Do Christians believe that witchcraft/occult really works? i.e. ouija boards, psychics, palm readers, tarot cards, black magic, white magic, seances, contacting the dead, new age spirituality, etc.
I've heard Christians say that demons can allow it to work. So are demons real?
Some Christian parents don't allow their children to read/watch Harry Potter - perhaps because they think there is some kind of reality to witchcraft.
First, is the command of God, which is not to mess with such. That's the first and foremost thing: God said don't do it, so don't do it.
Second, practicing magic is an appeal to something other than God. The very real question to ask is if such things be, then by what power?
Third, there can be something there that's not of God. That alone makes it bad. It's best to avoid such.
Here's something to consider, something told to me by a Christian: She had just become a convert to Christ when she heard a screech owl nearby. There was a local superstition of how to make a screech owl stop hollering and she briefly considered it, but then concluded that was in the same category as trying to work magic. I think she might have pointed out that was trusting in the superstition rather than God. Even though I'm convinced the superstition has no effect on screech owls, the very act is saying "I trust this more than I trust God."
On
Harry Potter: Our children were young during the
Harry Potter craze, and we thought it best not to go there. After one was grown, they told us they had read the books and didn't think they were bad. I blew their mind when I agreed. The problem wasn't so much the books as the interest in such that it can generate, especially among those too young to realize that it can be a dangerous thing. During the height of the
Harry Potter popularity, a retail store sold a wand-making tie-in that also included "spells" to say over it. That went beyond the book and I used it as an example of why we didn't have
Harry Potter books in our house when they were young. It wasn't the books as much as where it could lead.
Really, this isn't something that should not be played around with. Whether someone believes something is there or not, at the very least it causes a trust in something other than God.
