What do you think about witchcraft, magic, and sorcery?
That it doesn't exist--it's never existed. It's crucial to understand what the Bible is saying when you see words translated into these in English translations. The problem is we moderns have a set of ideas about those terms that we then insert into Scripture. For example, in the New Testament there is a Greek word, pharmakeia, that is often translated as "witchcraft"; but does that mean that pharmakeia means what we think about when we hear the word "witchcraft"?
Well no. Pharmakeia, in a negative sense, likely referred to making elixirs or concoctions for use in ritual pagan worship/practice. The word is not inherently negative. Early Christians also used it in a positive sense.
St. Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Ephesians, when talking about the Lord's Supper, refers to it as φάρμακον ἀθανασια (pharmakon athanasia), "medicine of immortality".
In a positive sense this word simply refers to medicine or the making of medicine. Which is why we have words like pharmacy, pharmaceutical, pharmacology, etc.
Do you think it is used today? If so, how is it relevant to us Christians? Is there any room for Christians to dabble? If you don't think it has modern application, when did it become irrelevant?
In a modern context, since the early-mid 20th century there have been some various Neo-Pagan/Pagan Revival movements that have appeared, and such movements have taken terms like "witchcraft" and "magic" to refer to their ritual practices.
No, Christians should not dabble in Pagan religious rituals.
In the more fantastical sense of magic as some kind of real power, rather than just religious pagan or folk ritual, well that doesn't exist. Nobody is out here casting fireballs like in Dungeons & Dragons, or waving wands around like in Harry Potter causing actual stuff to happen.
Where things become problematic for Christians is when we, unwittingly, begin to insert magical and superstitious ideas into our religious beliefs and practices. For example, when we start to believe that our prayers are about forcing God to act, or we treat prayer like a kind of magic. Prayer is prayer, it submits us to God, it is about our ongoing relationship with God through our faith and hope in Him; that we depend on Him for our daily physical and spiritual sustenence, e.g. "Give to us our supersubstantial/daily bread" as we read in the Lord's Prayer; that by the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives sanctifying us and conforming us to Christ we pray God's work and will, and that God strengthen us to live in accordance with Himself.
Prayer is not magic, it is to recognize ourselves as being on the receiving end of God's goodness and our total dependence upon Him, for everything.
There are other ways which we can fall into the trap of superstition and wrong ways of understanding God of course. The word "superstition" is derived via Latin translation of the Greek word
deisidaimonia, in Christian writing this word refers to false religion, false spirituality. There are a lot of things, both historically and modern which can probably be classified as deisidaimonia--superstition. When Oral Roberts said that if he didn't get a million dollars God was going to kill him, he was being a grifter and a charlatan, but he was banking on his listeners to be superstitious, to have such a wrong-headed view about God that they would be gullible enough to believe such conartistry.
If you've ever been worried or seen someone that's worried about seeing three 6's next to each other or near each other--that's superstitious thinking. Numbers are just numbers. There is a contextual reason why John writes that the number of the beast is six hundred and sixty-six--and it has nothing to do with the number six (by itself, or repeated anywhere) having some innate power--that is superstition, that is deisidaimonia.
So superstition is a problem, it causes us to live in fear and dread rather than in hope and faith; it makes us believe all kinds of wrong things.
-CryptoLutheran
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