(This is the first in a series of posts discussing the problems of confusing Christian prayer with magical incantation.)
God’s people have always been tempted to confuse prayer with magic. Bible readers will recall the Old Testament warning that the people of Israel steer well clear of witches, sorcerers and magicians (Deuteronomy 18:10).
Such warnings admit that the the temptation is real. Impotent temptations are easily ignored, so warnings are unnecessary. Only powerful allurements receive their own warning signals well in advance.
Magic is one of those.
Unfortunately, human nature has not changed. Today’s church shares the same tendencies as ancient Israel in its predisposition to blend piety with (sometimes sizeable) doses of magic, to turn intercession into incantation.
The warning against magic is not only for us to stay away from the corner-store medium, crystal ball gazer or the neighborhood séance (though it
certainly includes those temptations, too), but to respect the boundary separating Christian prayer from magical practices.
Human beings have always been characterized by impatience, impetuousness and an addiction to material goods such as wealth, power and success. This triumvirate of the tawdry conspire to stir up the human desire for control over God (or whatever spiritual forces we happen to believe in).
The Christian church is no different.
In any gathering of human beings, we will always find an amalgam of the good with the bad. In any Christian congregation, we can see maturity and immaturity, faith and unbelief, genuine prayer and unadulterated magic masquerading as devotion – often as a more attuned, more insightful, deeper brand of devotion.
In my book, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer 
(Baker, 2006), I tell the story of a fourth century church father, John Chrysostom, who publicly commends an elderly woman in one of his sermons for refusing to resort to a magician’s help as she watched her only son die of an illness.
Placing all of her faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, whom she believed was the one and only spiritual power listening intently to every one of her prayer requests, she waited to see what Jesus would do, regardless of the outcome.
Obviously, not everyone in Chrysostom’s congregation was as single-minded in their devotion as was this grieving mother. That’s why he held her up as exemplary, the model of prayerful devotion that every other congregant should emulate.
Here’s the question: Will we hold faithfully to Jesus, even when he says “No” to our most feverish requests?
Every Christian in the ancient world knew exactly where they might turn for a little extra help, especially in times of crisis, if their prayers remained unanswered, if their pleadings and petitions needed a power boost, some additional “uuumph” to speed them on their way to God’s throne.
Find a magician, perhaps a “Christian” magician.
There were lots of them available and plenty (or so it seems) of Christians went to them for help, especially when God’s apparent deafness put the
entire process of Christian prayer in doubt. Check out the book Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (Harper, 1994) and read an ancient collection of magical “prayers” for yourself.
The 4th century pastor, John Chrysostom, was addressing a serious problem for his congregation. It remains a serious problem for the church today.
The shape of modern Christian magic in the developed world may have changed, but the substance of Christian magic remains the same in both the developed and undeveloped nations. Magical thinking permeates the church in a variety of ways, but it becomes especially evident in (a) the techniques that we teach people to use when they pray and (b) the role of faith that we urge them to embrace.
This is the first in a series of posts that I hope will help my readers to distinguish between Christian prayer as taught in the New Testament and magical prayers bastardized by the human penchant for quick solutions, visible results and the nurturing of a feeble faith that never wishes to be tested.
