witchcraft and religion

Religion is evil. It has the same origin as witchcraft and has to do with the same goals: to manipulate and control others by the use of words(1). On the other hand, the way of Jesus is good. It has the same origin as life and has to do with the same goals: freedom through goodness.

I wrote a story last year about a witch. Really, witchcraft is everywhere—in every church, possibly in every relationship, certainly in every person who is not abandoned to Christ, in every person who still wants control of their life, their environment, and the people around them. And if you're not actively doing witchcraft, you can still be swept into its field of influence and go through the motions, ultimately helping to achieve its goals. It takes both an awareness of it and an active faith to resist its temptation. In Vera's story, she did just that.

The witch was slowly and warily making her way back to Vera, thinking fast, thinking of some way out of this pickle she was in. “Aha! So you’re a player!” she said. “Well now, you’re well on your way to becoming a fine witch. Name your price and I’ll bring it tomorrow, and you can hold my broom as deposit to ensure my return.” But Vera just looked at her with sad resolve and said,

I’m weary of payback and weary of game
I’m wasted on years of staying the same
Rules and laws
Are death-like jaws
Forgiveness is my only claim.

“What?!” cried the witch! “Don’t say that!”
“I forgive you,” said Vera, and she would say no more.
“You can’t say that at all! You can’t do that at all!”
But it was all she had to say, and all she had to do.

Religion is like that. Rules and laws, death-like jaws. And payback. It’s not a good way to live. Mapping out all the scenarios one might find oneself in and coming up with the what’s right for each situation—herding, restricting, funneling, cornering, proving—like a spiritual flowchart or a spiritual trial by jury, is evil. Attempts to prove and justify actions, whether past, present, future, or in theory is evil. Attempts to prove that you deserve something is dabbling in witchcraft. And coming up with payback plans for offenses and sins is evil, too. It is the way of death. God is the one who justifies, not us. Trying to take the power of the heavens into our own hands like any of these practices is witchcraft.

And the heart of it all is this. God doesn’t justify us based on what we do or say. He justifies us before we do or say anything, to prove that it’s not by any other power that we became right, but His. His way is that we are right because He decided it and we believed Him, not because anything we say or do. And isn’t it comforting to know that you are justified because of the power of a good God rather than power you or someone else has worked up and used to make you feel justified?

I’m not making this up. Paul said the same exact thing in a letter he wrote to the Romans, in what is now included in the bible as Romans.

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus…he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded.

It’s not a rightness apart from The Law, but a rightness apart from law. It’s not a rightness apart from one particular Law so that some new Law could enslave people again. It’s a rightness apart from any law(2), from rules and laws, those death-like jaws, from witchcraft. Forgiveness is God’s only claim.

(1) Galatians 3:1
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?

(2) Galatians 3:21
If such is the case, is the law, then, an anti-promise, a negation of God's will for us? Not at all. Its purpose was to make obvious to everyone that we are, in ourselves, out of right relationship with God, and therefore to show us the futility of devising some religious system for getting by our own efforts what we can only get by waiting in faith for God to complete his promise. For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time.