Day 081, Thursday, Oct. 31
Leviticus 20:1 – 22:16 Click here to read
One of the drawbacks of using a Bible reading schedule is that it doesn’t usually align with either the Christian calendar or the secular calendar…but once in a while it does!
Before I noticed that these chapters would appear on Halloween, I had decided to focus on 20:6, “I will set my face against the person who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute himself by following them, and I will cut him off from his people.”
Similar passages appear throughout scripture, usually in lists of laws. Yesterday’s reading included some other common terms for the same offense in 19:26, “Do not practice divination or sorcery.”
There are a lot of good reasons that dabbling in the so-called “dark arts” is a bad idea, but I’ve always suspected the greatest damage is from the lack of faith in God that it reveals.
At its core, divination or sorcery or going to a medium has one purpose: a desire to influence the future. At the extreme this could be seeking a spell or potion to change the natural course of history, but more commonly it is just seeking knowledge of the future in order to get a jump start on reacting to what is going to happen.
For a God whose frequent command is “follow me,” the idea that we have to know the destination first shows a lack of faith.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:25, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.”
People who aren’t worried about the future don’t feel the need for a sneak peek.
Tuesday we talked about releasing our sins to Christ’s forgiveness; that is about letting go of the past.
God also calls us to let go of the future.
A surprising number of people today still believe in some kind of divination that allows glimpsing into the future so that they can control it, or at least prepare for it.
And that lack of faith isn’t just shown by belief in horoscopes or other supernatural phenomena. As we’re in the final days before the election, the headlines every day are about the latest polling numbers. However statistically sound and dependable they are, those are just another way we try to know the future in advance so that we can direct our own lives rather than trusting God to lead.