I Love Witchcraft

By Michelle Angel (a very dear friend)

I love witchcraft.

Yes, in my heart is the sin of the love of witchcraft. Now before you envision me with a pointy hat dumping vials of animal organs into a boiling pot, let me expand....THAT *kind* of witchcraft is disgusting. Appalling. Forbidden!

What I confess to loving is the subtle, sweet, princess fairy tales where Cinderella is turned into a princess through witchcraft and *gentle* sorcery from her fairy godmother, Belle lives in a magical castle that is cursed, and Rapunzel utters demonic incantations with her magical hair.

But wait! Aren't those just kid movies? Yes. Yes they are.

And I grew up watching them.

And I loved them.

And because of my lack of discernment, my kids grew up watching them.

Awhile ago we lost Tangled. It was a gift we received at Christmas, (possibly purchased by me) and I wasn't sure where it scampered off to. Well, a few days ago the kids found it and my daughter started singing along to the magical song. I was HORRIFIED.

I said "Mikayla! Honey, you can't sing that! She's using witchcraft and a demonic incantation to heal Eugene. We can't watch this any more."

In fact, we couldn't watch almost ANY of our Princess movies anymore, as we couldn't think of ONE that didn't use magic, spells, incantations or curses to promote the girl to royalty. And how many more promoted witchcraft? It's one thing if the Villain is using sorcery and they are evil, and the children know they are evil...but what about when the hero/heroine is using it? We just can't have these types of movies anymore.

But THROW THEM AWAY??? That's just crazy.

Extreme.

Unreasonable.

Or is it? The Lord strictly forbids witchcraft of any kind. FORBIDS. So why do I find it so easy to overlook my favorite Disney movies and make an exception for those? Aren't we self proclaimed Christians?? Don't we profess to Love Jesus with our whole hearts? Then why in MY heart do I find it so difficult to rid our house of our love for godless, pagan, magical movies, like....Sword in the Stone? Peter Pan? Beauty and the Beast?

What IS witchcraft, anyway?

Simply put, it is wanting to be a spiritual "mover and shaker" without submitting to God. James 3:15 Such "wisdom" does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil.

Revelation 22:15 Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

Witchcraft is one of the tools Satan uses to lure people away from God. And in my case, it has already worked, since "giving up" several childhood movies seems downright impossible, maybe even unnecessary. Why is it so hard to give up something so meaningless anyway?

All the rest of the day I wrestled with God about our childhood Disney movie collection. My conversation went something like this:

"They're *just* kid movies. They *just* have a little bit of witchcraft/magic/sorcery in them! That's harmless, right?

Right, God?

God?

.....It's sin? Well, can't I just keep a little bit of it?"

And God says, "Are you really asking ME, the HOLY LORD GOD if it's okay to keep a little bit of your sin?" "Please God, won't you just let me keep a LITTLE BIT of my sin? It's warm and soft and comfortable here...with my childhood nostalgia, my popcorn and my sorcery filled Disney movies...that mock Your Holiness and are opposite of Your ways..."

And so the conversation went down with the kids the next day.

There were tears.

There were questions.

("Why did you even let us HAVE those movies if you knew they were bad, Mom?")

There was repentance

...As the children and I got down on our knees before the Lord and asked for forgiveness.

For placing things as an Idol before Him.

For being a willing party to witchcraft which is despicable in the Lord's sight.

For aligning ourselves with Satan in the form of our entertainment and nostalgia.

For not discerning these things SO MUCH SOONER.

The kids rid our collection of MANY movies.

Even the utterance of any "magic words", MUST GO, my kids decided.

I confess, they were more strict than I was... which shames me.

Our idols will be dealt with.

It is no sacrifice.

The Lord is gracious and merciful to us as we seek to purify ourselves before His Holy throne, so that others may see us and proclaim that He is the Lord.

He forgives our sins!

He heals our brokenness.

Joy comes with the morning.

And so does new movie shopping.

 

Are you a Peeping Tom?

Here is an article written by Stacy McDonald at Your Sacred Calling.

This is a small excerpt from Randy Alcorn’s book, The Purity Principle.

Suppose I said, “There’s a great-looking girl down the street. Let’s go look through her window and watch her undress, then pose for us naked, from the waist up. Then this girl and her boyfriend will get in a car and have sex–let’s listen and watch the windows steam up!”
You’d be shocked. You’d think, What a pervert!
But suppose instead I said, “Hey, come on over. Let’s watch Titanic.”
Christians recommend this movie, church youth groups view it together, and many have shown it in their homes. yet the movie contains precisely the scenes I described.
So, as our young men lust after the girl on the screen, our young women are trained in how to get a man’s attention.
How does something shocking and shameful somehow become acceptable because we watch it through a television instead of a window?
In terms of the lasting effects on our minds and morals, what’s the difference?
Yet many think, Titanic? Wonderful! It wasn’t even rated R!
Every day Christians across the country, including many church leaders, watch people undress through the window of television. We peek on people committing fornication and adultery, which our God calls an abomination.
We’ve become voyeurs, Peeping Toms, entertained by sin.

While the movie, Titanic, is old news, there are plenty of movies (and television shows) that would fit this description, and there are plenty of Christian watching them under the catch-all excuse of “Christian liberty.”

1 Corinthians 6:18, "Flee immorality. Every sin that a man commits is outside body, but the immoral man sins against his own body."

Philippians 4:8, "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things."

Our Entertainment

"I am concerned that our reading and our writing is gravitating to the lowest common denominator so completely that the great themes of majesty and nobility and felicity are made to seem trite, puny, pedestrian. . . . I am concerned about the state of the soul in the midst of all the cheap sensory overload going on today. You see, without what Alfred North Whitehead called “an habitual vision of greatness,” our soul will shrivel up and lose the capacity for beauty and mystery and transcendence. . . .

But it isn’t just the substance of what we say (or write or read or hear or see) that concerns me. It is the way we say it. To write pedantically about radiance or infinity or ubiquity stunts the mind and cramps the soul. To find the right word, to capture the perfect image, awakens the spirit and enlarges the soul. Mark Twain noted that the difference between the right word and the almost right world is like the difference between the lightning and a lightning bug. . . The ancient Hebrew prophets cared enough about their message that they frequently delivered it in poetic form. May new prophets arise in our day that will call us to faithful living in words that are crisp and clear and imaginative."---Richard Foster