Faith Not Magic

Christianity is not magic. There are many that talk of a belief in Christ as if it is a mystical/magical experience. It is not. It is about faith. Magic implies that one has a certain power to "conjure" or affect change on some unseen power not yet documented by science. There are formulas, incantations, techniques and manuals for performing magic. Christianity is not about having the right words to say or doing a sacrifice on the right day. There is something called Orthopraxis, or right practice, but that is wholly different from magical ritual. If anything the practice of the Christian faith is necessarily flawed, not that we should not attempt to practice, but rather it is not humanly possible to acheive the totality of Christian practice, hence the need for Christ.

Really Christianity is about relationships. First and foremost is one's relationship with God. Any acts that God chooses to perform are expressly of his will, it is not the perfection of ones prayer which binds God into a certain action. It is not explicitly the taking of Communion that restores ones soul to its natural place. God gives us what he does because he wills it to be so. Now that being said, God makes promises. He promised Abraham that he would be a father of nations, Abraham had faith AND God accounted that faith to him as righteousness. I think the last part is important. Abraham was not a particularly great man, he was not someone which special spiritual powers, he just believed what God said. It was God that made Abraham righteous because of Abraham's belief. I want to qualify the word "because" in that last sentence, it is not a strictly causal relationship. God chose to honor Abraham's faith, for God's own reasons. This is a personal relationship that typified by one party honoring something from the other side. I think of the way that I want to do things for my child, I see him smile and I want to talk to him, even baby-talk to him. My infatuation with my little boy is exacerbated by his cuteness, but his cuteness is not the cause of my attention to him. I still choose to attend to him and there are times when I must focus my attention elsewhere, like now when I am not in the same place as my child. He can be as cute as he wants to be right now, but I will not be able to attend to him -- so his actions aren't causal. In the same way, Abrahams actions are not causal, God and Abraham had a relationship, and God chose to honor Abraham.

In the same way that God honored Abraham, he honors us as Christians. We are told to break bread in remembrance of Him, and we do. There is nothing magical about the act, but God honors our symbol of faith, because he said he would. It is not the preist that makes the bread and wine into Christ's body, it was Christ when he said, "This is my body... This is my blood", he honors us through out time because we keep his imperative, "Do this in remembrance of me". When one takes Communion in a disorderly way(without preparation of ones heart and mind) they are not fulfilling the command(and I say command in a qualified sense, like mitzvah, a command which should be followed through with joy) "Do this in remembrance of me." Rather they condemn themselves through delusion, they profane the Eucharist by treating it like magic, like the act of taking the bread and wine is what matters, not like they should be actively reaching out to God, seeking to change, and become closer to God. That delusion while it may seem like it has no consequence is dangerous, it is what removes the soul from Christianity. It is a reduction of a relationship with God, to a practice of religion. This is what Jesus rebuked the Pharisees about, they performed all the rituals, but not because of their faith in God, not because they wanted to understand and become closer to God, but because they thought that if they kept the commandments that they were righteous. This brings us back to Abraham, he was not called righteous for his actions, but his faith. Granted his faith affected his action and as James wrote in his epistle, "faith without works is dead", but it is not the place of humans to judge the works of others. We can advise or try to correct others, but we should not judge others unworthy or worthy because of their actions. There are many people that do good things for the wrong reasons and while that does not taint the quality of their works, it does not mean that they are good people. Conversely, there are many who cannot help but do bad things, or at least undesirable things, though they have the best of intentions. There may not be excuses for their actions, and every person should bear the consequences of what they do, but one should exhort those who do bad things to do good things and also to bear the consequences of their poor choices.

Anyway, I reached a little beyond my intended scope. My point is that Christianity is not meant to be a secret religion where one advances to levels of greater understanding or power. It is the development of self-knowledge and knowledge of God, through a life long working relationship with God. If God grants us a blessing it is his will, but not a result of some set of prescribed actions we take. Rebuke those who say things like "tithe and you will become rich", "Just pray and you will be healed". Those things may happen, but only if God sees to do so. God is not our genie, or our servant, if he serves us it is out of his compassion for us, not because we have said the right prayer 50 times. For our part, imagine us as the child in a parent-child relationship. A good parent is not going to abandon their child for being bad, but they aren't going to be happy about it. A good child works to please their parent, and while the standards of what a child might be able to do don't meet up with what a parent could do themselves(like a mishapen arts and crafts project or a poorly drawn picture), a parent enjoys gifts from their children, they enjoy seeing their child help out around the house, or try to do chores despite what they might have missed along the way. A good parent enjoys those things AND they work with the child to do those things more perfectly. God is working with use to do everything more perfectly but He finds great joy in seeing us try to do good, emulating His example.