Thank you for sharing these insights, please keep throwing up these “thought balloons”. Like you said in your book “unclean”, “magical thinking is very often carried over into the life of the church” and “tends to override reason.” I have experienced in my own walk and observation of my own spiritual formation process parsing out the difference between Biblical teaching and magical thinking has been incredibly fruitful. As a youth pastor I am trying to think carefully about your observations and translate them to teachable practices that will help my young people.
This is a fascinating piece, lots to think about. I've been thinking recently about the difference between different levels of technological complexity in the devices and tools we use. It seems that simple mechanical objects work more like a hard magic system with simple inputs and outputs. This often makes it easier to understand for the average person, for example, most people can get their head around how bicycle mechanisms work without too much effort. Something like an AI system, plagued by the infamous 'black box problem' where even the engineers don't know how the algorithm works, is much harder for the average person so understand. In this way, an AI system, or even a more simple computer system can be seen as something that is more like soft magic. I wonder if this 'black box' aspect of AI will be used to play into people's religious sensibilities.
"Job's lament concerning God's inscrutability, the infuriating mystery of his situation, pushes him into a relationship with God." Wonderful insight! One perspective that I've found valuable is that Job's story is primarily about trusting God's wisdom in sustaining the cosmos rather than a parable about a mechanistic system of justice. (as you say) It's "easier" to lament my disconnection from God's transcendent wisdom rather than despair in what could be perceived as God's injustice.
I contrast all of this to the Reformed tradition I grew up in, which seems to me to have not so much a hard magic system but a no-magic system, where everything is rational and explainable and predetermined and monstrous. Lament seems wasteful or even faithless--who am I to lament what the LORD has chosen for me. There's no mystery either. It's a very hard thing to recover from.
I don't see Job's friends having a magical view of the world, I see them having a very limited understanding of God (or a very sheltered life) because they could not conceive that Job could be innocent and have all these bad things happen to him and not be a form of punishment or the other alternative would be that God is absent or not in control and that creation runs amok. In both scenarios, there is no hope that God can intervene in Job's situation, and are non magical views. Job is the one that could be said to have magical thinking, demanding an audience with God and thinking that he could have some sway in the matter. Job shows tremendous faith and God answers him...ironically God questions Job about the supernatural. Job admits he doesn't know about such things, however, now that he has experienced God instead of just having intellectual knowledge of him, he is content in not knowing about the mysteries that are God's alone. Yet, God blesses Job, proving that Job was innocent all along.
The irony is that Job's friends, due to the lack of magical thinking, are the ones that have to repent.
Thank you for sharing these insights, please keep throwing up these “thought balloons”. Like you said in your book “unclean”, “magical thinking is very often carried over into the life of the church” and “tends to override reason.” I have experienced in my own walk and observation of my own spiritual formation process parsing out the difference between Biblical teaching and magical thinking has been incredibly fruitful. As a youth pastor I am trying to think carefully about your observations and translate them to teachable practices that will help my young people.
This is a fascinating piece, lots to think about. I've been thinking recently about the difference between different levels of technological complexity in the devices and tools we use. It seems that simple mechanical objects work more like a hard magic system with simple inputs and outputs. This often makes it easier to understand for the average person, for example, most people can get their head around how bicycle mechanisms work without too much effort. Something like an AI system, plagued by the infamous 'black box problem' where even the engineers don't know how the algorithm works, is much harder for the average person so understand. In this way, an AI system, or even a more simple computer system can be seen as something that is more like soft magic. I wonder if this 'black box' aspect of AI will be used to play into people's religious sensibilities.
"Job's lament concerning God's inscrutability, the infuriating mystery of his situation, pushes him into a relationship with God." Wonderful insight! One perspective that I've found valuable is that Job's story is primarily about trusting God's wisdom in sustaining the cosmos rather than a parable about a mechanistic system of justice. (as you say) It's "easier" to lament my disconnection from God's transcendent wisdom rather than despair in what could be perceived as God's injustice.
I contrast all of this to the Reformed tradition I grew up in, which seems to me to have not so much a hard magic system but a no-magic system, where everything is rational and explainable and predetermined and monstrous. Lament seems wasteful or even faithless--who am I to lament what the LORD has chosen for me. There's no mystery either. It's a very hard thing to recover from.
I don't see Job's friends having a magical view of the world, I see them having a very limited understanding of God (or a very sheltered life) because they could not conceive that Job could be innocent and have all these bad things happen to him and not be a form of punishment or the other alternative would be that God is absent or not in control and that creation runs amok. In both scenarios, there is no hope that God can intervene in Job's situation, and are non magical views. Job is the one that could be said to have magical thinking, demanding an audience with God and thinking that he could have some sway in the matter. Job shows tremendous faith and God answers him...ironically God questions Job about the supernatural. Job admits he doesn't know about such things, however, now that he has experienced God instead of just having intellectual knowledge of him, he is content in not knowing about the mysteries that are God's alone. Yet, God blesses Job, proving that Job was innocent all along.
The irony is that Job's friends, due to the lack of magical thinking, are the ones that have to repent.
I am becoming more appreciative of lament as a kind of prayer.