There is a lot of confusion these days as to what comes from God and what does not. I am talking in particular about things like fortune tellers, Tarot card readers, psychics, playing the Ouija board, or going to mediums and many other practices that come under the general term of Occult. A lot of people just consider them harmless fun; besides, what could possibly be wrong with them?
God expressly warns us in the Scriptures to stay away from such things. 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 enchantments or who consults the spirits, no diviner, or one who asks questions of the dead. For the Lord abhors those who do these things (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).
In another book it says, ‘Do not have recourse to the spirits of the dead or to magicians; they will defile you. I, the Lord, am your God’ (Leviticus 19:31).
I would like to try and explain why these things are wrong for us, because God doesn’t just give us rules for the sake of rules. If God tells us to stay away from something, there is a good reason for it, just like you will tell your children to stay away from the fire, or they’ll get burned. The Lord does the same for us, telling us what to avoid if we want to stay healthy.
So why are these things, which are now available everywhere, a problem? The first and most important reason is that they interfere with our free will. Our free will is a wonderful gift which the Lord has given us, because it means that we have the freedom to do anything we choose, be it good or evil, although real freedom is the freedom to choose what is good. We can even reject God if we choose. It is an extraordinary thing that the Lord who has created us to live in his presence forever, respects us enough even to giving us the freedom to reject him and sadly some people do this, by the way they live. Going to fortune tellers, or any of these other practices that I mentioned, is basically an attempt to gain knowledge of the future. Anything occult is an attempt to gain knowledge or power of the future. The problem is that if we think we have any kind of knowledge of the future, it is going to influence our freedom to choose, because we will probably start acting out of fear or what we think might be going to happen. The Lord does not want us to be afraid, but to be at peace. That is why the Lord does not reveal the future to us. We don’t need to know it. If we did, He would show us, because He wants the very best for us.
The second reason why these things are a problem for us, is that by dabbling in them we are going directly against something God has asked us, which is a way of creating an obstacle between us and God. We sin when we do this. From a spiritual point of view they can also have a hold, or influence over us. If God does not reveal the future to us, then where is this information coming from? It is not coming from the Lord, even if the fortune teller starts off by praying the Hail Mary, or Our Father, which I know some of them do.
I worked with an exorcist priest friend of mine for a while and saw first-hand the mess that some people get themselves into, by dabbling in occult practices, which the Lord tells us specifically to keep away from. They are very real. Satan is cunning and will do anything to lead us away from God, because he hates God’s creation. Remember that Jesus spoke about Satan many times. He called him the liar and the deceiver. If Satan is not real, then Jesus is a liar, because Jesus frequently mentioned him in his teaching.
Let me give you an example. The former exorcist of this diocese told me one time, that he had been called to a house where footsteps kept appearing across the couch. When he went to the house he asked them if any of them had been involved in any occult practices. The lady of the house said that she and her daughter both practiced witchcraft. She was also living with a man who wasn’t her husband. He told them there was nothing he could do for them, unless they were willing to change their lifestyles. If you are living in a state of sin against God, you are opening yourself up to the powers of darkness.
I was called to a house one time, where radios and lights were coming on during the night. I asked them if they had ever been involved in any kind of occult practice. They said no, but they told me that the woman who lived in the house before them was a medium, calling on the spirits of the dead! They had just moved in.
We have to ask ourselves, do I believe what Jesus said is true, or not? Either the Bible (the Scriptures) is the word of God or it isn’t. If it is, we need to listen to it. If it’s not true, then what are we doing here?
Several years ago the exorcist of the diocese of Rome, Gabriel Amorth, a bishop, wrote a book called An Exorcist Tells his Story. The reason he wrote it was because people were not taking it seriously enough. He said that more and more people were dabbling in occult practice and the Church was not taking it seriously enough. It's a book worth reading.
The Lord wants the very best for us and will continually guide us along the right path, the path that will help us to reach our full potential as human beings, but sometimes we get misled and go astray. That’s not a problem so long as we recognize it and come back again. I’m sure you want God’s blessing for your lives and for your families, just as I do, but if we mess with what God expressly tells us to stay away from, we will be blocking God’s help from us.
If you have dabbled in any of these things at any stage, confess it, which is also what the Lord asks us to do. By confessing it you break any spiritual hold that it can have over you. By repenting of it you also open the door to God’s grace as well. Many times I have heard exorcists say that if someone who is possessed can make a good confession, then half of the work is already done. It makes total sense. The power of evil in their life is broken and God’s grace is allowed in. The devil loses his foothold.
If God has assured us of his help, then we would be foolish to look for spiritual help from any other source. We know that God wants the very best for us and if we believe that, then we must also listen to what He tells us to do and what He tells us to avoid.
‘I have come that you may have life and have it to the full’ (John 10:10)
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