Magic?

This past Sunday we launched our spring series The Baby, The Bathwater, and the Spiritual Life. This is our attempt to bring some clarity to current thinking in Christian spirituality, especially as true practice tends to get immersed in other lesser things. In other words, we are asserting that there is a baby to embrace as well as bathwater to throw away. We are saying that we need to periodically establish which is which.

On Sunday we reviewed the story of Philip and Simon Magus in Acts 8. I would encourage you to read that text and to consider the clear delineation that emerges between a view of spirituality that wants to learn how to control God, and the essential Christian way. What becomes clear is that the message of Jesus which Philip brought to Samaria contrasts distinctly with the deeply magical thinking of Simon. This is seen in how Simon actually attempts to buy the power of the apostles for his own selfish agenda. Simon apparently loves power for its own sake. And as a result, the apostles condemn his thinking in the harshest of terms. Which should get us to thinking -- do we tend towards magical thinking in our life with God? Do we try to make this faith over into a system or technique instead of a deeply trusting relationship?

Magic is a very old thing, maybe one of the oldest things. Of course, there is the silly side of magic, our “Bewitched” fantasy -- that we could wrinkle our nose and clean up the house. But there is a much more serious side to magic, the idea that we can actually learn to control events, people, and objects. The word sorcery literally means the ability to control fate (sors being the old latin word for fate). The idea of magic is connected to one of our most fundamental human temptations, that we can use power to get what we want.

On my daily commute to work, I often hear an add for The Total Transformation System, a kind of coaching resource for parents who can’t get their kids to cooperate. The promises are amazing: “simple step-by-step techniques”, “how to stop any argument with your kid instantly”, “a word-by-word script to use”, “ten words to say”, “the technique that stops back talk”, and so it goes, a seeming sure-fire way to take control of out-of-control relationships. Now, I don’t don’t doubt that there may be pieces of wisdom in what is being offered here (and I may have just helped their business). But the idea that parenting needs a system, or that there is a technique to it (word for word scripts and the like), is deeply resonant with the culture we live in. How many times have you heard a personal change program referred to as a technology? Do we really believe that we can buy a system that will fix our life?

Instances like this are nothing less than magical thinking, that we can shape life through technique. And they reveal how much our culture thinks this way. The need as followers of Jesus, then, is for us to step back and ask ourselves whether or not we are prone to apply the concepts of magic to our concepts of Christian faith. In contrast with magic, an essential Christian spirituality learns the way of non-technique while, at the same time, gravitates towards what is more personal and relational. And all of this is based on what we are presented with in the Scripture: the infinite-personal God, who relates to us as Father, comes among us as the Son, dwells with us as the intimate Spirit, and calls us into the company of his people.

On a practical or formational level, one very good way learn the non-technical and non-magical way of our faith is to immerse ourselves daily in the Lord’s Prayer. This is our primer, the way we learn on a daily basis that God is not a problem to solve, nor a technique to master, nor a system to tweak: God is a Father to love, in the way of his Son, and by the power of his Spirit. Everything is personal here.

I have over-written the Lord’s prayer to show how this works:

God our Father

we honor all you are and don’t want to make you into a thing

we want what you want; educate our wants so that we might become more like you

provide us with what we need to live our normal earthly life as your children

forgive our missteps as we forgive the missteps of others (keep us in this grace life)

keep us from caving in to the unreality and illusion of evil

everything will eventually be seen in the light of your awesome character, Amen

I say the Lord’s prayer daily as part of my morning ritual. What I have been reminded of lately is that there is no consumerism or technique going on there -- it is all pure relational living. And that is good, because we make lousy gods, but we are perfectly fitted to be beloved children.

We continue this Sunday with lessons in authentic Biblical spirituality in our new series The Baby and Bathwater series. We hope to see you this Sunday at 9:29 or 11:11 am.