I am fully in agreement with the great American prophet Stevie Wonder when he says:
“When you believe in things
That you don't understand,
Then you suffer...
Superstition ain’t the way.”
I’m amazed at how often superstition and new forms of divination creep their way into the beliefs and practices of the church today.
Counseling and Psychology
Many times, people will come in for counseling with a therapist or "Christian psychologist” who is schooled in the latest musings of fad psychology. Here are just a handful of ways superstition and even divination have entered many places of “Christian” counseling.
First is EFT (Emotional Field Therapy), also known as Tapping. It is witchcraft — a spirit-based energy practice which is not medically or biologically credible. After all, there are only two worlds: the natural and the spiritual. And all attempts to derive propositional information from the immaterial world are witchcraft. Even the believer (who walks by faith and not sight) is sent to the law and to the testimony to find truth and light (Isa 8:19-20).
Next up: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), in which the one being treated is re-exposed to repressed memories through eye movement. The perceived problem is that your inner connections are stuck in a certain hemisphere of your body, and if I can get you to move your eyes back and forth very quickly while you focus on your trauma, then that gets the "skipping" record "unstuck." Or maybe it makes you vomit. Either way, you feel better while staying stuck. In truth, we know that the only lasting way to have victory over our past is to become a new creature in Christ and let him take our thoughts (2Co 5:17, 10:3-5).
Last is splankna (allegedly the "redemption" of energy therapy). It involves a practitioner who uses "Applied Kinesiology" (which is neither kinesiology nor anything applied) alongside peeps and mutters, turning your body into his divining rod for diagnostic purposes. The truly biblical counselor will use the dividing sword of the word of God to diagnose someone’s root issue (Heb 4:12).
These things are the best that a lost man can do on a good day. Yet there is still an extraction of this superstition which needs to take place in the church (a logical lobotomy if you will). And while we’re at it, there is no "lizard brain" — unless evolution is true. And if you believe evolution is true, then maybe you do have a lizard brain.
Conspiracy Theories
Bible believers are admonished not to be entangled in the affairs of this life (2Ti 2:4). That is the bottom-line. Why? Because we cannot afford to have a distracted soldier on the field. Mark Trotter once said, "The busyness of life takes us away from the business of life." And the business of life is bringing souls into God's kingdom and purpose for eternity.
What can be some of these distractions?
From 1 Timothy 1:4 we see:
Fables — i.e. human conspiracies, and not acknowledging the real conspiracy as the Bible defines it: the world, the flesh and the Devil.
Endless genealogies — the idea there is a hidden, secret truth. This is the same way every YouTuber with a Patreon account portrays the videos on his channel.
Focusing our energy on and teaching about this generations “fables” and “endless genealogies” only brings questions and doubts, not godly edifying (1Ti 1:4).
From 1 Timothy 4:7, we see “profane and old wives’ fables”.
Esau was a profane person because he sold a future inheritance for present satisfaction (Heb 12:16). Fables are profane if they include superstition (or direct divination) from someone in order to get the "key" to who and what is "really" going on. Rejecting the promise of God’s provision and protection in favor of devilish instant gratification.
They are old wives fables if they recycle debunked hash, some of it so old that people have forgotten how debunked it was. Here is an example: "The Jews in Israel are not real Jews. They are of another ethnicity. This includes the Rothschilds. Check the bloodlines." And so the antisemitic blood libel goes on.
The only way to avoid these distractions is by exercising yourself unto godliness (1Ti 4:7). Peter says he did not follow cunningly devised fables. So why do we, I wonder? It displays an inordinate love for this present world.
Popular Christianity
We need to stop "pole-sitting Christianity." I don’t mean the literal fad from centuries ago, in which ascetic Christians would sit atop a column and preach down at the people, but we’ll get into what I do mean in a moment. Why is this phenomenon of pole-sitting even recorded in church history?
Well, God wants to make sure you know that what posed and passed for Christianity at the time of the "Church Fathers" was often not real. This was not the true church, and they did not have true worship. True worship provokes a life laid down for the sake of the cross, not lifting oneself up above the “lesser folk”. These were Christian celebrities who influenced politics (does that sound familiar?). They looked spiritual but were not biblical.
Unfortunately, we still have hyper-spiritual hermits and stylites who write books today, yet have nothing to say to really lead others into biblical discipleship.They do just what the pole-sitters were doing. They give you all kinds of spiritual insights while ignoring or even rejecting scriptural truth. They object to paganism but replace it with a superstition as strong as paganism ever was. There are whole conferences, retreats, rallies, marches and webinars so you can go hear a pole-sitter holy person. Instead, what we really need to be doing is bringing people to worship God for themselves.
In all of these examples, the superstitious practices enter the lives of believers and our church congregations through a slow rejection of biblical authority. If we rightly divide the preserved and inerrant word of truth, we will not fall prey to the lies of false spirituality.
Alan Shelby is the senior pastor of Harvest Baptist Church in Blue Springs, MO and the dean of Living Faith Bible Institute.