All around us we see signs
for Tarot card reading, fortune telling, psychics, all kinds of alternative
healing and other practices that come under the heading of ‘occult’. We are told to stay away from these things
that so many people find fascinating.
Why is this? What is so wrong
with it? Are we just over-reacting
because we do not understand it?
If God tells us to stay
away from something, there is a good reason for it. God does not give us rules just for the sake
of rules. There is a reason for
everything. In the Old Testament in the
book of Deuteronomy it says:
You must not have in your midst anyone
who... practices divination, or anyone who consults the stars, who is a
sorcerer, or one who practices magic or who consults the spirits, no diviner or
one who asks questions of the dead. For
the Lord abhors those who do these things. (Deut 18:10-11)
So what is the problem
with these thing? Anything that is
‘occult’ is generally an attempt to gain knowledge or power of the future. One of the greatest things that God has given
us is the gift of free will. All through
this life we have the freedom to choose to do what we want, even to rejecting
God, which is quite amazing. God does
not reveal the future to us because if He did it would influence our free
will. If I thought there was going to be
an earthquake in the city centre tomorrow, the chances are I would avoid the
city centre. If I think I know what is
going to happen, I am most likely to make decisions based on that information,
but the problem is that then I am not totally free to choose, because my free
will has been influenced. That is the
main problem with things such as fortune telling, tarot card reading, etc. We think we are gaining knowledge of the
future, but this influences our freedom.
However, we have no way of
knowing whether the information we are given is true or not and perhaps more
importantly, where is it coming from? If
God deliberately does not reveal the future to us, then the information is not
coming from God. So where is it coming
from and how can we trust that it is reliable?
We are dabbling in the world of the spirit, without knowing what we are
dealing with and make no mistake about it Satan is very cunning in how he
deceives us. Jesus himself called him
‘the father of lies.’ And don’t be
fooled by the fact that a fortune teller starts of with a Christian prayer, as
some of them do. If the Lord tells us
that these things are detestable to him, then we would be wise to stay away
from them.
I know of a woman who was
given the initials of someone she was told she would marry. And she met a man with those initials, and
she married him, and it was a disaster. If
you have dabbled in any of these things confess them and let them not have any
kind of influence over you, spiritual or otherwise.
Now listen to what Jesus
says to the woman at the well:
If you only knew what God was offering you
and who it was that was asking you for a drink, you would have been the one to
ask, and he would have given you living water.
What is God offering
us? What is this living water? First of all it is the life of faith, the
path to God, the truth about God as given to us by Jesus who is Son of
God. Jesus is either telling us the
truth or he is not. If he is—and we say
we believe he is—then we need to listen.
For two thousand years the teachings of Christ have been guiding people
on the path to God. The fact that it has
lasted that long is itself a sign that this must be from God, especially when
you look at the history of the Church, which is nothing to boast about. Yet in spite of that the message of God is
still passed on, through sinful people like me, it is true, but passed on none
the less. It is there for anyone who
wants it. Many things are continually offered
to us, but not all of them are good and not all of them will help us. What we believe is that what God offers
us—the waters of life—is what will lead us to total happiness, beginning now
and fulfilled in the world to come. This
is what the Lord is teaching us. Do we
believe that?
Sometimes I think it comes
back to something as basic as asking ourselves, ‘Do I believe the Scriptures
are from God?’ ‘Do I believe that Jesus
teaches us through his Church?’ If we
believe that, then we need to listen to it.
If we don’t believe that, we shouldn’t be here in the first place. God offers us his word to guide us, his Body
and Blood to feed us, his forgiveness to heal us, but if we want to follow the
path that He is showing us, then we must listen to what he teaches us and act
on it.
If you only knew what God was offering you
and who it was that was asking you for a drink, you would have been the one to
ask, and he would have given you living water
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