Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Is There Good Magic and Edifying Sorcery?

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Is There Good Magic and Edifying Sorcery? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Witchcraft and Wizardry Week on the s Pastor
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  Speaker 1: John podcast, Driven by our Bible reading. We begin the
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  Speaker 1: week asking if there's good magic and edifying sorcery. The
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  Speaker 1: question is a popular one about Lord of the Rings
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  Speaker 1: and Harry Potter and fantasy literature in general, and the
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  Speaker 1: question comes to us today from an anonymous woman. Pastor John, Hello,
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  Speaker 1: and thank you for this podcast. I have a question
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  Speaker 1: for you about an ongoing debate among my Christian friends
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  Speaker 1: over whether there's such a thing as good or righteous
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  Speaker 1: signs and wonders done at the command of a miracle worker.
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  Speaker 1: A lot of godly Christians think novels like Harry Potter
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  Speaker 1: and Lord of the Rings are forbidden because they feature
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  Speaker 1: even a good use of spells and sorcery. The mere
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  Speaker 1: existence of sorcery in a novel makes it bad. But
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  Speaker 1: on the other side of the argument, we read in
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  Speaker 1: the Old Testament itself that God's holy men seem to
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  Speaker 1: respond to sorcerers with a matching supernatural per hour, creating
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  Speaker 1: a black and white contrast. We read about all the
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  Speaker 1: incredible things God did at the hands of Moses and
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  Speaker 1: Aaron in the Plague Accounts, which, by the way, we
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  Speaker 1: just began reading today in our Bible reading plan, and
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  Speaker 1: we'll carry on here for a while. Back to the question.
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  Speaker 1: Aaron throws down his staff and it becomes a devouring snake,
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  Speaker 1: the same staff that will cause the nile to become
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  Speaker 1: blood all. In Exodus seven, Aaron holds his staff and
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  Speaker 1: frogs emerge from the nile and taps the ground and
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  Speaker 1: nats cover everything all. In Exodus eight, Moses holds his
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  Speaker 1: staff and hale reiins down on Egypt. In Exodus nine,
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  Speaker 1: uses his staff to rouse the wind to deliver devouring
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  Speaker 1: locusts in Exodus ten. Most famously, Moses lifts his staff
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  Speaker 1: and splits the Red Sea in Exodus fourteen, the same
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  Speaker 1: staff he uses to hit a desert stone to draw
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  Speaker 1: out water in Exodus seventeen, and even recently in the
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  Speaker 1: New Testament, we read about Paul's supernatural response in Acts
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  Speaker 1: thirteen Versus six to eleven, who met a magician with
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  Speaker 1: a form of magic his own, causing a magician to
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  Speaker 1: go blind. Aaron, Moses, and Paul accomplish supernatural feats in
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  Speaker 1: response to their opponents. Should this argument factor into our
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  Speaker 1: fiction too? For appreciating a righteous use of supernatural power.
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  Speaker 2: The debate between the helpfulness or hurtfulness of alternative fantastic
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  Speaker 2: fictional worlds that an author creates, say Tolkien's Lord of
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  Speaker 2: the Rings or Harry Potter series. I don't think that
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  Speaker 2: debate between the helpfulness and hurtfulness of creating worlds like
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  Speaker 2: that is resolved by showing that there are both demonic
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  Speaker 2: and godly uses of signs and wonders in this real
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  Speaker 2: world of ours. It's certainly true that there have been,
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  Speaker 2: always will be deceptive signs and wonders done by the
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  Speaker 2: power of Satan in this real world, and godly signs
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  Speaker 2: and wonders in the name of Jesus in this real
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  Speaker 2: world intended for the confirmation of God's inspired word in
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  Speaker 2: the Bible. But to argue from the use of signs
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  Speaker 2: and wonders in this real world of ours to the
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  Speaker 2: goodness of say righteous sorcery or white magic in a
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  Speaker 2: fictional world where Satan and God are only symbolized but
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  Speaker 2: not present in an explicit way doesn't seem to me
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  Speaker 2: to settle anything, And the reason is that the question
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  Speaker 2: will still be there. Does the fictional fantastic, alternative epic world,
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  Speaker 2: with its different kind of nature and different kind of
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  Speaker 2: SuperNature tend to distract readers from the real world of
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  Speaker 2: real nature and real SuperNature as God and Satan by
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  Speaker 2: replacing this world with a fictional world. That's the question.
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  Speaker 2: Does it help or does it hurt? Whether or not
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  Speaker 2: those elements of sorcery and magic are there. Does the
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  Speaker 2: fictional fantastic, alternative epic world have the literary power to
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  Speaker 2: awaken materialistic, small minded, sinful, worldly, unbelieving readers to the
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  Speaker 2: possibility of a real world of real nature and real SuperNature,
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  Speaker 2: the real world of God and Christ. That's the question.
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  Speaker 2: Does a fictional world of fantastic happenings tend to lead
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  Speaker 2: people away from or toward a real world where water
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  Speaker 2: turns into wine and a real man walks on water,
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  Speaker 2: and lame people really walk, and blind people see, and
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  Speaker 2: five loaves feed five thousand people, and there's a real
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  Speaker 2: resurrection of the and ascending of the King into heaven
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  Speaker 2: a real god man. Does fiction send people there or
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  Speaker 2: distract people from there? That's the key question I think
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  Speaker 2: does fiction help or hurt in seeking to awaken people
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  Speaker 2: to reality, to the reality of God in Christ with
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  Speaker 2: all the strange and wonderful other worldly realities that truly exist.
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  Speaker 2: Creation out of nothing, pervasive providence, great bodies of water
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  Speaker 2: dividing in half, the sun stopping in the sky as heads, floating,
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  Speaker 2: incarnation of God into humanity by a virgin birth, crucifixion, resurrection,
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  Speaker 2: second coming of a sovereign king. Does the use of
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  Speaker 2: language to create an alternative world to tell a story
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  Speaker 2: help awaken people to the supernatural realities that really exist?
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  Speaker 2: Or do they distract and replace that reality? Do they
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  Speaker 2: help or do they hurt? Or Another way to ask
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  Speaker 2: the question is whether the creation of an alternative world
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  Speaker 2: in fiction can effectively communicate truth about the real world
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  Speaker 2: and draw people into it. Can made up reality clarify reality?
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  Speaker 2: Does fiction have the capacity to awaken people to the
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  Speaker 2: truth of the real world? And I think the answer
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  Speaker 2: to that question is some of it? Now why do
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  Speaker 2: I say that, I mean, why am I optimistic about
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  Speaker 2: some of it and pessimistic about others? The first reason
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  Speaker 2: is that I have tasted both. I have been exposed
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  Speaker 2: to fiction that is simply corrupting, not just corrupting immediately
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  Speaker 2: to my morals, but corrupting to my whole world view
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  Speaker 2: by being shot through with a litany of non Christian
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  Speaker 2: assumptions that don't open me to the possibilities of beauty
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  Speaker 2: and truth in this real world, but in fact inoculate
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  Speaker 2: me against them. I've tasted that kind of fiction. I
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  Speaker 2: think we ought to avoid it. And I've tasted fiction,
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  Speaker 2: whether in poetry or short story or novels, that makes
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  Speaker 2: me love, purity, nobility, courage, sacrifice, love, hope, joy, with
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  Speaker 2: the result that when I read my Bible, I am
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  Speaker 2: freshly hungry for reality and touchable by reality with a
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  Speaker 2: capital R. Jesus Reality, God, Reality, Bible Reality. This fiction
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  Speaker 2: hasn't drawn me away from reality, never tempted me to
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  Speaker 2: believe the fictional world was real. I don't believe that
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  Speaker 2: most children don't believe that it was always pointing beyond itself.
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  Speaker 2: It was never tempting me to idolize an alternative world,
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  Speaker 2: but was making me dissatisfied with anything less than the
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  Speaker 2: true God. So that's my first reason for saying that
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  Speaker 2: the fictional creation of alternative worlds may or may not
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  Speaker 2: serve the truth. The other reason is that the Bible,
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  Speaker 2: the Bible, God's Word, uses fantastic fictional visions and images
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  Speaker 2: to serve reality. For example, in Zechariah five. God makes
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  Speaker 2: the prophet see a flying scroll twenty cubits long, ten
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  Speaker 2: cubits wide. This is the curse that goes out over
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  Speaker 2: the face of the whole land. Then he causes him
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  Speaker 2: to see a moving basket.
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  Speaker 1: What is it?
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  Speaker 2: This is their iniquity in all the land. And behold
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  Speaker 2: the leaden cover was lifted, and there was a woman
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  Speaker 2: sitting in the basket. And he said, this is wickedness.
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  Speaker 2: And he thrust her back into the basket and thrust
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  Speaker 2: down the leaden weight on its opening. Then I lifted
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  Speaker 2: my eyes and saw and behold two women coming forward.
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  Speaker 2: The wind was in their wings. They had wings like
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  Speaker 2: the wings of a stork. And they lifted up the
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  Speaker 2: basket between Earth and Heaven. Talk about alternative realities, right, Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: A flying scroll, a basket with a woman in it,
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  Speaker 2: n in wickedness, two women with wings like wings of
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  Speaker 2: a stork. What in the world is all this? This
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  Speaker 2: is God's fantastic alternative visionary world. Zachariah does not inhabit
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  Speaker 2: that world. He doesn't inhabit a world with lying scrolls
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  Speaker 2: and women with wings. This is God's way of communicating
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  Speaker 2: truth about reality by creating images outside ordinary reality, and amazingly,
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  Speaker 2: God has enabled human beings created in his image to
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  Speaker 2: be subcreators, creators of alternative realities fiction, poetry, metaphor epic story,
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  Speaker 2: which have the capacity of awakening readers to reality with
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  Speaker 2: the capital R. My own sense is that the truth
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  Speaker 2: of fiction does not depend on the absence of fictional SuperNature, say,
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  Speaker 2: the absence of white magic, but it depends on how
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  Speaker 2: that is used and how it all fits together. C. S.
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  Speaker 2: Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien wrote about stories about
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  Speaker 2: fairy tales which meant more to them than it does
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  Speaker 2: to us, fictional stories and truth, and I think the
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  Speaker 2: best thing I can do is quote both of them
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  Speaker 2: in turn as to how truth with a capital T
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  Speaker 2: is communicated through fiction or stories made up. Here's Lewis,
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  Speaker 2: The story does what no theorem can quite do. It
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  Speaker 2: may not be quote like real life unquote in the
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  Speaker 2: superficial sense, but it sets before us an image of
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  Speaker 2: what reality may well be like at some more central region.
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  Speaker 1: End quote.
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  Speaker 2: He's Tolkien from his essay that That quote from Lewis
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  Speaker 2: is in an essay called on Stories, and Tolkien's quote
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  Speaker 2: here is from his essay called on Fairy stories. Probably
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  Speaker 2: every writer making a secondary world a fantasy. Every subcreator
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  Speaker 2: wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or
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  Speaker 2: hopes that he is drawing on reality, hopes that the
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  Speaker 2: peculiar quality of his secondary world, if not in all
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  Speaker 2: details are derived from reality with a capital R, or
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  Speaker 2: are flowing from it. If he indeed achieves a quality
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  Speaker 2: that can fairly be described by the dictionary definition quote
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  Speaker 2: inner consistency of reality close quote, it is difficult to
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  Speaker 2: conceive how this can be if the work does not,
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  Speaker 2: in some way partake of reality. The peculiar quality of
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  Speaker 2: the joy in successful fantasy can thus be explained as
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  Speaker 2: a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It
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  Speaker 2: is not only a consolation for the sorrow of this world,
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  Speaker 2: but a satisfaction and an answer to that question, is
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  Speaker 2: it true?
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  Speaker 1: Thank you, pastor John is so good? The imagination stretching
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  Speaker 1: images that we read about in the Bible are God's
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  Speaker 1: way of slighting a spiritual defibrillator over the slowing hearts
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  Speaker 1: of the sluggish. And take the Book of Revelation for example,
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  Speaker 1: which which invites us to see ultimate realities through our
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  Speaker 1: imaginations in breathtaking earth scorching, mind stretching, sin feeding, dragon
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  Speaker 1: slaying Christ centered God, glorifying images that change the way
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  Speaker 1: we think and act and speak. God does that as
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  Speaker 1: we read these images in the Bible. And if you
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  Speaker 1: want more on that point, see my book lit a
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  Speaker 1: Christian Guide to Reading Books, specifically pages eighty eight and
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  Speaker 1: eighty nine, where I go into that and show you
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  Speaker 1: some of the Bible scholars that have made that point
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  Speaker 1: about Revelation changed how I read the Bible forever. In
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  Speaker 1: any event, Witchcraft and Wizardry Week continues here on the
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  Speaker 1: ass Passer John Podcast. Next time, I'm Tony Rank. See
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  Speaker 1: you back here on Thursday.