REPLAY: The Rise of Millennial Witches
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Summary
In this episode of Relatable Monday, we discuss a recent cultural trend, a controversial tweet from Richard Dawkins, and what the Bible has to say about it all. We also talk about the implications of eugenics.
Transcript
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Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. So for
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those of you who have missed Theology Mondays, you are in luck today. We are going to be talking
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about two things that have happened. One cultural trend and then one thing that a very famous
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atheist said and we are going to see what the Bible has to say about these things, what truth
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has to say about these things and to analyze how we should take a look at these two phenomenon from
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a phenomenon. I think that is the plural form of that from a Christian perspective and we're not
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talking about the primary today. You might be wondering how can you skip on something so big
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that just happened. The reason that we're not talking about the Nevada caucus or Nevada caucus,
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one of you from Nevada messaged me and said that I said Nevada and that was the wrong way to say it.
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So the Nevada caucus is because I'm actually recording this the week before. So as I'm
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recording this, I don't actually know the results. So I don't, I'm not a prophetess. And so I don't have
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the ability to be able to guess what is going to happen then. But on Wednesday, we will talk about
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that. We will break that down and all that good stuff. But for today, we are going to look at one
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central theme and that is the effect and the inherent nonsensical nature of godlessness.
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discount that is promo code blaze at genesis950.com. Okay, let's get into all this. So I want to talk
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about something that Richard Dawkins, he is a very famous atheist, something that he said on Twitter
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that caused a lot of uproar, not just from Christians, not just from conservatives, but from
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people all across the spectrum. And we'll talk about why. So he said, it's one thing to deplore
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eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It's quite another to conclude that it wouldn't work
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in practice. Okay. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs, and roses. Why on earth
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wouldn't it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology. So people freaked out about this. Now I will say
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it has a 25,500 likes and 4,000 retweets. So there were some people who thought that,
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Hey, this is a really good idea. I'm so glad that Richard Dawkins brought this up, but it did get
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ratioed. It got a ton of replies from people saying, why would you say this? What was the point of saying
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this? This is totally just something that we didn't need to see today was one tweet that I, that I saw.
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And of course I agree with that, but I'm actually glad. I'm glad that he said this because he is
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saying the quiet parts out loud, which is why wouldn't we? What's, what's wrong? He doesn't
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say this part and I'll get to this in a minute, but really for the atheist, what is wrong with
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eugenics? So eugenics, the process of basically breeding out any kind of imperfection. So breeding
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out any kind of disability, whether it be autism, whether it be, uh, you know, down syndrome,
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uh, spina bifida, any of those things, trying to create a perfect human race. So people could
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jump higher, could run faster, could be smarter, whatever. Obviously this was endorsed, uh, by Nazi
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Germany to try to create a perfect Aryan race. And so it doesn't really have the best history,
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but here we've got Richard Dawkins, his gift to us on his Twitter was to say, you know,
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eugenics would probably work. Now when people freaked out and the reason why people freaked
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out across the ideological spectrum is because it doesn't matter what your political background
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is. Everyone knows someone with special needs. Everyone knows someone who is imperfect because
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we're all imperfect in some way. And when you think about some kind of higher government
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power deciding who is most valuable, whether it's based on race, whether it's based on sex,
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whether it's based on your IQ, uh, some kind of other cognitive ability or personality, whatever
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it is, if we get to the point to where you can even start to determine all of that kind of stuff in
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the womb, um, is it possible to be able to cut out a portion of the human race that doesn't fit
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this arbitrary standard of perfection that some kind of bureaucratic power, uh, decides upon, uh,
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the reason why we freak out is because we all know someone, maybe even ourselves that probably
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wouldn't fit into that arbitrarily, arbitrarily decided definition of perfection. So people freaked
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out at him. People started replying and saying, you know, this is ableist. This is bigoted. This could
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be racist. This could be sexist. Of course, all of this is true. We've seen what the one China or
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one, the one child policy did, uh, in China, where you've had thousands and thousands and thousands
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of aborted babies up until the point of nine months old. That's not just a, you know, a hyperbolic,
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a scare tactic. That is true. You should watch the documentary one child policy. I think it's on
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Amazon prime. It is extremely eyeopening. Uh, so we've seen the effects of at least if it's not
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called eugenics, eugenic type thinking and eugenic type policy, uh, people don't like that. Whether
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you are on the right or the left, whether you are a Christian or you're an atheist, it kind of makes
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you feel icky because it is all of the things that the left says that they don't like. It is
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condescension based on some inherent quality. So the color of your skin, the type of ability that
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you have, uh, the sexual organs that you have and the right doesn't like it for the most part,
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because we believe at least Christian conservatives believe that human beings are made in the image
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of God. And therefore we are inherently valuable and not just inherently valuable, but inherently
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more valuable than any other species. And so we are against the idea of eugenics. We don't believe
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in some kind of perfect human race. We don't believe that people are more valuable based on their
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capability, based on their talent, based on their cognitive ability. We believe that someone
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who is, um, completely physically disabled and totally mentally disabled, someone who needs help
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to do everything physically, mentally, uh, is unable to emote. We believe that that person is inherently
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and infinitely more valuable than the most capable, the winningest horse, uh, or any kind of animal that
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you find capable or majestic or valuable. Any kind of human being, regardless of their capacity,
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regardless of their capability, regardless of their accomplishments, the Christian believes
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is inherently and infinitely more valuable than any other member of any other species. However,
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uh, if you are an atheist, although there are a lot of atheists that say what Richard Dawkins says,
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you know, that's so gross. Why would you even say that? I'm completely morally against this.
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Here's the thing. And here's the point that I want to make. The atheist really has no reason
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morally to be against this. And Richard Dawkins, I think knows this, but he lives in this crazy,
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constant state of contradiction and paradoxes in his mind where he pretends to be a moral person.
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He pretends that righteousness, objective righteousness exists. He pretends that an objective
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good exists. And yet he, uh, denies the existence of a standard bearer. He denies the existence of, uh,
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an objective moral arbiter. And yet he purports that some kind of objective goodness and objective
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badness does exist. And we see that. So he was very frustrated that people were ratioing him,
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that people were saying, why would you even say this? And he said, for those determined to miss
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the point, I deplored the idea of eugenic policy. I simply said, deploring it doesn't mean it wouldn't
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work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher,
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but heaven forbid that we do it. So he is trying to back up and say, whoa, I'm not saying that we
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should do it. I'm saying that we could do it, that we have the capability to do it, but
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I'm totally morally against it. First of all, if that's true, why even bring it up? Like there,
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yes, sure. There are lots of things that people could do, but we don't talk about it. And we don't
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say, uh, we don't say, Hey, just FYI, everyone, this morally reprehensible thing is possible,
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but we shouldn't do it. Why even bring it into the conversation? But he thought that this was a good
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enough thought, not just to consider in his own mind, not just to say in private conversation,
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not to, uh, you know, I don't know, talk about privately in some other way or write a article
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about, he actually thought that, you know what, this is good enough to tweet and to go out there
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and to make sure that people share and like, and see thousands of times. That's how highly he thought
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of this consideration that he held in his mind. And then he realized that human beings, whether Richard
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Dawkins wants to admit it or not, are all inherently moral because we are made in the image
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of God. And so whether or not we deny objective morality, all of us as image bearers of God have
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this, uh, have this instinct in us when something is wrong, when something is icky, when something we
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know is, uh, corrupt or depraved, and we're not even sure why that speaks to the fact that we are made
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in God's image that all of us have an objective morality that is buried, uh, deep inside us that
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God gave us that when he realized that, Oh yeah, people reacting this way because they don't like
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this because they have a higher view of the human race than this. He backs up and he has, Oh no, no,
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no, I don't, I don't think that we should do this. This is no, this is wrong. This is wrong. And here's
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the question. Why, why is it wrong for Richard Dawkins, who is an atheist for any atheist that
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is mad at Richard Dawkins saying that we should, uh, or that we could do eugenics. If he said we
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should do eugenics, why would any atheist be mad at that? Uh, if you believe in evolution, like if you
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believe that we came from the big bang, that that is, that we are just one grand cosmic accident,
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if you believe that human beings have no inherent value outside of our capability,
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if you believe that we are no more important than any other animal, in fact, we are just animals.
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Like if you don't believe that we have souls that give us value, if you don't believe that we are
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made in the image of God, if you don't believe that there is at least at the very least a higher
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power that is saying, this is the objective standard of right and wrong, then why, why do you
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believe that eugenics is wrong? What, what would be wrong with it? If you believe in survival of the
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fittest, then why not create a human race? According to atheist thinking, survival of the fittest thinking,
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why not create a human race, um, that has the best capabilities, the largest capacity for success,
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the largest capacity for health? What is, what is wrong with that? And then that just goes to the
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bigger question. What is morality? What is a should or shouldn't? Because the fact of the matter is,
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um, in the atheist worldview, there is no objective should or shouldn't beyond what you feel or beyond
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what advances the human race. According to the atheistic thinking, everything that we feel,
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everything that exists, um, exists, or everything that we do, we do because it at one time helped our
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ancestors survive and carry on. Uh, if that is the case, what to you is wrong with eugenics? Not even
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speaking about the fact that actually there's a lot of studies that say eugenics wouldn't work with
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the human race because we're actually a lot more complex than an ape or some other animal, but that's
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the question. What is a should, what is a shouldn't? What is a moral right? What is a moral wrong?
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If you do not believe that there is a moral arbiter, if you do not believe, as C.S. Lewis said
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in mere Christianity, a grand, a supreme moral lawgiver. And it's funny because Richard Dawkins,
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obviously he famously denies the existence of God. And then he goes on to say that it's wrong,
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that it's wrong, that we shouldn't do eugenics with human beings. Well, why? Why not?
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Why? If you are an atheist, why not? If you don't believe that there is any inherent value in human
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beings beyond what they can do, what would be wrong with creating a perfect human race? But
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atheists exist in this world of paradoxes that they cannot reconcile because they are unwilling to say
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why they believe in a morality, why they believe in a right and wrong, why they believe that there is
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any kind of objective standard of righteousness or goodness or decency. Now they do, they do believe
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in morals. They do have standards. As Richard Dawkins says, he does think that eugenic policy
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is wrong, but he can't tell you why. And that's the problem with a large portion of the scientific
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community and even the technological community is that the capability to be able to do something
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scientifically or technologically with technological innovation grants a lot of people in that
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community the license to actually do it. So it's never a question of, is this good for people? Is
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this good for society? But can we do it? And if we can do it, then we will do it. And so I find
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Richard Dawkins's argument very weak. That's his argument that we can do it, but we shouldn't do it
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on the basis of nothing except for feelings. I just don't find that very compelling. I would love for
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Richard Dawkins to give a good argument for why morally it is wrong to do what he is proposing
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we can do and not use some kind of higher standard of morality that is given by a higher standard bearer
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and not use that as the basis of his argument. It's just impossible. Again, if you believe
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that the only standard of morality is what has ever advanced humanity, starting with our ancestors
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to now, then you're going to have to answer that question. What's the reason? I actually had an
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atheist reach out to me not that long ago. And he was like, you know, I am an atheist. I'm kind of
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an agnostic. And I've pondered this question forever of where I get morality, why I believe some
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things are right and some things are wrong. And I don't know. I just kind of feel it.
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To me, that takes so much more faith. I mean, atheists laugh at Christians all the time for
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having the belief in the things that we do, or they laugh at anyone who believes in God and just
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says, oh, that's, you know, I get this a lot. Oh, just your sky daddy, which is just a funny phrase.
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And you just believe in this fairy tale book and this fiction. Well, you, your beliefs honestly take a
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lot more faith than mine do. Now, I don't know if that's objectively true, but it takes faith. It
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takes faith to believe in the atheistic worldview that we're all just doing everything that we're
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doing for basic survival and based on feeling. I don't believe that. I believe that we were all
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made in the image of God and therefore we've all got the same instinct for morality and this all,
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all the same instinct against the things that God calls bad. Now we are sinful human beings. We are
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fallen human beings. And so we resist that. And without Christ, we are dead in our sin. And so we
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don't know which way is up. That's how you get someone like Richard Dawkins purporting this kind of
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stuff and the other crazy things that he puts forward. But I think that that is a much more,
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a much more formidable idea than the idea that we're just all kind of moving along by some
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accidents and figuring out morality as we go. I think that's just a little, a little bit too far
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fetched for me. But this is the nature of godlessness. The nature of godlessness is confusion. Thankfully,
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according to the Bible, Christians serve a God of peace, not a God of confusion. And without God,
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you constantly see confusion. You constantly, you constantly see contradictions. And we're going
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Allie, A-L-L-I-E. So here's a trend that I've been wanting to talk about for a long time,
00:20:03.620
and that is the upward trend of witchcraft that is very prevalent among young women. So you and I,
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all the young women that are listening to this podcast, and I are the target audience for witchcraft
00:20:19.280
these days. Now, it's not the witchcraft of yesteryear. It's not the pointy hats, like hocus
00:20:25.880
pocus type thing, where people have this, like, you know, steamy cauldron, and they're putting,
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I don't know, chicken feet and sawed-off fingers into it and casting spells from a spell book from
00:20:38.520
1482. That's not what witchcraft looks like today. It looks a lot trendier. It looks a lot prettier.
00:20:45.920
It looks a lot lighter. It looks a lot more fun. It looks like a bunch of celebrities that we really
00:20:51.920
admire circling up and setting their intentions for the year. And if you're thinking, oh, that's
00:20:58.960
not witchcraft at all. You are just being dramatic. Well, I want to read to you from an article. This is
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the reason why I'm talking about this from The Atlantic titled, Why is witchcraft on the rise?
00:21:11.640
So we are going to kind of analyze that article and talk about what it says about witchcraft,
00:21:16.800
what it says about our society, what it says about godlessness, and then what the Bible has to say
00:21:21.340
about all this stuff. Because I think a lot of us, we're just kind of wading through culture and
00:21:25.520
letting culture happen to us. We're letting society evangelize to us. We're letting society share its
00:21:31.600
gospel with us. And before we know it, we find ourselves accepting these things without even
00:21:36.620
realizing it. Like, we don't, you know, say the prayer that society wants us to say and walk down
00:21:43.640
the aisle that society wants us to walk down and accept society as our Lord and Savior. We don't do that
00:21:50.220
in an obvious way or in a deliberate way or even all at once. But over time, it's like the frog in
00:21:58.240
the boiling water. We start to believe the things that society is telling us. That certainly is what
00:22:03.260
has happened with the whole self-love culture, with the whole trendy narcissism culture is what
00:22:08.180
I call it. That Christians have started to believe the gospel of self that is being propagated by the
00:22:15.600
world. And we have started sounding like the world rather than the world sounding like us. So when you
00:22:21.680
see churches talk about, oh, you are enough, you just need to love yourself before you can love other
00:22:26.860
people. If that sounds suspiciously like every secular non-Christian artist and non-Christian,
00:22:37.620
you know, outlet resource that you know, that you read, that you follow, that's because the church,
00:22:44.060
unfortunately, has been evangelized to by the world for so long that we have started sounding like
00:22:49.520
the world. And so as Christians, it is our obligation. It's our responsibility. It is our
00:22:54.440
privilege. It's our right to push back against that with truth and truth that is so much better than all
00:23:00.720
of that self-love crap. Sorry if you didn't want your kids to hear that word. That's exactly what it is.
00:23:07.640
It's trash. So I want to talk about how witchcraft being on the rise is actually connected to the
00:23:14.580
gospel of self, this world of trendy narcissism that is so popular, that is so pervasive in our
00:23:21.160
world today. And you might be thinking, no, no, no, Ali, at least self-love is pure. It is the culture
00:23:28.240
of self-love is about motivation. It's about taking charge of your life. At least it works. Witchcraft
00:23:33.600
is dark. It's of Satan. It's not the same at all. Well, remember what we've talked about on this
00:23:38.760
podcast is that there's no such thing as neutral ground. There's no such thing as neutral ground.
00:23:43.540
So Ephesians 2 says that Satan is the prince of the power of the air. He has real power here on
00:23:49.620
earth. And even though we as Christians know that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the
00:23:55.140
world, Satan does have real power. And so there's no such thing. Satan would like us to believe that
00:24:00.680
there's neutral ground that, okay, some of the things that aren't biblical, that the world says
00:24:06.580
they're not necessarily wrong. They're not necessarily sinful. They're not necessarily
00:24:10.600
bad. They're just neutral. We can just take them. I think self-love falls into that. It might not be
00:24:16.480
biblical. The Bible might not tell us to love ourselves, but no, it's not satanic. It's not
00:24:21.200
from hell. It's not demonic. It's not that it's just neutral. Well, again, like the frog in the pot of
00:24:27.380
boiling water, we just start to accept all the neutral stuff until we are full blown into the
00:24:32.300
world. And we sound exactly like every non-Christian friend that you've got talking about how much we
00:24:37.320
love ourselves and how we can save ourselves and all of that absolute madness. And here you get
00:24:42.720
witchcraft. Okay. So if you don't think that witchcraft has become trendy, if you think I'm
00:24:47.540
exaggerating, I'll give you some examples. So it's been, uh, it's become really cool to call yourself a
00:24:52.400
witch. So creating altars, burning sage astrology. Yes. That is part of this casting spells. They've
00:24:59.140
all become something that young girls have gravitated toward as a form of rebellion, as a
00:25:04.040
form of self-empowerment. It is very intertwined with feminism. The history of witchcraft, you can
00:25:09.380
read that anywhere is very intertwined, uh, with female rebellion. Cosmo published an article a couple
00:25:16.080
years ago titled influencer witches of Instagram. These are women on Instagram who have hundreds of
00:25:21.140
thousands of followers teaching people to be witches, um, commercializing witchcraft. And so
00:25:26.460
offering their services for some sort of payment, young women who, uh, young women on Instagram,
00:25:32.340
they, they claim that they can help you cast spells, manifest your intentions. Now that's something
00:25:38.260
that you've probably heard from people who don't claim to be witches, uh, read your future, help you
00:25:43.020
understand your Zodiac signs, your birth charts, how to cleanse your space. It sounds like witchcraft
00:25:48.620
is identical to all the new age stuff that your friend from spin classes into. That's because it
00:25:54.780
is. Uh, so here are three recent articles published by Teen Vogue. Love spells and the basics of love
00:26:00.660
magic. How to do magic and other questions you might have about being a witch, uh, a witch's guide to the
00:26:07.400
new year, practical magic, 2020. Here's one in Cosmo. How to date a witch. Now, uh, interestingly,
00:26:13.940
all of these articles that I just listed, and I just kind of went through looking for recent, uh,
00:26:20.520
witch and witchcraft articles, all of these articles are written by the same person. Uh,
00:26:24.820
her name is Lisa Stardust. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's probably not her real name,
00:26:30.220
but that is what she goes by. Here's what she says in her Cosmo article. My parents were new age
00:26:36.060
junkies and our bookshelves were filled with bright and glossy iridescent tomes about astrology,
00:26:42.240
meditation, crystals, and ways to use spices to boost magical vibes with titles like the complete
00:26:48.580
book of magic and witchcraft, uh, crystals and healing and, uh, astral projection. I don't even
00:26:55.060
know what that is, but before this sentence, she says, I guess I was born witchy. And the reason why
00:27:00.840
she believes that she was born witchy and born into a witchy family is for the reasons that she
00:27:06.080
lists. So from a witch, she is saying that there is a connection, uh, uh, between witchcraft and new
00:27:12.580
age meditation, astrology crystals, uh, the using of spices to boost magical vibes. Okay. And so this
00:27:21.600
is not just me saying that there's a connection between all the new age, uh, self-empowered,
00:27:27.100
self-centered, self-focused stuff that we see in witchcraft. This is coming from a self-proclaimed
00:27:32.220
witch herself. So I just wanted to, I just want you to hear the words of a witch making that
00:27:38.840
connection. The episode that I did with Doreen Virtue a couple of weeks ago about the dangers
00:27:43.120
of the new age. It's extremely pertinent, uh, to the conversation that we're having today. And if
00:27:47.960
you have not listened to that, I highly recommend that you do. It's actually the most listened to
00:27:53.260
episode. It's only been out a couple of weeks, the most listened to episode of relatable dangers of
00:27:58.240
the new age with Doreen Virtue. The reason why it's the most listened to is because it is so
00:28:02.920
relevant to everything that's going on in the lives of young women, everything that's going on
00:28:07.100
in social media and pop culture. I highly recommend you go listen to that, whether you're
00:28:11.640
a young woman yourself, or whether you've got a daughter, a sister, or a friend that you think
00:28:16.140
that it would be relevant to. I really recommend it. Um, I came across the article, like I said,
00:28:21.220
uh, in the Atlantic, which really made me start thinking about all of this. Why is witchcraft on the
00:28:25.700
rise? And I found it fascinating. So we're going to go through that now and why it matters to us
00:28:31.940
and what the Bible has to tell us about all of it. So this article is by Bianca Bosker. So she's
00:28:37.440
talking to this witch influencer and someone who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars,
00:28:42.980
apparently selling her witchy, uh, services. This is what the article says. Uh, Diaz sells anointing
00:28:48.860
oils and intention infused body products in her online store and instructs more than 8,900 witches
00:28:55.420
enrolled in her online school leads witchy workshops that promise to leave attendees
00:28:59.880
feeling magical AF. Uh, in 2018 Diaz, the author of the bestselling book, witchery embrace the witch
00:29:06.460
within earned more than half a million dollars from her magic work. So what does that tell us?
00:29:12.280
That tells us that witchcraft is lucrative. Uh, but for, but over the past few years, witchcraft is
00:29:18.180
what the article says long viewed with suspicion and even hostility. It's so funny. The attitude of
00:29:23.840
this article, like all the people that are angry at witchcraft are in the wrong has transmuted into
00:29:28.800
a mainstream phenomenon. So what we see here is that is, it is pervasive. Uh, witchcraft is not
00:29:35.800
just lucrative, but it's also pervasive. 2014 Pew Research Center, uh, report suggested that the
00:29:42.960
United States adult population of pagans and wiccans was about, uh, 730,000 on par with the number of
00:29:49.360
Unitarians. I wonder if there's any crossover there. Uh, these days Diaz told me everyone calls
00:29:55.980
themselves a witch, which is so true. There are so many young women who think it's cool to call
00:30:01.440
themselves a witch. So not only is it lucrative, not only is it pervasive, uh, it's also popular and
00:30:07.900
that's a little bit different than pervasive. So it's trendy and that's all of the cool people
00:30:12.900
nowadays are calling themselves a witch. She said, being a witch, this Diaz person said,
00:30:18.460
being a witch is listen to this, an embodiment of her truth in all its power. That's how this
00:30:25.340
self-proclaimed witch describes what being a witch is. So that's the second witch that we have heard
00:30:31.380
reiterate a phrase from this world of self-help and self-love and self-focus. Uh, that is, we wouldn't
00:30:39.080
automatically identify as being witchcraft, but this is what she says. Being a witch is an embodiment
00:30:44.960
of her truth in all its power. How many well-meaning, uh, fitness gurus, lifestyle bloggers,
00:30:53.980
motivational authors, even Christian teachers. Do you hear saying things that reflect directly
00:31:01.080
what this witch is saying being a witch is? Uh, she said among other magic practitioners,
00:31:07.600
a witch might embody a religious affiliation, a political act, a wellness regimen, hot new Luke,
00:31:14.300
or some combination of the above. Uh, the Instagram's reigning witch influencer, this
00:31:21.220
article says Brie Luna has more than 450,000 followers, has collaborated with coach with
00:31:26.660
refinery 29 and smash box for which she recently introduced a line of cosmetics inspired by the
00:31:32.660
transformative quality of crystals. Now, something that Doreen Virtue and I said, and we pointed out
00:31:39.040
the same thing as essential oils, crystals, oils, God made both. There is nothing inherently wrong
00:31:45.360
with crystals. There's nothing inherently wrong with oils. Oils might have some kind of calming effect on
00:31:51.560
your life and you know, that's all good. You might like the smell of it, whatever. That's fine. God made
00:31:56.860
these things. They're not impure, uh, in and of themselves, but using them for some kind of healing
00:32:02.540
power. Of course, we know that is paganism. That is idolatry. That's some sort of pantheism thinking
00:32:08.300
that God is in everything and in everyone. That of course is not a biblical perspective. You can go to
00:32:16.160
Sephora, by the way, there is a witch, uh, like startup kit where you can buy, I don't even know what it
00:32:23.340
is. Sage, crystals, uh, oils, different kinds of things to manifest your intention. So this stuff
00:32:30.720
is very commercialized. It is lucrative. It is pervasive. It is popular. It is commercialized.
00:32:37.560
All of those things kind of, uh, tie together. So just in case you doubted that this is mainstream,
00:32:43.760
doubt no more. It is. If you are a mother and you, your daughter is on social media, she's in the age
00:32:50.800
where she could be influenced by this stuff. Just make sure that you're paying attention and just be
00:32:54.880
aware of the fact that the stores that you go to, that the accounts that you follow, that the
00:33:00.620
celebrities that you like, or that she likes, uh, they are going to try to one in one way or another,
00:33:06.540
whether it's through the elevation of the self or outright witchcraft, they are going to try to
00:33:12.040
influence her, uh, influence her in this way. The, the, uh, article also talks about the wick of faith.
00:33:19.020
And I think it's interesting that it refers to it as a faith. This is something that does require,
00:33:24.500
uh, an amount of faith and an amount of belief in absolute lunacy. The belief in witchcraft is so
00:33:30.840
widespread and so enduring that one historian speculates it's innate to being human. That's
00:33:36.200
what this article says. And I would say that's true. I would say our fallen nature, um, seeks to
00:33:43.300
distort what God has made a desire for him. So he, God made us to need something higher than ourself,
00:33:53.460
to need a power that's higher than ourself, to be in not enough inherently to, uh, desire help,
00:34:00.880
to desire salvation, to desire some kind of power, to desire some kind of refuge. And we can only find
00:34:09.340
that reliably in him. We can only find that ultimately in him. But when we reject God,
00:34:15.240
because, uh, we hate God, that's what enemies of God do. Everyone who is not in Christ is an enemy of
00:34:21.380
God. And whether they say it or not, they hate God because they are in enmity with God, which is what
00:34:26.560
the Bible says, uh, then they are going to, uh, look towards another power in order to help them.
00:34:32.860
That is what we are created to do. So this article is correct. This historian is correct.
00:34:36.940
It is innate. Witchcraft is innate. It's just a distortion of a God-given desire for something
00:34:43.000
higher than ourselves. Um, this is also important for us to note that this includes, so the latest
00:34:49.680
witch Renaissance coincides with a growing fascination with astrology, with crystals, with
00:34:54.900
tarot cards, uh, which like magic practitioners consider ways to tap into unseen, unconventional,
00:35:01.160
unconventional sources of power, which of course, that is exactly what it's about. What we just said
00:35:06.140
to tap into unseen sources of power, uh, astrology guys is not something that Christians should ever
00:35:14.740
be a part of. Like you don't need to know your zodiac sign. I'm sure we all do know our zodiac
00:35:19.220
signs. I remember when I was little, I didn't know, you know, that any of this stuff was bad.
00:35:23.280
And I was like, Oh, I'm an Aquarius. That's so exciting. But I remember my mom telling me at some
00:35:28.340
point that that's not something that we, uh, that we care about. That's not something that we read
00:35:32.920
about. That's not something that we're fascinated by Christianity and astrology does not go hand in
00:35:39.780
hand. They cannot coincide. They're completely perpendicular to one another. If we see this
00:35:45.420
in an article about witchcraft over and over again, that astrology, your birth chart, all of that stuff,
00:35:52.700
your zodiac sign, which I guess is within all of that. If we see that perpetually as being claimed
00:35:59.540
by witches, it should at least make us take a step back and say, Hmm, maybe this isn't something
00:36:04.980
that I should be a part of. Anytime you go to anything other than God, uh, for power, for self
00:36:13.280
understanding, for healing. Um, now that's not to say that God can't give us medicine or God hasn't
00:36:20.700
allowed medicine to be invented. Of course, uh, these things can be gifts of common grace, but when we go
00:36:27.640
to something outside of biblical Christianity and we go to something outside of God and the things that
00:36:33.900
are, he has given us for their intended purpose, we end up with idolatry. That's exactly what
00:36:39.600
astrology is. You're looking for some kind of power. You're looking for some kind of direction. You're
00:36:44.040
looking for some kind of wisdom, some kind of insight, some kind of self understanding that is
00:36:48.760
meant to be found in God. Uh, all of the things that we truly seek ultimately underneath them all
00:36:56.140
is a desire for God, a desire for true salvation, for true wisdom, for true direction, for true purpose,
00:37:02.880
for true meaning to truly be filled. We are going to false idols like astrology, uh, to find those
00:37:09.720
things. And you'll notice that people who are obsessed with astrology, they're very unsatisfied.
00:37:15.160
Like they're constantly looking at new astrology posts. Like they're constantly looking at new
00:37:20.660
insights. They're constantly trying to find a way to fit this, uh, Zodiac reading that really doesn't
00:37:26.880
align with their personality at all. Like really doesn't align with their life at all. They're
00:37:30.720
trying to constantly find a way to make it fit in to their life so they can keep putting their faith
00:37:36.840
in it. Because again, we are made to put our faith in something and it feels more tangible to them.
00:37:43.100
It feels more like they're able to control it. And astrology is all about you. It's all about why
00:37:48.820
you're special. It's all about your life. This is another reason why witchcraft is so popular,
00:37:53.500
because it's about you, empowering you, freeing you. Uh, and the Bible, Christianity is not about
00:38:00.680
that. It is about denying yourself, taking up your cross and following Christ. As Philippians 2 says,
00:38:06.520
it is looking at others as more important than we look at ourselves, honoring others more than we
00:38:12.920
honor ourselves, helping others at our own expense. And that is the opposite of what something like
00:38:20.860
witchcraft is for. Witchcraft is all about what can, how can you reign the powers of darkness
00:38:26.020
in to help you to manifest the successes that you want? And if you are thinking, wow, that kind of
00:38:34.700
sounds a lot like the prosperity gospel. That's because it is, um, there was a really interesting
00:38:40.800
article in, in outlet called the American interest. And, uh, it talked about AOC and AOC releasing her
00:38:49.340
birth chart. So let me read this more importantly, however, AOC's gambit taps into the way. So she
00:38:54.740
tweeted out her birth chart. That's the context, uh, taps into the way in which progressive millennials
00:38:59.180
have appropriated the rhetoric imagery and rituals of what was once called the new age from astrology
00:39:05.100
to witchcraft. So again, we see astrology associated with witchcraft as both a political and spiritual
00:39:10.860
statement of identity for an increasing number of left-leaning millennials, more and more of whom
00:39:15.720
do not belong to any organized religion. Occult spirituality, isn't just a form of personal
00:39:20.580
practice, self-care with more sage, uh, rather it's a metaphysical canvas for the American culture,
00:39:28.020
wars in the post Trump era, pitting the self-identified Davids of seemingly secular
00:39:33.360
progressivism against the Goliath of nationalist evangelical Christianity. So this really creates
00:39:41.720
an intersection of all of the things that we talk about. Now, this is not to say that everyone on the
00:39:46.080
left, everyone who's a Democrat, everyone who is anti-Trump, uh, is engaged in witchcraft. I'm not
00:39:51.660
saying that, but this is why it matters for Christians to care about politics. This is why it matters for
00:39:57.900
Christians to have a holistic worldview, why it matters for us to care about what's going on in
00:40:03.360
culture and why we should allow the Bible to inform all of these things because they are connected.
00:40:09.980
They're always connected. Our worldview, how we view God, how we view the self, it affects everything we
00:40:16.240
believe, including politics. So let me, let me, uh, read that again. So for an increasing number of
00:40:23.460
left-leaning millennials, many of whom do not belong to any organized religion, occult spirituality,
00:40:30.000
occult spirituality, isn't just a form of personal practice, self-care with more sage. It is a
00:40:34.740
metaphysical canvas for the American culture wars in the post Trump era, pitting the Davids of secular
00:40:41.360
progressivism against the Goliath of nationalist evangelical Christianity. As an aesthetic, as a
00:40:47.940
spiritual practice, this article says, and as a communal ideology, contemporary millennial witch
00:40:53.320
culture defines itself as the cosmic counterbalance to Trumpian evangelicalism. Isn't that interesting?
00:41:00.580
Progressive occultism, the language of witches and demons of spells and sage of cleansing and bad
00:41:05.620
energy of stars and signs has become the de facto religion of millennial progressives. The metaphysical
00:41:11.480
symbol set threaded through the worldly ethos of modern social justice activism. I mean,
00:41:17.340
this is just everything we talked about in this podcast. Its rise parallels the rise of religious
00:41:22.140
nuns. That's N-O-N-E-S, which we've also discussed on this podcast. And with them, a model of spiritual
00:41:28.080
and religious practice that's at once instant in intuitional and atomized. Marie Claire's, uh, this is how
00:41:35.920
real life resistance, which is say they're taking down the patriarchy and broadly is how the socialist
00:41:42.540
feminist of which use magic to fight capitalism proves exactly what this article in American
00:41:49.280
interest is talking about. Um, this stuff is connected to politics. It's connected to the
00:41:57.200
godlessness that we see rising among millennials. It's connected to, uh, the SJW movement that we see
00:42:04.080
that is so prevalent in millennials. It is this glorification of self. It has to do with the
00:42:09.060
entitlement that a lot of young millennials see. It has to do with the trust in the government
00:42:13.100
rather than God that we see among millennials. This is whether you want to call it witchcraft or
00:42:18.420
not. It's just the effect of godlessness that we are always looking to put our faith in something
00:42:24.260
and people feel that they can put their faith in magic and that it's going to help them manifest
00:42:29.060
the successes in their lives. Um, this is also something that we see with Jennifer Aniston. She talked to
00:42:36.000
the New York times about a goddess circle that she's been doing for 30 years that it's some kind
00:42:41.020
of spiritual routine that you'll probably see across your Instagram with a lot of celebrity
00:42:46.600
influencers that, you know, you sit in a goddess circle and you're supposed to manifest some sort of
00:42:51.020
magic. You've got sage burning. You've got all these kinds of rituals that are supposed to manifest
00:42:56.160
the success in your life. And of course, Jen Aniston might say that this has been very effective for her.
00:43:01.960
She obviously has a lot of success, a lot of money, but it doesn't matter whether or not this
00:43:07.180
stuff is effective, which by the way, it might actually work because Satan is real and demons
00:43:12.260
are real and the power of darkness is real. And so people might get the things that they are
00:43:17.460
manifesting. People might get the things that they have set intentions for. They might get the things
00:43:21.940
that they did a candle service for or read tarot cards for. I mean, Satan is very real and he very much
00:43:28.820
works and he might give people the things that they cast spells for or whatever or use witchcraft
00:43:34.300
for in order to get them to keep following him. But guess what? All this stuff leads to hell. It leads
00:43:40.440
to hell forever. And so, yes, it might attract some people. It might give you some success for a little
00:43:47.080
bit. It might be effective for a little bit, but the place where it leads is not a place where any of us
00:43:54.300
want to go. And so this is not neutral ground. This is not something that Christians ignore. This is not
00:43:59.960
something that we say is just harmless. We say this is a path that leads to eternity in hell and a place
00:44:06.980
where no one wants to go, a place where we don't want any of our friends to go, the people that we
00:44:12.200
love to go. It doesn't matter if people are happy with it now. People say, well, it's happy. It makes me
00:44:18.320
happy or it works or I've been successful or I've manifested these things. It doesn't matter whether it's done
00:44:23.460
these things. The fact of the matter is, is that it can't save you and in fact, damns you. It's not
00:44:28.760
that this in particular damns you. It's that your lack of faith in Christ, which has led to these
00:44:34.500
things, condemns all of us. This is what the Bible has to say about witchcraft. Deuteronomy 18, 9 through
00:44:41.000
12 says, when you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable
00:44:46.080
ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire.
00:44:52.220
So against child sacrifice, that's good. By the way, let me just say in Uganda, where witchcraft
00:44:57.660
unfortunately is very pervasive, they have had a terrible epidemic of child sacrifice.
00:45:06.000
There's been a very stark uptick, a very sharp uptick in child sacrifice in Uganda over the past
00:45:13.340
10 to 20 years because of these witch doctors that come through in villages and say, you know,
00:45:17.820
we'll pay you X amount if you sacrifice your child to us. And so they literally take these
00:45:22.460
children, they kill them, rip their hearts out. Well, maybe I shouldn't get so graphic.
00:45:27.140
Sorry, if you need to turn this off, you've got kids in the car, but it's probably too late for that.
00:45:31.400
Cut their limbs off, cut their genitalia off, and they offer it to whatever gods they think
00:45:37.200
they're worshiping as a form of witchcraft because they think it's going to give them good luck or power.
00:45:41.600
That's obviously not working out very well for them, but working out very well for these
00:45:45.940
evil witch doctors who are making money off of all of this. So this is the God of the universe
00:45:53.760
telling his people thousands of years ago, we're not supposed to do that stuff that's still going
00:45:58.860
on right now. So no one should sacrifice their son or daughter in the fire. There should be no one
00:46:04.660
who practices divination or sorcery, no one who interprets omens, no one who engages in witchcraft
00:46:10.540
or casts spells or who is a medium or a spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these
00:46:15.920
things is detestable to the Lord. So even though Christians don't follow all of the cleansing laws
00:46:21.460
that God has in the Old Testament, we still follow his moral laws. We can still look at the principles
00:46:26.560
that he put forth for his people in the Old Testament and say, that's the same God. That's the
00:46:32.700
same desire that he has. It's the same principle today as it's ever been. God doesn't want us to
00:46:37.340
have anything to do with witchcraft. Exodus 22, 18, you shall not permit a sorceress to live.
00:46:43.300
So it was a death penalty for people who practice witchcraft. Leviticus 20, 27, a man or a woman who
00:46:49.480
is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones. Their
00:46:57.040
blood shall be upon them. First Chronicles 10, 13. So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith
00:47:02.500
with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord and also consulted a medium seeking
00:47:08.180
guidance. So Colossians 5, 16, 24 says this. So this is the New Testament now talking about all
00:47:15.880
the things that God has, that God has been saying since the beginning, that we should have no part
00:47:21.820
in the unfruitful works of darkness. The New Testament reiterates this Colossians 5, 16 through 24.
00:47:27.420
But I say, walk by the spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh for the desires
00:47:34.040
of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh for these are
00:47:38.920
opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the
00:47:43.620
spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh, here we go. Now the works of the flesh
00:47:49.060
are evident. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of
00:47:57.760
anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn
00:48:04.780
you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
00:48:11.560
But the fruit of the spirit, and this is the verse that most of us know, the fruit of the spirit is love,
00:48:17.400
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against
00:48:22.020
such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
00:48:28.260
passions and desires. So typically we just extricate verses 22 through 23, say these are the fruit of the
00:48:34.920
spirit and we don't pay any attention to the stuff around it. Equally as important, maybe not equally
00:48:39.840
as important, but very comparably important, as important to the fruit of the spirit are the fruit
00:48:46.640
of the flesh, the fruit of darkness, which is idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy,
00:48:52.580
fits of anger, all of these things. And witchcraft, being sorcery, is included in all of that. And so if
00:48:59.760
you are of the flesh, Paul is saying, the Holy Spirit through Paul, you are going to have an affinity
00:49:04.880
for the works of darkness. You are going to have an affinity for things like sorcery, an affinity for
00:49:09.600
things like witchcraft. So if you are a Christian who is taking part in any of this stuff, you need to ask
00:49:18.120
God to give you the power to repent and you need to have nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with
00:49:23.820
astrology, nothing to do with mediums, nothing to do with tarot cards, nothing to do with ascribing power to
00:49:31.580
crystals, ascribing power to oils that are not inherently there that God did not intend. And any
00:49:40.200
other thing, any of us may be doing, and I'm evaluating my own life, anything that we are doing
00:49:46.080
that is giving power to things or giving power to the self in a way that God did not intend. The
00:49:52.000
through line through the new age, through the self-empowerment, self-love stuff that we are hearing by
00:49:58.300
people who did not purport to be witches, the through line between witchcraft, new age, self-help,
00:50:03.700
self-love, self-care. That's not to say that getting your nails done is bad. People always ask me about
00:50:10.320
that. But the empowerment of the self, the focus on the self, the similarity between witchcraft and that
00:50:16.620
and the new age, the way that it all comes together, the through line is the self. Anything that empowers
00:50:23.640
the self that tries to elevate the self to the place of God, whether it's through sorcery and
00:50:28.880
witchcraft and mediums and tarot cards and these intention setting candle ceremonies, whatever they
00:50:35.260
are, or any kind of motivational mantra that tells you to believe in yourself, to save yourself, to
00:50:41.640
discover yourself, to fulfill yourself. The through line is the self and that is Satan's lie. And it has
00:50:48.680
been the lie since the very beginning. That is the same lie that he gave to Eve in the Garden of Eden.
00:50:57.340
Don't submit to God. Submit to yourself and you will be like God. And he was partially right. Satan is
00:51:03.140
always partially right, by the way. Satan is always partially telling the truth. Eve did become like God
00:51:09.280
in knowing good and evil. But the consequence of her sin was suffering and physical death. And in elevating
00:51:14.740
the self, whether through traditional self-help or female empowerment or out great witchcraft,
00:51:19.160
you might find success. You might lose weight. You may get in a relationship, but that way is the wide
00:51:23.980
gate that leads to a place that none of us want to go. So Satan saying the same lie that he always had
00:51:31.580
since the very beginning shows that he is cunning, but he's not creative. He is insistent, but he is not
00:51:39.840
innovative. He has the same lie dressed up in a million different ways, some seeming more neutral
00:51:45.420
and some seeming darker than others, that we as Christians are obligated through the wisdom of God
00:51:50.780
to be able to point out and to resist with all of the strength the Holy Spirit can give us. Read Ephesians
00:51:56.380
6 and see the armor of God that he gives us through Christ to be able to fight these battles. Again,
00:52:03.580
there is no neutral ground. The time has come and gone for Christians to be able to accept
00:52:09.800
mainstream messages as having any sort of redeeming value in them. The time has come and gone for us to
00:52:16.920
be able to not pay attention. The time is come and gone for us to be apathetic. We have to care.
00:52:23.080
We have to pay attention. We have to know our Bibles and we have to be able to confront these cultural
00:52:28.340
messages with the truth of God. So I don't think that we should constantly be looking at the world of
00:52:36.160
witchcraft and we should constantly be observing the works of darkness that are happening in the rest
00:52:40.840
of the world. I think, frankly, all we need to do is to know our Bibles, to pray hard, to be aware of these
00:52:47.300
things, to be as innocent as doves, to be as cunning as a serpent in that, to be as knowledgeable or to be as
00:52:55.960
knowing, to be as perceptive as what the Bible says a serpent is like. So that's our responsibility
00:53:05.160
as Christians, to know that this stuff is going on, to not worry about it because, like I said earlier,
00:53:10.200
he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world and we know that Jesus is going to defeat
00:53:15.500
Satan once and for all, that he is going to rule in perfect peace forever, that we don't need to have
00:53:20.180
anxiety about any of this stuff. We don't need to have fear about any of this stuff because we have the
00:53:25.560
power of Christ within us and because of that, we are enslaved to righteousness. We are empowered to
00:53:31.980
do righteousness. We are ambassadors of Christ. We are the aroma of Christ. We are givers of light.
00:53:38.220
So we don't need to worry about this stuff, but we do need to be aware that it's happening. We do need
00:53:42.480
to fight darkness with the light that Christ has given us and we need to make sure that we are not
00:53:49.080
being apathetic and we are not being complacent and we are not the frog in the boiling water accepting
00:53:55.140
the messages of self-empowerment, not realizing that it's just a witchcraft-like lie from the pits of
00:54:02.820
hell. So that was a really long podcast. I should have just done the witchcraft stuff, but you just
00:54:07.940
never know how long I'm going to go. Okay. That's all I have today. I'll be back here on Wednesday.