Magical Thinking vs. The Mind of Christ
One of the challenges Christians have faced since the Church’s infancy is magical thinking. Christianity has always sternly rejected magic even as it has dogmatically affirmed the miraculous, while the world has often looked on, scratched its head and asked, “What’s the difference?” Sometimes the confusion has led to charges of sorcery against saints (as, for instance, with Joan of Arc). Sometimes it has led to the belief that Christianity is just another magical mystery religion. Sometimes it has led to bad teachers in the Church treating prayer as a kind of magical spell. What it never leads to is anything good. So what do we mean by “magical thinking”?
Acts 8:9-11 shows us one of the first encounters between the gospel and magic in the early Church. It tells of the encounter between Simon Peter and a magician named Simon Magus.
Simon Magus was a Samaritan who wowed the locals with magic. Then, one day, a Christian evangelist named Philip came to town and astonished everybody with his preaching of the gospel. Scripture says, “Even Simon himself believed, and after being baptized he continued with Philip. And seeing signs and great miracles performed, he was amazed.” When the Church in Jerusalem got wind of it, Peter and John were dispatched to lay hands on these new believers so that they would receive the Holy Spirit. In short, we are seeing the first evidence of the sacrament of Confirmation in the New Testament.
In those days, the fruits of Confirmation could be pretty dramatic and included all sorts of signs and wonders, as well as speaking in tongues and so forth. And that is where things got interesting, because Simon Magus, seeing all this, went to Peter and offered him money to give him the power to do what, for him, was a display of magical power. Peter rejects his appeal with fire:
“Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.” (Acts 8:20-23)
The story concludes with Simon Magus begging Peter to pray for him, not that he find the grace to repent his sin and obey God, but that “nothing of what you have said may come upon me.” He becomes the first of many Christians seeking deliverance from consequences, not deliverance from sin--because he thinks in terms of selfish power, not love. In short, Simon Magus imagines we are punished for our sins, not by our sins.
What can we learn from the sin of Simon Magus?
To begin with, it is for Simon Magus that the Church names the sin of “simony”: the attempt to sell or purchase the grace of God, usually with money.
But there are other forms of simony as well. Because, in truth, any attempt to exchange goods and services for grace is a form of simony. And the heart of that is what I mean by “magical thinking”: the attempt to control God and create an alternate reality by our human will and word.
The essence of magical thinking is not preternatural power from demonic or occult forces (though it may or may not sometimes involve that). It is, rather, the desire to be able to create reality apart from God. In other words, it is a diabolical parody of the doctrine of creation.
In Christian understanding, the Triune God speaks reality into existence by the power of the Word. As John says:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.(John 1:1-3)
The creative Word is God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, incarnate in Jesus Christ. It is by his power that Reality exists.
In contrast, the claim of all magical thinkers is that they can, by the power of their merely human words, make things that are not so to be so by the mere triumph of their will.
That’s why Jesus warned, “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:7-8). You cannot jaw God into loving you by your eloquence, nor can you force him to obey you. He already loves us. Our task is to receive and cooperate with his love, not generate it or overrule it.
Similarly, you cannot talk God into loving you by being a good boy or girl. God loves you freely already. The effort to make him love you is, in fact, one more attempt to gain power over him, to say, “If I am good, then God owes it to me to do the things I demand he do.” This “transactional” view of buying and selling the love of God is at the heart of Simon Magus’ thinking. With it often goes the corollary that those who suffer “must have had it coming”—something that can lead to poisonous pride in those who have comparatively easy lives.
But as the completely innocent Jesus shows, terrible things can happen to good people: things which can, in the end, be understood not as a sign of God’s anger at them, but of his mercy and blessing as they heroically bear the sins of others. Our Lord is the archetype and model for every innocent martyr: God didn’t kill Jesus; we did. But God took what we meant for evil and exalted Jesus, making his passion and death the means by which he saved the world.
In short, we can no more increase God’s love by our word and will than we can make the sun shine brighter. Nor can our sins dim his love for us. They only make it harder for us to see it.
Simon claimed to be “that power of God which is called Great” (Acts 8:10). In short, he was a liar like Satan, who is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). For in the end, the claim of both was the same: they both rebelled against God and attempted to usurp his place through power, not love.
Magical thinking’s link to the lust for power is evident whenever we see great liars whether human or demonic. So, for instance, Stalin had meteorologists shot for counter-revolutionary weather forecasts because he willed that nothing stand in the way of his Five Year Plans for the Soviet economy. Instead of addressing the actual created world that God made—which included the actual weather--he tried to create an alternative reality with wilful lies and violence. The weather, however, did what it did anyway despite Stalin’s word of command that reality be otherwise. Because Stalin was not God.
Similarly, Hitler moved imaginary armies around on maps in his bunker as the Soviets closed in on Berlin, trying to lie out of existence his gigantic failure as a world conqueror. Like the father of lies, he lied himself into believing in the triumph of his will, only to learn at last that he could not lie Steiner’s non-existent army into being with his human word. He famously raged at his generals for trying to tell him the truth, but no matter how loud he screamed, he could not create armies ex nihilo. Because Hitler was not God.
Nor, of course, are we God. We cannot will into being what God has not allowed to exist, nor destroy what God wills to be. So we can ask for things—even miracles—within certain limits. But we cannot pray in direct contradiction of God’s revealed will, for God is God and not our personal genie.
This is why we cannot pray that JFK not be assassinated, that the Vietnam War not happen, nor that God permit us to murder somebody we dislike. In all these cases, we know what God has willed either because he has told us (“You shall not murder” – Exodus 20: 13) or because the course of human events tells us that this thing occurred and God is not a time machine who allows us to change the past.
Recent events in American electoral politics are also a demonstration of this. When somebody clearly wins fair and square and the Department of Homeland Security tells us the election was “the most secure in American history”, it’s over. Prayers that it not be so have left the realm of cooperating with God and entered into the magical notion that we can overturn the revealed will of God by pure will and magical incantations. God has revealed his will through the course of human events. Our task is now to cooperate with God, not try to muscle him with magic.
Simon Magus can be thought of as the diabolical parody of Simon Peter. The former exalted himself as great and had to learn humility. The latter knew himself a failure and was exalted by Christ. The former sought power, the latter gave it away freely, as Jesus did.
The best way to avoid Simon Magus’ mistakes? Imitate Peter as he imitates Christ.
