Why Most Christians Miss The Point of God's Admonition Against Using Magic

If there is one fallacy many Christians have, albeit it often comes from the most well meaning motives, it's the belief that trying to influence the world using magic and the occult, contrary to the instructions of God, will actually have an effect on this planet or the people on it as regards events that cannot be explained. They agree doing so is immoral, and they are right, but they would be foolish to believe it has an effect either way without God's assent, nothing supernatural occurs without him signing off on it happening.

This is also missing a very basic point God himself made numerous times about why no one but him and those he gave power should ever trifle with the supernatural, and it wasn't so much he feared we'd do damage in a supernatural way if we tried, but more that we'd be fools to do so because we really have no power outside what he gives us.

He proved this several times in Scripture, showing Man's various attempts to substitute his power for that of others was totally toothless.

1. The ten plagues of Egypt as described in Exodus was God's mockery of the Egyptian Gods. Each plague was a deliberate slap to the faces of the gods said to have power over the sun, the water, livestock, insects, and all the other beings and elements said plagues turned against the Egyptians. God proved, successfully, that the Egyptians followed a sham faith in something that had no power to stop him in any way whatsoever.

2. Later, the Philistines captured God's own Ark of the Covenant and put it in front of their sea god Dagon as a tribute to it's capture. God proved himself mightier than Dagon multiple times, forcing the statue of Dagon to not only bow before his Ark; he even ripped off the head and hands off Dagon's statue after a few times of the Philistines not getting the point to hammer in the obvious point:

Dagon had no power, only God did.


Fun fact, Dagon was the FATHER of Baal in Canaanite tradition, which makes God's next trumping of false gods all the more hilarious.


3. When the showdown on Mount Carmel happened, God really set out to prove no power outside his own meant anything.Baal was allegedly a god over the weather, but Baal had failed to do ANYTHING to prevent a years long drought, simply because God said he'd withhold the rains until everyone acknowledged who truly held any power.

When the priests of Baal faced off against Elijah to prove whose God was superior, God set out to handicap himself as much as possible to just prove how meaningless worshiping Baal was.

God gave them several hours lead time on him doing anything. He had his own altar soaked with water several times over just to make the act of burning anything on said altar harder, and the contest was pretty lopsided to begin with, given the absurdly low bar set for both God and Baal.

All one of them had to do was light the slightest spark on their sacrifice without any human intervention first, and they'd win by default.

Baal was given every advantage, and the fools who thought he had power did everything including maiming themselves in a vain attempt to get their meaningless deity to light the slightest spark on their altar.

Once they finally gave up, all Elijah did was ask God to prove himself.

And God did, overwhelmingly. Despite the altar being soaked, EVERYTHING, from the water to meat on it to the stones of the altar itself, even all the excess water that had pooled in a trench around the altar, it was burned to the point NONE of it was left,


The point to all these incidents was God making a simple message clear: We humans have no power to affect this world supernaturally, except for what God alone allows and what he does on His own.

Any attempt by us to cast spells, make idols, summon demons, or affect this world in any supernatural way will actually do nothing except earn us His rightly earned contempt.


Granted, there were times when supernatural forces other than God were confirmably in existence, such as the demon possessed man who is oft referred to as Legion. Even the demons (who were the fallen angels cast out of heaven due to their collusion with the traitor Lucifer) bowed before God's power when Jesus told them to leave the man they had afflicted, and they begged to be sent into a herd of pigs instead of an even worse judgment at God's hands, and Jesus allowed it for one reason.

Sure, Jesus could have sent them straight to the bottomless pit if he wanted to, but the fact the demons begged Jesus to punish them in any other way means even they in their rebellion acknowledged even the mildest command from God had more power than they all possessed combined, and the slightest command from God would free Men from their influence.

Another time supernatural powers seemed to work was when King Saul was so desperate for God (who had turned his back on Saul for disobedience) to tell him something he went to a witch to summon the spirit of the prophet Samuel, all so Saul could get something from world beyond the temporal to go on since God was purposely putting Saul on Ignore for disobedience.

God chose to allow Saul to see what he was hoping for just so he could grind the spiritual glass in Saul, telling Saul his own death outside of God's grace was coming soon and there was nothing that could be done to avert it because Saul's faith in God's power had sunk so low he had turned to mediums and spiritualists (whom Saul had once hunted down on God's behalf) because his faith in God's power and that alone had become so weak.

Yet again, God proved the folly of we pathetic mortals in believing we have any control over the supernatural world. He even mentioned in the Books of the Law the only humans who would ever be authorized to do so would receive his explicit approval, and he even provided a two tiered test to weed out false prophets in his name:

1. First, what they predicted or whatever power they displayed had to come to pass. If it didn't, they were a powerless liar.

2. If the first happened, then on whose behalf the sign or supernatural work was performed had to be God. If done in the name of anyone else, they were not doing so with God's sanction or power and thus were false prophets.


Now, speaking merely for myself for a moment, I do not believe, based on all prior biblical precedent, any attempt by us humans to cast spells, summon demons, channel the dead, or any other meddling with the supernatural God said we shouldn't contemplate is real, at least nothing we do by ourselves has any real power, we have none because God gave us none by default.

If something supernatural does happen, it's for the same reasons Saul got to see what he was hoping to see, so God could grind in the glass over the disobedience of those who defied his instructions NOT to meddle in the supernatural, and any actual supernatural consequences of doing so is not because we humans have any power, because we do not, but because God chose to allow us to suffer for our defiance.

The more important reason God tells us not to meddle in the supernatural is far simpler than us messing with something we do actual damage with (and we can't), but it's more simple point, and I'll let God Himself explain why via Leviticus 19:31


""'Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God."


Note how God never says they are doing anything other causing others to be defiled? God never says what they are doing is effective, because it isn't, they are charlatans and liars pretending at God's own power.

What they are doing, however, is encouraging others to turn away from God by trusting in supernatural power attributed to a source outside of God's, who is the only one that can actually do anything. The pretenders can't do what God can do, but you would be foolish to be led astray by believing otherwise.

As for you following the example of said pretenders, you are not affecting the world beyond the natural one little bit. God is clear it is the height of arrogance to believe we humans without God's own sanction can do more than what he allows our mortal shells, anything beyond that is only allowed on his say so.

However, attempting to pretend otherwise accomplishes nothing save to defy God and earn his contempt, to which our fate is that of Saul, to die outside of God's grace because we chose to believe in something other than him.

So all Christians should be afraid to consider making the attempt even more than the actual act, because even attempting to influence this world beyond the natural is more than enough to earn us God's contempt, and that alone is enough of a judgment, we need not fear we could actually do anything God does not allow, but it's still wise to not even make the attempt since God said not to in the first place.

Why Evil Means Can Never Serve Good

Note: I would like to credit ChristCenteredGamer for the inspiration behind this post, based on a discussion on the CCG Discord channel when discussing the topic covered below.


There is a common fallacy in both real life and fiction that evil means used for good ends can somehow have the evil origins of the means negated by using them for the noblest of causes.


That could not be farther from the truth, especially for Christians.


For a popular fiction example, the comic book hero Batman is a good example of being very aware of this problem. Batman knows he has no moral or legal right to pass judgment on any criminal he stops from committing a crime, hence why he leave them to be apprehended by the police to dealt with by the legal system. He knows if he allows himself to believe he has the right to kill in cold blood, even of the most evil and depraved of people who "deserve it", he will quickly become just like them, and no matter how much the world might be better off for the absence of such evil people, he refuses to take the lives of even the most wicked of people because that would forever cross a moral line he walks every night he dons the cowl.

Even then, even if he doesn't kill, he is still a vigilante operating outside the law, and while he is  tolerated by the law to some extent because of his firm moral code, he has been warned more than once by the law he's on the razor edge between acting a good citizen and detaining a criminal in the act of committing crime for their processing by the proper authorities and being little more than the same thugs he stops.

To now use a real world example, it is argued in some circles child molestors should be killed on the spot and their deaths by extralegal killings should be celebrated, but the same reasons Batman does not kill even the most heinous of people still apply in reality: no one has the moral or legal right to determine the punishment of someone outside the law, both the legal and moral. Obviously, killing in self defense or the defense of another if such is required is acceptable if such is necessary, but finding excuses to do this is just rationalizing one's slide into becoming a murderer, and if the life of a child molestor or murderer should be taken, it should be by the very laws they show contempt, not the unsanctioned killing committed by someone who tells themselves they have the right to kill a criminal because they are "doing good".

No one person has that right. Even when God personally ordered the deaths of those who earned it under his Law, those who did the killings of the condemned were commanded not to exceed their mandate.

Those that did became little better than Jehu, who was originally commended for following God's instructions in wiping out the house of Ahab on God's instructions, but became little more than a bloodthirsty killer who became what he sought to destroy.

Jehu fulfilled his original mandate, but then stepped over the line and murdered the priests of Baal, who, while they were a stench in God's nostrils, they had not been ordered to die at Jehu's hands, he chose to add their blood to his sword on his own.

In doing so, he rationalized their deaths as doing what God would have wanted without getting God's explicit instructions, but in Jehu's way of seeing it, he was destroying those who opposed God, how could that be wrong?

As seen above, it's we humans assuming we can step outside lawfully and morally justified instructions to do what we THINK is right that is wrong and therefore evil.

And in doing something evil, you don't serve God, you serve yourself.

Evil means can never be used to fulfill good ends. Sure, you could argue the parties who gassed Jews should have been gassed themselves as a form of punishment appropriate to their crimes, but those who punished the parties responsible chose not to sink to such depths because that would have been compounding the original sin.

Murdering people in gas chambers had been declared a war crime and an act of genocide without any legal or moral protection. Had the people who ordered the executions of those who operated those gas chambers to die in the same manner, they would have been hypocrites who justified doing evil to evil people based on tainted laws and morality, and when you taint the law and morality, you become a hypocrite.

Under the laws of God and Men, such is legally and morally unacceptable for any reason, nor should it ever be.

Going back to fictional examples, let's say you use magic in a fantasy based game to summon demons, but you only use them to fight against evil people. Even if under a fictional code of ethics that is not inconsistent, under real world ethics, Christians are never supposed to consider using any evil means to serve a righteous end, as the ends then are no longer righteous.

While it not possible under most known means available to humanity in reality to perform such acts as summoning demons or shooting fireballs or some other acts of actual spellcasting, it's not something that should even be contemplated under ANY circumstance for ANY reason because.

1. As far as God is concerned, it's evil, end of story. He has a LOT to say about the very concept,and NONE of it is good.

2. Even if God gave someone power to do His Will, goes back to the example of Jehu, who was given leave to kill certain people on God's orders,but the temptation of bloodlust overcame Jehu and he became a bloodthirsty murderer outside of God's grace because he exceeded his heavenly license and did as he deemed fit, not God.

If God gives anyone else leave to do His Will either naturally or supernaturally, then one must do explicitly as God commands and do no more and no less. Doing otherwise is a but a gateway to Perdition itself, and the fate of those who do so is to die outside of the grace of God and to live the life after the one we live on this Earth in an even worse place than we will if we live outside of God's grace in our current one.


And there is no "evil means" one can justify to use for a "good" end that can be allowed, such is a deviation from God's command to do good and not evil, and everyone, especially those who know God's instructions, should know to never consider such means to ever be justified.