I don’t know much about the occult. My only experience of experimenting with the occult was during my high school days when my best friend and I got interested in Edgar Cayce and the I-Ching. I also listened to “Sunday sermons” by Alan Watts on the radio. He was one of the popularizers of Zen in the West. None of it “worked” and we soon lost interest and went back to soldering irons and attempts to build lasers.
However, I do believe that occult practices present a danger. I say this for a couple reasons.
First, I know some people who describe some very dark experiences that resulted from their involvement in the occult. While I have no way to verify these experiences for myself, my knowledge of them as people leads me to believe that they experienced — and sometimes continue to experience — something darkly real.
Second, the Bible speaks clearly and frequently about evil spirits and the impact they have on humans. I trust the Bible because it witnesses to Jesus, and I have trusted him and encountered him. If I start picking and choosing what I will believe that the Bible says, I will soon find myself in a welter of doubts and contradictions. I believe Jesus, so I believe the Bible. And the Bible speaks of evil spirits and experiences of “possession.” It also speaks of Jesus’ mastery over these evil beings.
Historically, superstition and occult practices were rampant in the time of Jesus — especially among the gentiles. I believe that this is why demons were so present. That is, occult practices and superstition open the door for these evil beings to intrude into our lives.
For example, it seems likely to me that the man who had the “legion” of demons described in Mark 5 was invoking some kind of “strength” spell. Perhaps every time he did it, he called another demon into himself. He probably was not aware of what he was doing or what the consequences would be. He became immensely strong, so that nobody could bind him or subdue him, but he lived in a graveyard crying out and hitting himself with stones. So whatever benefit he might have gained from what he was doing was counteracted by the fact that his life was totally unlivable.
I suggest the above scenario with all tentativeness, because the Bible doesn’t say anything about how this man got demonized — for good and obvious reasons. But I believe it is plausible.
This suggests that the normalizing of occult practices that has been occurring for the last fifty or sixty years presents danger for the unwary.
One of the common things people advocating occult practices do is to say that there is nothing “religious” about them. A person in my church had an experience like this; a fortune-teller said that the fortune-telling had nothing to do with religion.
But the Bible does not talk about “divination” as a religious practice. It simply prohibits the practice entirely. That is because unwary practitioners can be deceived into communing with unsavory spirits. After all, divination is an attempt to access the spirit world for the sake of gaining knowledge.
Going even further, there is a trend for people to practice the occult as an alternative to religion. A number of articles have come out recently on the internet.
Here are a few links:
Millennials ditching religion for occult
Washington Post religion columnist practices voodoo
Of course anyone who has been paying attention knows that this has been going on for a long time. A lot of it came through entertainment. In my day there was the song “Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones, which was satanist, and “My Sweet Lord” by the Beatles which was hare krishna. People have tried numerous times to introduce transcendental meditation into the public schools over the years, and now “mindfulness” is quite popular.
Ekhart Tolle, who advocates a kind of mindfulness, was catapulted to fame by Oprah Winfrey. Tolle’s views are a mixture of ideas from many different sources, including some that might seem Christian. As a result, people aren’t as alarmed as they might otherwise be by his teaching.
Even Sam Harris, one of the so-called “new atheists”, advocates mindfulness meditation and practices a form of meditation called vipassana which means “insight.” He claims that it “can be taught in an entirely secular way.”
So various spiritual practices are becoming more and more accepted in society. The movement toward secularism has not eliminated the need and desire for some form of spirituality. As G. K. Chesterton said, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in everything.”
This would be all fine and dandy except for the fact that we are at war. By this I mean spiritual war. The Bible says,
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
– Ephesians 6:12
Imagine wandering around no-man’s-land during a battle, picking up little scraps of shiny metal. You would not last long. Perhaps you’d pick up a piece of live ammunition and it would go boom. Perhaps you’d just get shot.
That’s the situation humanity is in. There is a cosmic battle going on. For many years, Jesus Christ kept the door closed to evil spiritual phenomena in a lot of the world. But as people “embrace” the occult, I believe this will change, and actual occult manifestations will become more prevalent. I cannot imagine what this will be like, but it will hardly be pleasant.
So what do we as Christians do?
I believe at this point we must be awake and watchful. We must also be less tolerant of the occult.
I write this on the day after Halloween. Now I am not against Halloween celebrations as a seasonal holiday, a kind of harvest festival for kids with pumpkins and masks and candy. This is how it was during my childhood.
But I think it will surprise nobody if I say that for a long time it has been becoming something darker. If we as Christians are to engage in Halloween festivities, I believe we must avoid the less savory aspects, partly for our own spiritual health but also for the health of those who might be stumbled thereby. Yes, we are free, but this kind of freedom means that we are responsible for what we do. As Paul says, “Reason it out for yourself,” and “all things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial.” Serve one another in love — to say nothing of our neighbors who have no defenses.
Most important, we need to take the “armor of God” passage seriously.
Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.
Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.
In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints….
(Ephesians 6:13-18)
The passage speaks of the following elements of “armor”:
- Truth
- Righteousness
- The good news
- Faith
- Salvation
- Word of God
And it ends with prayer: alert and persistent.
Regardless of one’s views about the reality of the occult, for any Christian all these things are worth thinking about and pursuing. It can do no harm to focus on them, and it could do a great deal of good.