301Prayer & Spell Casting

[…] “Is it me or does a Christian’s prayer and a Wiccan’s spell sound really, really similar…both in practice and intent?” -Jeffrey, Shadows of Love Spread It Around: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]

Christians have a relationship with God. We are allowed to approach God because of the blood of Jesus.

Many prayer rituals of Christianity do mimic the religious rituals of pagan practices because Christianity absorbed those practices when we absorbed those people.

Gods from old religions became “saints”, candles lit in pagan rites became altar candles and bells rung to summon or dispel spirits moved into church steeples.

The simplicity of Christianity is found in Christ’s words. “ask and it shall be given, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened.”

The lighting of candles, the ritual prayers of the liturgical church, the burning of incense, the ringing of bells are all ingredients we use out of habit or custom. They are not required by God.

thanks for expounding on the origin of some of those practices KC.

do you have any insight as to where the idea that if we “all pray together”, “pray enough times”, etc, about something that those things somehow have an affect on whether God honors that prayer or not?

[…] Are Prayers and Spell-Casting the Same? Filed under: My Imaginary Friend is Better Than Yours — Aunt B. @ 5:07 pm Via Brittney, I find Jeffrey asking In a recent conversation, a new acquaintance of mine said something to the affect of, “Religion only divides the spiritual, but it is all the same essence.” She meant that whether you call yourself a Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Wiccan, etc, we’re all talking about the same essence. […]

do you have any insight as to where the idea that if we “all pray together”, “pray enough times”, etc, about something that those things somehow have an affect on whether God honors that prayer or not?

Ohh boy. Don’t get me started on a tirade that will go into why I think Frank Peretti’s “This Present Darkness” is a hideous malformation of Christianity or why so many Christians mistake God for a cosmic vending machine that just occasionally eats your change.

I may end up going into it more over at my blog so as not to hog your comments, but the basic answer to your question is this:

The modern church has managed to be both far more pagan and far less spiritual than it should be. In our rush to sanitise the Church from being sullied by any actual religious experience we’ve turned it into a cultural ghetto.

As I said, our relationship with God is intended to be just that. A relationship. Paul talks of Jesus being our High Priest. Those aren’t just words. Jesus’ death created a mystic bridge whereby we humans can engage directly in a communication with the Divine. Hence some of Satan’s anger with us. He strove to be like God and failed. We, ironically, have a closer communication with God than Satan ever could.

Unfortunately in our rush to strip all mysticism out of the Church, we’ve also stripped most of the power out of our relationship with God. We’ve turned God from a mystical communicant into a sort of sugar-daddy.

Prayer always gives us answers, but mostly by opening our minds to that bridge of communication with the divine. We aren’t to be praying toward directed outcomes. “Ask and it shall be given” is often misunderstood to mean that if you ask hard enough, long enough or loud enough for a car or a pony or a baby or a new job you will get those things–and if you don’t get them, well you just didn’t do your best askin’!!!

That’s wrong. Very wrong. The act of asking is an act of engaging God. In talking WITH God (as opposed to yelling AT God) you achieve an understanding about what He wants for you. You may not get the car or the pony or the baby or the new job, but you will see how your life is a better one for you than what you thought you wanted.

Many of the “health and wealth” teachers of this present false age have seized upon this heresy. As a devout Christian with chronic illness I’m convinced by God that one of the very purposes of my illness is to act in testament against the false teachings of those who would say that you are only sick because you didn’t pray hard enough. Or that you are only poor because you didn’t ask God for money.

Our prayers are not about acheiving OUR desired outcome. They are about remaining in constant communication with God. God then gives us the eyes with which we can see Divine Wisdom play out in our earthly circumstance.

[…] May 14th, 2007 by Katherine Coble Jeffrey started this conversation over at his blog, not knowing that he’d strike at least three of my nerves simultaneously. How can I ignore any conversation that deals with […]

Prayers of petition are only one kind of Christian prayer. We also practice prayers of thanksgiving (although probably not as often as we should). A third type of Christian prayer is mental prayer or meditation that is practiced in order to build a closer relationship with God. Christian prayer is a lot more complex and diverse than most people know. I would suggest reading the article on prayer at the Catholic Encyclopedia. You can find it here.

thanks for the info and link, Marc. sorry for it taking a while to get your comment up here. the spam filter thought you were trying to slip through for some reason…good ole Akismet.

I’ll check out that link soon.

Jeffrey,
I cannot begin to speak on behalf of Wiccans or spell casting, but I can only answer this based on the Word of God and my own personal experience. The Word of God clearly shows again and again that prayer made a difference in Old Testament times and New Testament times. And I know that prayer in Jesus’ name in my life has transformed my life, circumstances and sometimes the people around me. Does it make a difference when two or more are gathered? Well, the Bible clearly states that when two or more gather together in prayer, it makes a difference (Matthew 18:20 - Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them). I can attest to huge answers to prayer when I prayed with others about something. As an example, a few years ago, our marriage was not in a good place. My prayers alone did not seem to be making a difference. I and several others began getting together weekly to spend time praying for our marriages and our husbands. We used scripture as the basis for our prayers. The transformation that happened in our marriages, ourselves and our husbands were huge. Was this coincidence? I think not. This is just one example of how I have seen God demonstrate His power over and over again through prayer. If it is a coincidence than I suppose that my life is a series of coincidences. Jim Cymbala’s books ‘Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” , “Fresh Faith”, and “Fresh Power” transformed my prayer life. I recommend them highly.

hey maria! how are ya? wow I didn’t know you knew of my blog.

As you can see (or even if you couldn’t), I’m playing a little devil’s advocate here on this post.

As i was writing this post I as thinking of the conceptual similarities in the wiccan spell, christian prayer, new age visualization, and more.

Do you have any ideas as to how evangelical christians came to believe that God responds and moves more readily when numerous people pray the same thing? Or does that mean we can manipulate God? Does it mean that God cares more about the masses than the individual?

I’m not being sarcastic or cynical, those are just some questions that come to mind when I think about prayer…as I was brought up to believe it.