrative it's trying to to tell your child.
00:18:52
Speaker
That you have... A spark of enchantment within you and the goal of your life or the goal of your journey and your adventure might include saving the day or helping somebody out, but ultimately boils down to.
00:19:11
Speaker
Will you find yourself? Will you find self-fulfillment through your acknowledgement of ah who you are and who you can be and affect change in the world around you? Not all of those things are bad things, but you can see how that's not exactly the biblical narrative.
00:19:26
Speaker
Our goal as Christians is not to find our inner self that's been otherwise hidden or is otherwise mysterious. and rise up to a godlike level to be able to affect material change through our own wills.
00:19:43
Speaker
We're supposed to align our wills. We even pray it in the Lord's Prayer, let your will be done. We're supposed to align our wills with the Creator God. And as creatures, we are fulfilled.
00:19:55
Speaker
ah We are made whole. Our existence is dependent on his grace relationship to us. He chooses us. He loves us. And so the the narrative story, there's a great quote. I have it right here, actually. I really want to share it. I love this quote. It's like my favorite quote please all time.
00:20:09
Speaker
A society of unbelief that can mean a number of things, but mainly unbelief in God, the Christian, god at least a Christian view of God. And Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and self-expression.
00:20:30
Speaker
and what he's And that's Stanley Hauerwas from a book called Resident Aliens, a really, really cool book, challenging book. But his point is that we in our society have made it so much about our ability to to find ourselves, to fulfill ourselves, to experience life to the fullest in terms of of of experiencing pleasure or or creating or crafting our own meaning or our own purpose or finding our place to fit or to use like a Lutheran concept to to justify ourselves. Are we right with our communities and with our families and with our friends and with the world around us?
00:21:06
Speaker
That it's becoming kind of boring. Every story is about that. Every story is about ah you actually have some kind of a divine spark in you And really the whole of your life is just realizing yourself.
Theological Perspective on Humanity
00:21:21
Speaker
Whereas we were created, ah from a creator God who is outside of creation, who comes into creation. He makes us male and female. He makes, when you hear the church talk about mankind, we don't, do that you guys at Messiah are a lot better with that language and making sure it reflects, you know, our contemporary experience. But the ancients didn't mean just dudes.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah. They meant like man, humanity, human beings, are man and woman. You can't have a, you can't have humanity without man and woman. Right. That Adam was this, this being that God is like, I'm not done yet because you're not in relationship yet. So you can't be a full human being yet.
00:22:01
Speaker
So he creates Eve from not just his rib, but from his side, like riven from his side. There are now man and woman who make this one human creature and both are Good, both are good for each other.
00:22:17
Speaker
Both are, ah when especially when married, are a witness and an example of how much God loves his people in Jesus Christ and and all of what love is supposed to look like.
00:22:28
Speaker
And so what I would say to, you know, ah a better narrative for a young woman is, first you can look at the Genesis account and say, nature and our relationship with it and our relationship with each other um You are a part of the fullness of humanity and how God created you in terms of your embodied reality. You are an embodied creature is is not just vastly important. It's half the thing.
00:22:57
Speaker
And it has an extremely important place in the reality that God has created, um the very good creation that he's made. But then, you know, the world's broken. Things don't work that way. um Adam and Eve sinned and they fall into sin. And that has even says in Genesis three that it's going to have complications to their relationship. So the human relationship within itself is is torn apart. And that's why we struggle with each other.
00:23:23
Speaker
Husbands struggle with wives, wives struggle with husbands, men with women, women with men. um That's why you get things like oppression and and what people would call the the patriarchy and the oppression of the patriarchy. And and i'm I'm not saying that I think that's the right way to talk about it, but it's there's reality to it.
00:23:40
Speaker
Where do you get that from a broken creation in a broken world? Well, then you get Jesus, who while is is a man, clearly, he's God's son, incarnate, male, human flesh.
00:23:52
Speaker
In him, we get a revelation of the fullness of not just men, men but of humanity. And he says, love as I have loved, which is in this sacrificial way. So we see the bride and the bridegroom, Jesus, the bridegroom.
00:24:08
Speaker
the bride being the church, and a different way of us as humanity to come together and in which we find our fulfillment not in the story of ourselves, but how our embodied experiences can witness and be and image the will that is in Jesus Christ, which is the will of the Father.
00:24:28
Speaker
Long story short, not to nerd out, i know this supposed to be about normal goes a long way podcast, and I'm being weird and theological. You're not being weird. I just think that there is this person of Jesus who humbles himself to the point of a cross, who does not count his actual divine power something to be grasped in his lifetime in his earthly ministry.
00:24:51
Speaker
who sought the marginalized and the broken and the poor, whose first followers were um some of the best ones, if not the best ones who got it the quickest were women. um he's He's breaking rules of of our human thought process in a different sort of way.
00:25:06
Speaker
ah And I think his narrative of self-denial and his narrative of aligning yourself with his image and his father's will, ah his story is better.
00:25:19
Speaker
And the story of human beings trying to usurp the world around them through their own actions and their own work and their own ritualistic behavior.
00:25:29
Speaker
Well, that comes from Genesis and it stunk. And it was what the Pharisees were up to and it stunk. And it's what Martin Luther was dealing with in the medieval church and it stunk. And it wasn't witchcraft in those times necessarily, but you can see how the human desire to be like God,
00:25:45
Speaker
And to have control and empowerment for the sake of their own self-trajectory, it's just not as interesting as someone who denies themselves for their brothers and their sisters, who follows the living God and who receives what is given to them as gift and as a grace and celebrates it and gives thanks.
00:26:04
Speaker
So let me see if this is kind of where I'm tracking with this. You mentioned the spark. And I kind of interpreted it as, you know, if you're living your life, like you said, and with the witchcraft, so to speak, and then all of a sudden you get the the spark, like you find your purpose or whatever, that none of that other stuff mattered. You realize as a human being, like, oh, this is my thing or whatever, and then you go do whatever.
00:26:38
Speaker
And so I'm thinking in my mind, like, – God created us for a purpose. All of the things before this so-called spark led to that.
00:26:50
Speaker
And let's let's give that glory to God. Is that the missing piece? Yeah, we want to use quote-unquote magic to get ahead, to get to the next best best thing, or to heal things, or to, you yeah. even know things Yeah, i think that's a good point, yeah.
00:27:11
Speaker
But that's not the way it should be. It's kind of, this is a far stretch, but it kind of reminds me of like cheating on a test.
00:27:22
Speaker
You're going to cheat on the test so that you can get an a but really there's a lot of other stuff mixed in there that have so many implications that you may not know. Like that is trying to almost, I guess, alter it. i mean, you are altering it.
00:27:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and and you can see where they could do that when there's not a other, and by other I mean outside of human create outside of creation, outside of the material.
00:27:52
Speaker
There's not an other God who created all things according to his will. um And God is you, and God is me, and God is the tree, and God is everything else. And the universe becomes this this monastic, to reuse that term, that this one entity, this one divine being, then that's all you got.
00:28:16
Speaker
So for them, it's it's not cheating on the test. It is the test.
Approaches to Change and Justice
00:28:20
Speaker
It is your will is just as valuable because you got your God or you at least should exercise or act like one and impose your will on the world around you, especially if it's for whatever they would deem as the good.
00:28:36
Speaker
As opposed to the Christian worldview, which is, well, how would we, when we see something, I'll give an example of what we would do. um witch sees something wrong in the world, in their community.
00:28:47
Speaker
and ah Or they see they want to seek justice over something that's gone wrong. where where their Where their morality comes from is a whole other conversation. But they would... I don't know, get the coven together and they would do some spells or a ritual or they would make a potion or they would they would craft or they would set up a vision board or they would do. there's There's all these other these things that they could do to, to quote unquote, manifest a reaction of the universe.
00:29:15
Speaker
A Christian would ah pray God of heaven. creator of the earth, in the name of Jesus, we know you to be a father and we to be your created children who you've adopted as as sons and daughters in Christ.
00:29:28
Speaker
We come to you knowing that you are the one who is in control of all things and it's that your will would be done. And it may be as a result of our faith response, because that's what it is. It's a faith relationship.
00:29:43
Speaker
We would maybe go do something about it. But there is no concept that we're going to be able to go behind the scenes into the into the realms that we weren't given to affect that sort of change. We've been given the realm that we experience as embodied creatures.
00:30:01
Speaker
So maybe we have rituals of helping people, but they're not to affect some kind of a universal shift. We would talk to God. ah But... I can think about ancient times and the stories and everything with witchcraft and, you know, around the cauldron and you you're putting in a piece of hair and all this stuff.
00:30:21
Speaker
Like, that's fake in my mind, that's what I'm seeing on on movies and being portrayed in TV shows and stuff like that. So who's proven that these magic spells, so to speak, work?
00:30:39
Speaker
Oh, well, this is where Christians can humble themselves too, because, you know, how many times do we like to think that we get the inside scoop from the Holy Spirit? Right, true. It's like, oh, that clearly, you know, this is clearly the the way I'm supposed to behave because I got told in a dream or something. and thats And again, it's like, well, are all dreams not really revelation? Like, well, that's the thing. As as Lutherans, we would say there are no extra revelations. Whatever is the scripture says is is in Christ is the final revelation.
00:31:09
Speaker
but we might be moved or compelled or or other things. And it's just like, well, who who decides that? What's the norm? What's the foundation to that? And the answer is, For us, it's always been Scripture. If it contradicts Scripture, then it's not helpful. If it doesn't benefit the neighbor, it's not not legitimate. And um if it causes discord or disunity, it's not like there's lots of ways we can measure those sorts of things, if they're even happening anymore, which we can't we can't confirm or deny because the Holy Spirit can do what He wants.
00:31:42
Speaker
Angels can be told to do whatever God wants them to do. And we do believe in spiritual realms. So to what extent is all of this real or not real? One, is a psycho thought therapy as as a worldview, as a philosophy, it's very real.
00:31:56
Speaker
in that ah it contradicts the biblical narrative, and it contradicts the will that Christ has for us as his creatures and as his disciples. As far as the the metaphysical stuff, like are there actual curses and hexes? and you know All I would say that I can speak to is that we do see in Scripture, they're probably retrospectively called witches. I don't think that would be a term that they would have had, but there are people exercising...
00:32:26
Speaker
some kind of a magic adjacent thing. and that's in the scripture. So what do we do with that? I would say, well, we believe in ah principalities of darkness. We believe in ah Satan and the demons and the fallen angels. We believe in those sorts of things. And to the rest of it, we don't know or understand, nor his scripture or Christ or anybody under the ah ah apostolic, the messaging sending of of that Christ gave to the early church has filled us in on what goes on behind the scenes because we're creatures.
00:33:02
Speaker
We're physical creatures. where We're enfleshed. We're embodied. That's not our world. That's not what we've been given. God hasn't revealed that thing to us. So what is and isn't real, i don't I can't speak to that because as as long as there are forces of darkness and evil that are allowed to, for whatever reason, interact with us,
00:33:24
Speaker
you know, we have to give it some credence, but I would also say at the same time, that's not the predominant experience that a lot of modern witches are, are seeking out.
Spiritual Realities and Cultural Discernment
00:33:36
Speaker
Like you're saying, or maybe you're not saying that some of that situation could be part of the devil's work. Absolutely.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah. Any, any, and you think of a Satan means adversary, right? That's what his name means. um What is adversarial to God's will is in a way satanic.
00:33:58
Speaker
And so it doesn't have to always be spooky Halloween occult stuff that like, right oh man, there's, you know, what what are they up to? The seances and the upside down pentagrams and all that stuff, which is, you know, it can be that which is adversarial to God's will.
00:34:15
Speaker
I want to go back for just a minute yeah about the female empowerment thing, because as I'm learning, as I'm growing in my faith, I have heard so many times, and now I've started to say this to others, like it is context.
00:34:29
Speaker
what You were talking about with mankind. yeah It is context, and it is also perception. And... Absolutely. You can easily look at scripture and go, well, like ah one of the things that I always struggled with when I started reading the Bible was the word fear. I'm like, why do I want to fear the Lord? Like that seems very abusive. And, and somebody had said fear as in awe, like you need to think of it as in awe that Just whenever you read it like that.
00:35:03
Speaker
And that has changed the perspective for me and the context. So i i I do want to give credit to saying, yes, mankind is everything. It's a word.
00:35:16
Speaker
It is a word. And I know we can go down a rabbit hole on that. But it is the word that's used. but it's to include all of us. and And that's, i personally, humankind or human beings. it's Yes. i don't i don't The semantics can get us off the track. And so I tend to use humankind or humanity.
00:35:35
Speaker
Because it means the same thing, that we are one sort of being. With two di distinct manifestations of yeah that being. There are certain words that you have used in our conversation here that have kind of made me go, oh wait.
00:35:51
Speaker
I mean, I started it at the beginning with the crystals. But there's a difference, though, with self-help in regard to like going to a therapist and trying to work on the things that...
00:36:08
Speaker
I'm working on that. Like, maybe I don't understand why I do this. Like, that's that's not what you're talking about. No, not at all. I mean, therapy is is can be really helpful.
00:36:18
Speaker
Counselors, certain medications. Like, no, we're not talking about that sort of thing. um We do live in a world where almost everything, in a way, is used as a therapy, for right or for wrong. That's just our culture. Okay.
00:36:32
Speaker
um And just some are... more palatable than others. Some are more effective than others. Some are more appropriate for Christians to practice than others. Okay. The word manifest.
00:36:43
Speaker
I do have a vision board that brings up a little bit of an alarm in me. Yeah. What do you, what what do you say? Yeah. So it's funny. i used to have a vision board, uh, like a long time ago and I just thought it was like a cool way to like, uh, you know,
00:36:59
Speaker
I guess I was sheltered. I didn't know how to use the internet well, so I didn't know what it meant. But I like, oh, no, that's a really cool way to put the things you want to accomplish in a visual, if you're a visual person. Yeah, like just a reminder. Yeah, so I had that, and I really enjoyed making it. um Come to find out that it's it's heavily associated with some, I would say, neo-pagan worldviews. i The concept being that if you focus your mind on it, you can manifest it in the material world. that your mind and it has the the like cycle, energy, I don't know. I don't know the terms they use because it's it's, like I said, it's not something I've pursued heavily, but you can essentially through either energies or your mind power affect change in the universe to manifest the things that you are desiring.
00:37:47
Speaker
If you have a board with your goals on it, you're like, chill, calm down. Yeah, that's okay. That's not the worst thing in the world. um If you, if you, think that we as creatures can manifest things with our mental energies,
00:38:06
Speaker
through manipulating the universe through thought, i would I would have to ask, like, well, one, I don't know. don't have a study that's showing that that's the case.
00:38:17
Speaker
But I would also have to say, like, well, what's your what's your foundational worldview view here? Is that the end-all, be-all? Because that doesn't have anything to do with what Christ calls us to do or be. That's good to know. like i Like I said, I look at it as a visual reminder to spend more time in scripture, to spend more time with my family, to things like that. Absolutely. Yeah. i't yeah So it's and we can go into each thing. I'm sure we could justify each and every single thing.
00:38:47
Speaker
At the end of the day, i just want to point to what we know. What practices do we know? the The early church had, I mean, throughout time and space has had certain practices and things that they have done that have been universally agreed upon.
Engaging with Modern Witches
00:39:01
Speaker
Prayer, gathering, worship, scripture, it other spiritual disciplines. And those are those are things I would say before we go and...
00:39:12
Speaker
jump into what has been adopted by a lot of neo-pagan practitioners let's think about why we're doing them and why they're doing them and is it shaping us in our embodied experience in a way that is going to bring us closer to christ or muddy the waters and make it more challenging or difficult for us to understand what he's wanting us to do and who he's calling us to be So we started this whole conversation talking about witchcraft.
00:39:39
Speaker
I'd love to wrap it up talking about witchcraft. And what did I miss? What did, you know, we not talk about that you think it's super important for people to know? And specifically, selfishly, you know, as a mom to two girls, what is it that we need to be doing? Yeah.
00:39:58
Speaker
Yeah, I would say you know there's there's two big takeaways for me that I want to share with people when I have this conversation with them. is is One, and I think you have to start here, that we we as Christians especially who are people of Christ's victory, who are ah foretaste of the new creation because of what Jesus has done, that we are we come at it from a perspective of our foundation being in Christ.
00:40:27
Speaker
With that being said, we do not struggle against flesh and blood. We struggle against principalities that Christ has already overcome. When you see someone who is a witch practitioner, and say they're not, say they're just, they're they're alternatively dressed, or or they're practitioners of some other form of of New Age religion, or something they've made up on their own, or just whatever it might be,
00:40:53
Speaker
that this is not only the new norm, but those are your neighbors. Those are your neighbors. And we're asking who our neighbors are. For a lot of us, it's going to be witches now.
00:41:04
Speaker
And we can go oh well, that's just really, really awful and terrible. But um you know i have to i'd have to ask, like well, what should non-Christians be? and Do you have a specific religion that you can tolerate in terms of like, oh, if they're this way, then I can, you know, I'll talk to them and I'll treat them a certain way. I'm like, no.
00:41:23
Speaker
Christians can't judge non-Christians according to our Christian standards because they're not Christian. They're not within the gathering yet. Modern witch practitioners should be treated with the respect and dignity of a creature of God.
00:41:37
Speaker
And i think it behooves us to understand where they're coming from. Because we didn't have a lot of time to talk about it, but there are some opportunities to to have some common ground. One of them being the environment.
00:41:49
Speaker
We think God created it all and gave us dominion to care for it, which humans aren't very good at. Right. But we were created for that. And they some of some of the iterations of of witchcraft would would believe that there is it's divine.
00:42:05
Speaker
Well... We don't agree on the why, but we agree on the on the what. We got to care for our community of creation. So we have an opportunity there. so So just kind of understanding the boundaries and the dynamics so that you can love your neighbors better without necessarily having to say like, oh, yeah, well, let's it's all the same. Let's just, you know, we'll do witchcraft too. No, we don't have to go that far. But it's at least understanding that these are the people you're going to be interacting with and evangelizing.
00:42:34
Speaker
This is exactly what we need. We can't stop like accusing and we're all guilty. We all sin. that But instead of going, ah that's just, that's awful. That's horrible. Like yeah they're no less than you or me.
00:42:53
Speaker
there Like you said, they're neighbors. And i don't know how many people would just have said what you just said. Like, have a conversation. Be willing to talk.
00:43:03
Speaker
You don't have to go in and fight and argue or start going, this is wrong and you're wrong. like You have no idea what happens to someone as they develop over time, over time, over time, over time.
00:43:17
Speaker
And of course, we would want them to grow close to Christ. But even if they don't, we didn't shun them. No, it's having the right distinctions.
00:43:28
Speaker
as you approach the world around you. And I think that's huge. it's It's not a zero-sum game all of the time, or if ever. and And that's an example of it. They are the creation in which we're supposed to steward and love and respect.
00:43:42
Speaker
While also we need to be honest about saying, well, yeah, that's not... We need to understand the difference. Because Christian discipleship is also important. And I don't think that we should evangelize at the risk of...
00:43:57
Speaker
Christian discipleship. I don't think you have to. I think that knowing and understanding ourselves better and what we believe and understanding what our neighbors believe actually helps us to to facilitate relationships.
00:44:10
Speaker
But we actually have to take the time to do both of those things. And sometimes I feel like churches feel like it's got to be one or the other. Either we're all in on ourselves or all out. And I'm like, well, we are the community of Christ.
00:44:21
Speaker
We are his body and he loves his body. He died for his body. So we have to care for ourselves too. And we have to make sure that we are understanding more deeply what our walk and relationship with Christ is and to exhibit it and to be an an actual alternative to what witchcraft is is promulgating, which is hyper individualistic. Well, does the church act as a community or does it act like a community of individuals?
00:44:46
Speaker
There's no difference. Why would they be interested in this? Or does the church act sacrificially? Or does it also make sacrifices to get ahead? Well, that's no different than than a ritual of some kind, right? So it's it's it's an opportunity for us to understand ourselves better too, to challenge ourselves, as opposed to always assuming that we're right, they're wrong. It's like, are we?
00:45:07
Speaker
let's Let's talk about it. Because I don't know if we know what that means. And last time I checked as Lutherans, We are justified or we are made right by grace, by a choosing, and that we that that's through faith in Jesus Christ.
00:45:23
Speaker
So he makes things right. And knowing him better is going to be a better thing for for the church and for our neighbors, whoever they might be.
Invitation for Further Discussion and Conclusion
00:45:30
Speaker
So Max, someone might want to talk to you. How do they get ahold of you?
00:45:35
Speaker
got an email now. i work here. I've only been working here for a few weeks. i don't have, they haven't given me like a special, uh, like cell phone or anything yet. So, um, do you want me to put your email in the show notes?
00:45:46
Speaker
but Email in the show notes. yeah Absolutely. That's one appreciated. Um, Yeah, that's what I'm here for, especially for for anybody, but especially for parents and students.
00:45:56
Speaker
You know, i want to give an extra shout out. Like, if you need me, I'm here for you guys. And if you're worried about your Harry Potters, if you're worried about the crystals some of the stuff you're doing, we can talk through a little bit more. I'm happy to do that. That it would be so awesome just to have that resource and just know, like, again...
00:46:15
Speaker
You helped talk me off the ledge on that vision board. I guess like I'm going to go burn it. I don't have to burn my vision board. I just have to know. Yes. Just don't call it a vision board. How about that? How about we call it a goal board? don't know. It's good. Like church, like the church sets a vision. Nothing wrong with certain terms or concepts, but what undergirds them? and that's something we all need to be checked on together. We got to do that. that's That's what the body of Christ does.
00:46:40
Speaker
Well, I know we could keep on talking, but I've taken enough of your time. Maybe another time. Yeah. We'll talk more. It's not the only topic I know. I was going to say, you have a lot to offer. So yes, if you go to the show notes, normalgoesalongway.com, you can get Max's information. You can email him and learn up a little bit more. And happy Halloween. Yeah, happy Halloween. Very spooky podcast. I appreciate it.