A Story Whose End Has Not Yet Happened

Any time we Christians depart our comfort zone and befrend unbelievers, we find again that those unbelievers always have a story of their own, even if THEY THMSELVES don't understand how they got to where they are in the story.

Most obsessive fantasy -- what Mister Lewis would call "unhealthy castle-building" -- arises from a feeling (which may in fact be a JUSTIFIED feeling) that one is powerless to affect the events in one's own life. No one really likes being powerless. Even if we are so blessed as to know that someone more powerful is lovingly protecting us, our happiness in this is not BECAUSE OF our own powerlessness; it's just that the powerful protector makes our weakness NOT MATTER anymore. In the absence of that protection, it is entirely understandable if we wish forlornly that WE had some
power to change things-- up to and including magical power.

I am a witness to this. As a teenager, being absurdly small and runty, I had concrete cause to feel helpless and ineffectual. By God's mercy, I never joined any sorcerous covens; but I sure did often wish that  I had supernatura powers to offset the frustration of ABSOLUTELY EVERY ONE of my peers being bigger and stronger and more athletic than I was.

The Apostle Paul wrote that he rejoiced in his infirmity because it furnished an occasion for God to display His strength. But even here, Paul was not taking pleasure in weakness FOR THE SAKE OF being weak; the weakness was only a circumstance which facilitated his real treasure, the work of God's grace.

Thus, when persons who don't know God experience pain and vulnerability, they're getting the distress WITHOUT the divine compensation. We should not, therefore, indulge in TOO much indignation at them if they look for security in the wrong places.... like the occult.

I know a woman whom I shall call Vesta. She has an appalling history. Molested as a little girl, treated with contempt by a mother who had wanted to abort her, and forced to witness evildoers continuously going unpunished for their crimes, it was as inevitable as mathematics that she came to have a gloomy view of the world. It is to her CREDIT that she still desired to know love and kindness; and it is to the condemnation of our depraved society that neo-paganism
got to her first with its fraudulent offers.

At present, Vesta believes in multiple gods, in reincarnation, in channeling, and in familiar spirits. Over time, I have been drawing her out on what she really believes, while giving her in return such easy doses of the true faith as she is able to assimilate. It is my non-dogmatic opinion that the reason why Vesta prefers plural gods over One Living God is because her chaotic early life gave her no assurance of a reliable moral authority on Earth, so that she would figure it unlikely that the spiritual realm had one righteous primary authority either.