A former church member called and asked me to perform his wedding. When I got together with him and his fiance, he began talking with deep conviction about an occult teaching-the progenitors of which received it through clairvoyant “automatic writing”-that sin is not real and that human beings can themselves work miracles of healing and prosperity.
On another occasion, a pastor asked me to join him in counseling an elderly parishioner who had invested considerable time and money in occult books, from Edgar Cayce to Shirley MacLaine. “I just don’t understand why everyone is so concerned about my private spiritual life,” the member complained. “I’m not hurting anyone else. You make me out to be as bad as a criminal.”
In still another situation, a fellow minister asked me to pray with him for his head usher, who had been attending sances and reading a variety of spiritualist literature. When we met with him and expressed our concern, he demanded, “Why is everyone condemning me just because I want to know more about spiritual things?”
Touchy but essential
Today, when Shirley MacLaine can command several evenings of prime-time TV to preach her occult spirituality, we ministers must be prepared to respond both to simple curiosity and dedicated involvement in occult practices among church members. Nor can we assume, I have discovered, that all churchgoers know what the Bible says about the occult, or even that those who do will discern the more subtle forms of the occult springing up in our time. Simply to tell someone, “The Bible says occult practices arc a sin,” may cause the person to feel judged and turn away.
Having made my share of mistakes in this difficult area of witnessing, I have come to rely on several guidelines. Following them is not guaranteed to change the other’s mind, but it at least allows me to make the Lord’s case with both compassion and integrity-and leave the encounter feeling I have responded faithfully.
Communicate concern rather than condemnation
The fact that a member is involved in the occult indicates that he or she does not recognize the full authority of Scripture, and without that common base, I feel hard-pressed to communicate effectively. Often, I fear I will fail to get my message across. A part of me wants to shake the person by the shoulders and shout, “Don’t you see you’ve given yourself over to death?” While I do not rule out that response, in most cases I find it’s more effective to use a softer response that the person perceives as nonjudgmental.
With the usher who was an avid reader of Edgar Cayce, for example, I first explained that our primary concern was for his safety. What he was doing bore danger to his spiritual welfare. “If you were experimenting with eating varieties of wild mushrooms, I would come to you,” I said, “because I wouldn’t want you to poison yourself. Because we care about you, we want you to know that what you are doing is potentially poisoning your spirit.”
See the valid spiritual hunger
One thing that helps me communicate to a parishioner involved in the occult is to remember that sin is primarily a perversion of the good. I assume that the sin of occult involvement can be traced to a genuine and even good desire for something of God. And so, in both my prayers and encounter with the person, I ask God to show me the deeper, genuine need for him in that person, which sin has perverted.
I ask early in the conversation, for example, “What are you looking for in astrology?” That is, “What need of yours do you hope astrology will meet?”
Whatever the need might be, whether marital advice or protection on a plane flight, I ask the person in sincerity, “Have you tried Jesus? What makes you think he can’t meet your need?”
But I find people more open when I begin with acceptance for the good desire buried beneath their occult involvement: “You’re spiritually hungry, like all of us.”
Don’t deny the reality of occult power
“It’s odd,” a fellow pastor once lamented to me, “that I can talk more openly about my Christian spirituality with my brother, who’s into the occult, than with all the others in my family, who have gone to church all their lives but scoff at any real spiritual power.”
Here lies an essential point of contact for the Christian witness. Many churches have pooh-poohed occult activities as mere superstition, power of suggestion, fantasy, or plain baloney. I admit that in my naturalistic conceit, I used to assume occult activities held no real power at all.
The reality, however, according to both Scripture and many people’s experience, is that the realm of the occult is powerful, and it is evil. If occult activities summoned no real power, God would not have condemned to death those who practiced them. The biblical faith recognizes that every occult practice, no matter how harmless it may appear, nevertheless beckons genuine power.
People who have dabbled in the occult know this, because they have seen it, and our sophisticated scoffing to the contrary only forces them to defend their experiences more fervently-or withdraw. When someone has visited a fortuneteller and received a message that comes true, for us to scoff is worse than useless.
Our Christian witness against occult powers therefore needs to ask, not, “Does it really work?” but rather, “What is its source, and thus, its ultimate intention for the one who engages it?” A clear biblical guideline here is Deuteronomy 13:1-4, which warns against the prophet who foretells accurately but then urges people to turn from the Lord to other gods.
Sometimes practitioners will challenge us: “But have you tried it? You shouldn’t condemn astrology if you’ve never seen what it can do.”
To a person who said this to me, I wrote, “When you ask me to try an occult practice, I consider it the same as if you were asking me to commit adultery. Granted, to do so might well be adventurous and exciting. But I just couldn’t do that to my wife. In a similar way with the occult, I couldn’t do that to Jesus, who I believe gave his life to ‘marry me to God,’ as it were-in fact, precisely so I could have far more saving power than any occult practice could ever provide.”
Explain the rationale behind God’s commands
People need to understand not only that the Bible says occult activities are wrong, but also why God would say they are.
I begin with the most common biblical denominator. No matter how ignorant of the Bible nonbelievers or churchgoers may be, everyone has heard of the Ten Commandments. I point out that occult involvement violates God’s very first commandment: “You shall have no other gods besides me” (Exod. 20:3).
A god is a source of spiritual power; to indulge in occult practices is to seek spiritual power from some other source than the one Creator God revealed in the Bible.
Some people cannot accept this assessment because they do not understand the loving nature of God. They believe Scripture binds or restricts them harshly. I explain that God commands his people to renounce certain behaviors not because he is an egoist or sadist, but because he is a father who loves his children. Like any loving parent, God knows that for his naive children, this world is often a dangerous place. Mothers and fathers can understand when I add, “I’m sure you have set rules for your children’s good even when they couldn’t understand why.”
Of course, I am prepared to show that in the Bible God does indeed condemn occult practices: astrology (Isa. 47:10-15), reincarnation (Heb. 9:27), divination (Deut. 18:10-11), fortune telling (Ezek. 13:17-23; Acts 16:16-18), contacting the dead (Deut. 18:11; 1 Chron. 10:13-14), spiritism (Lev. 20:27).
Pray
Certainly our most powerful weapon in setting someone free from occult involvement is prayer. But I must pray only “as the Spirit leads” (Eph. 6:18) and not as I might desire.
We can pray helpfully by realizing that one who rejects the authority of Scripture and turns away from God to occult spirituality is often blinded by rebellion. God makes this very connection, declaring that “rebellion is as the sin of divination” (1 Sam. 15:23).
In any case, it is best not to pray alone for those in occult bondage, and always to begin by confessing one’s own powerlessness and Jesus’ victory. As in any intercession, you can ask the Lord for his heart of compassion for the person.
Consider discipline
At times we may be called to speak a hard word of warning to someone involved in the occult, and thus to risk losing that person’s friendship.
One friend, a leader in another church, embraced astrology. I had to warn him that as a spiritual leader of his people, he was walking in an area that would cause great damage to his church. In response, he wrote me a blistering letter accusing me of being narrow and using my faith as a defense against life. I persisted in friendship, however, and he came to lunch with me one day; though I was not able to change his mind, I affirmed my respect for him and we parted agreeing to disagree.
For people in our congregations also, we must be prepared to take appropriate action. The head usher who went to sances, for example, seemed unresponsive to our plea after perhaps ten meetings over a year’s period, including one with the church elders.
After prayer, the pastor and I sensed we were to take two steps. First, we disciplined the man by removing him from his position as usher, explaining to him clearly why we were doing so. Second, since in our prayer the Lord had shown us the man’s loneliness and how that had offered an inappropriate opening for occult interest, we arranged for others in the church to call him and invite him to dinner and other activities.
Obedience, not odds of success
Over the past ten years, I have seen many people, once convicted of the sin in their occult involvements, set free to experience God’s saving power. One member, after I had talked with her about the occult’s dangers, asked me to come to her house and go over her library so she could throw out any book that might reflect the occult. I went, and within a few minutes she had filled a small trash can outside with perhaps twenty-five such books.
At other times I have seen partial success. The head usher mentioned that he had been using a Ouija board once and a “dark heaviness” came over him that frightened him “enough not to mess with that again.” I have prayed that God would continue to make clear to this man the nature of the powers he is entertaining. As of this writing, though, the pastor and I are not aware of any way in which the Lord has answered that prayer directly.
At the same time, I have been unsuccessful with many others, such as a fellow pastor who is into astrology.
My experience convinces me that the ministry of alerting God’s people to the dangers in the occult requires a simple willingness to obey, more than hopes for success. But like Ezekiel (3:18-19), our role is to warn those who are in danger.
-Gordon Dalbey
Torrance, California
Copyright © 1989 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
