Against my better judgment, I want to offer a descriptive assessment about how our discourse about the war in Gaza has played out and has continued to play out. 

Before making that assessment, I want to share a passage from one of the new chapters from the paperback edition of Hunting Magic Eels, the chapter entitled "Why Good People Need God." In building the argument for the chapter's title, one of the points I make is how contemporary, post-Christian moral discourse, especially in social justice spaces, has become thin, simplistic, reductive, and impoverished. How we've come to talk about good versus evil and right versus wrong has increasingly been stripped of the complexity required to adequately address our moral crises. Here's the passage from Hunting Magic Eels:

As the saying goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Justice is just one tool in our moral toolbox. A critical, essential tool. But one tool can’t do all the moral work life demands of us. Justice is a hammer, and when you’re looking at a nail— say, oppression—the hammer is the tool to pick up. But the moral drama of our lives isn’t just about oppression. We’re dealing with all sorts of things, from forgiveness to mercy to shame to guilt to joy to truth to peace to reconciliation. And hitting mercy with a hammer just isn’t a good idea. You’ll break it.

Consider an obvious example: how the social justice movement struggles with the issue of forgiveness. With the pervasiveness of what has been called “cancel culture,” can the canceled ever be forgiven? What about problematic allies? What if someone’s moral performance for the cause is less than perfect? The social justice movement struggles here with the issues of mercy, grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The reason for this is that justice is a hammer, and while a hammer is an excellent tool for nails, it is not so great with other moral tasks. Forgiveness is a different problem than injustice. You need different tools. The moral drama of life isn’t putting up a swing set in the backyard, easily tackled with the single tool enclosed in the box; it’s building an entire house. Moral life is cement work, brick laying, carpentry, plumbing, electrical, roofing, painting, and so on. You need more than a hammer.

This passage explains what I think has happened to our discourse about the war in Gaza. Specifically, when we reduce our moral categories to an oppressor/oppressed dichotomy we're forced to pick and choose between Israel and the Palestinians as to who should be plugged into the "oppressor" side of the equation. Plug Israel into the "oppressor" position and you're antisemitic, ignoring the historical persecution of the Jews, and have turned a blind eye to the atrocities that Hamas committed in October of 2023. Plug the Palestinians into the "oppressor" position and you're ignoring Israel's harsh and dehumanizing treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories and how Israel has conducted the war. Both parties have material for oppressor and oppressed portfolios and this crosses the wires and short-circuits social justice discourse. The only moral tool available, the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, is too reductive for the conflict. So we fight about who gets categorized as the victim. A very long and complicated historical conflict is reduced to a blame game.  

But here's the thing we all know. Life isn't so simple. The long and sad history between the Jews and Palestinians is messy and complex. Our simplistic, reductionistic, and politically polarized moral discourse--Who is oppressed and who is oppressor?--is inadequate for the task of peacemaking in the Middle East. We're trying to build an entire house with a screwdriver. 

When I look at the war in Gaza what I see is a tragedy. My heart breaks for both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Because Jesus calls me to love them both. 

And lest there be any confusion among the black and white thinkers, this isn't me trying to have it both ways or create moral equivalencies. This isn't me trying to shift blame around. This is me saying it's always been way more complicated than that.

The point I made in the prior post is that our experience of the world isn't a passive reception but is formed and shaped by our beliefs, expectations and assumptions. And at the end of the post, I ask how this might affect our experience of God. 

Specifically, as I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, borrowing an insight from Andrew Root, our disenchantment in an increasingly post-Christian culture is largely due to attention blindness, habits of attention that direct our gaze away from God. Much of this attention blindness is due to our beliefs, assumptions, and expectations about what can or cannot be seen in the world. Our assumptions can help us see, and they can blind us.

Beyond seeing, our beliefs and expectations about the world affect the richness and variety of our experiences. This is an argument made by George Lindbeck in his widely read book The Nature of Doctrine. Linbeck's argument is that learning a faith, like learning a language, gives us symbols, rituals, and practices that make some experiences possible and enrich the kinds of experiences we have. Here is Lindbeck describing this:

[T]o become religious--no less than to become culturally or linguistically competent--is to interiorize a set of skills by practice and training. One learns how to feel, act and think in conformity with a religious tradition that is, in its inner structure, far richer and more subtle than can be explicitly articulated. The primary knowledge is not about the religion, nor that the religion teaches such and such, but rather how to be religious in such and such ways...[I]t is necessary to have the means for expressing an experience in order to have it, and the richer our expressive or linguistic system, the more subtle, varied, and differentiated can be our experience. To be religious, then, is learning to become competent. Learning to interiorize a set of skills that allow us--in ways we can't all on our own--to have certain experiences, and more subtle, varied and richer experiences at that. There are some meanings that only the practice of the faith can reveal.

In short, faith isn't a list of propositions that we "believe." Faith is an experiential pathway leading us into a deeper and richer experience of ourselves and the world. Lindbeck once more:

There are numberless thoughts we cannot think, sentiments we cannot have, and realities we cannot perceive unless we learn to use the appropriate symbol systems. It seems, as the cases of Helen Keller and of supposed wolf children vividly illustrate, that unless we acquire language of some kind, we cannot actualize our specifically human capacities for thought, action and feeling. Similarly, so the argument goes, to become religious involves becoming skilled in the language of the symbol system of a given religion. To become a Christian involves learning the story of Israel and of Jesus well enough to interpret and experience oneself and one's world in its terms. A religion is above all an external word...that molds and shapes the self and its world...

It is necessary to have the means of expressing an experience in order to have it, and the richer this means of expression the deeper and more varied will be our experience of the world. For there are numberless thoughts we cannot think, emotions we cannot feel, and realities we cannot perceive unless we become skilled and competent in these expressive systems. There are some meanings that only the practice of faith can reveal. 

At school I teach a class called "Cognition and Learning." It's a basic introduction to learning theory (classical, operant, and social learning) and cognitive science. 

Perhaps the greatest finding in cognitive science is that the brain is not a passive computational machine, taking in sensory input and crunching through all that raw data. The brain is, rather, active and anticipatory. The brain doesn't have time to churn through all the sensory input to compute, from scratch, the virtual real-time simulation we call consciousness. The brain has to guess, hypothesize, and anticipate. The brain has to fill in gaps with expectations, assumptions, and prior knowledge. The brain uses heuristics and rules of thumb. 

For most of our waking lives, the brain does this flawlessly. But sometimes we can trick the brain into making a wrong guess. A famous example is the Ames Room illusion. 

Whenever the brain compares visual images on the retina, it has to make a guess about if the two images represent a difference of size or distance. For example, a smaller image of a person on the retina can mean that a person is short or that they are average-sized but further away. By using a lot of visual cues, along with some general assumptions about the world, the brain can quickly sort out if an object is small versus far away. The Ames Room illusion, however, tricks the brain into making a wrong guess about size versus distance. Most rooms are square, so the brain is generally correct in assuming that people within a small room are about the same distance away. If so, any visual differences in their sizes has to be due to differences in their height, smaller versus taller people standing side by side in a room together. But in the Ames Room a person seems to shrink or grow as they walk around the room. How is that happening? Because the brain is tricked into thinking the room is square when it's actually trapezoidal. As the person walks around the room they are actually walking toward or away from the viewer. Normally, the brain would see this changing image as a change in distance. The person isn't "shrinking" but is simply walking away from me. Nor is the person "growing," they are simply approaching. The brain makes the reasonable guess that people stay the same size, so any change in their visual image--larger or smaller--has to be a change in distance. But the Ames Room, through cunning arrangement of the room, tricks the brain out of that assumption. If a person in the room can't be getting closer or farther from me the brain switches to the only other explanation left to it: The person is changing in size. People in the Ames Room look tiny or giant, rather than farther or closer way.

I'm using the Ames Room to illustrate the point I made above. The brain works with assumptions and hypotheses. And most of the time these guesses work. In a complex visual world, the brain has to quickly judge if things are small or far away, large or close at hand. And we hardly notice that the brain does this work so quickly and so well. 

The Ames Room illustrates what is called bottom-up versus top-down processing. Again, a lot of us think the brain is a "bottom-up" processor, that the brain pulls in raw sensory data to build up from scratch our experience of consciousness. It's like putting a puzzle together, each bit of sensory data a puzzle piece fit together until the fuller picture is revealed in consciousness. But most of our cognitive processes are not bottom-up, they are top-down. The brain begins with assumptions, predictions, prior knowledge, and expectations and then imposes those guesses and hypotheses upon incoming sensory data. We have the puzzle pieces in front of us, the sensory data, but we also have the picture on the cover of puzzle box set before us. We know where the pieces are "going" as we are putting the puzzle together. This is top-down processing, the brain sees what it expects to see.

Change blindness is another fun example of this. The work of Daniel Simons has shown how people often fail to notice changes in their environment, even big and obvious changes. Follow the link for an example of a classic Simons' study, where people don't notice that the person they are talking is replaced with a different person. Here's another version of that study. Change blindness is due to top-down processing. The brain makes the good guess that people don't change while we're talking to them, and uses that expectation to "fill in" its visual surroundings, seeing but not really seeing. And thus missing the change. 

But you know all this already! We all know that we see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. Much of what we experience is coming from our own minds and is being projected onto the world. Our "experience" is a complex product of both bottom-up and top-down processing, the world we are experiencing along with how those experiences are being shaped and filled in by our beliefs, assumptions, expectations, knowledge, prior experiences, and desires. 

Now, what does all this cognitive science have to do with God? Well, ponder this question: How is your experience of God, or lack of experience, being affected by your top-down processing? How are your beliefs and assumptions about the world, your categories of the possible and impossible, shaping your experience of the world as a spiritual person? 

How are you seeing but not really seeing?

Today another film from my 2019 conversation with Travis Reed for The Work of the People. 

Again, you can preview the first two minutes of the film. The Work of the People is supported by a subscription-based model, so if you'd like to access the whole film, along with every other film at the site, it's only $7 a month for a personal subscription, which you can cancel anytime.

Today's film is entitled "Finding Your Hobab."

In this film, Travis and I discuss themes from my book Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise.

The point I make in the two minute preview of the film concerns the way hospitality flips our expectations about divine encounter. Churches regularly use words like "service," "mission," and "evangelism." In encounters framed by these words, Christ is always identified with Us over against Them. We "bring Christ" to others. We are always acting as "the hands and feet of Jesus" in service to our neighbors.

Hospitality reverses all this. God comes to Us in Them. Christ is the stranger we welcome. We don't always do the saving. Sometimes others save us.

The title of the film--"Finding Your Hobab"--comes from a story told in Numbers 10. 

For years, in working with churches about practices of hospitality, I've started by asking them to share Scriptural examples of God coming as a stranger or in disguise. Passages like Genesis 18, Matthew 25, and Luke 24 are regularly shared. But once I was surprised when someone said, "There's the example of Hobab."

If you are like me when I first heard this example and don't know who Hobab is, here's the story from Numbers. The Israelites are about to head out from Mount Sinai toward the Promised Land. But they have to cross the desert. It will be a treacherous journey, looking for water and places to camp in this wasteland. And no one among the Israelites knows the desert well enough to make the crossing. They could all die.

Facing this risk, Moses approaches his brother-in-law Hobab. Hobab is not a Hebrew, he's a Midianite. But Hobab knows the way. So Moses makes him an offer: “We are setting out for the place about which the Lord said, ‘I will give it to you.’ Come with us and we will treat you well, for the Lord has promised good things to Israel.” Hobab demurs, but Moses insists. The Israelites need this Midianite. As Moses says, "Please do not leave us. You know where we should camp in the wilderness, and you can be our eyes." And so, Hobab becomes their guide.

This story has become precious to me. There is a deep and profound image here. The Israelites cannot make it to the Promised Land unless a Midianite guides them. And Midianites, let's recall, are among the sworn enemies of Israel.

Ponder the shock of this story. We cannot make it to the Promised Land unless the stranger guides us. That is what I mean when I tell churches to "find their Hobab." Stop sitting around your conference tables making plans about how you're going to save the world. You have no idea how to save the world. Stop standing at a distance discerning how to be the hands and feet of Jesus to your neighbors. You have no idea what your neighbors need or want. Instead, find your Hobab. You need a guide. Create friendships so that your neighbors can lead you. For you do not know the way. As a church, admit that don't know how to make it, all on your own, to the Promised Land. Like Moses, find the stranger who will serve as eyes for you and who knows where to camp. 

Churches, find your Hobab. Let the stranger lead you the Promised Land.

"when he dies he will carry nothing away"

Psalm 49 preaches about the vanity and futility and wealth, and in making this assessment it sounds a lot like Ecclesiastes. For example:

For he sees that even the wise die;
the fool and the stupid alike must perish
and leave their wealth to others.

And also:

Be not afraid when a man becomes rich,
when the glory of his house increases.
For when he dies he will carry nothing away;
his glory will not go down after him.
For though, while he lives, he counts himself blessed
—and though you get praise when you do well for yourself—
his soul will go to the generation of his fathers,
who will never again see light.
Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish.

Psalm 49 isn't as bleak as Ecclesiastes. Where Ecclesiastes often sounds agnostic about the fate of the dead, Psalm 49 expresses confidence that God will remember the faithful:

But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me.

Still, Psalm 49 is similar to how Ecclesiastes uses death to expose idolatry, in this case our trust in wealth. As I've argued before, I think Ecclesiastes shares the Old Testament concern about idolatry. And yet, Ecclesiastes is unique in the Old Testament in how it attacks that issue. Specifically, while the prophetic tradition describes idolatry as infidelity, Ecclesiastes describes idolatry as futility. Death destroys every false idol upon which we might trust. Psalm 49 displays this same approach in using death to expose our futile and idolatrous trust in wealth, riches, and possessions. 

For when we die we carry nothing away. 

"One is not commanded to be on the winning side, but to be in the right place when the Lord returns."

This is a quote from Daniel Berrigan, priest, poet, author, and activist. The quote struck me because it concisely encapsulates my political vision. As regular readers know, I agree with Tolkien that history is "a long defeat." I'm a political pessimist. As a student of the book of Revelation I don't think history is heading anywhere good. 

That said, politics matters, it makes a difference. And those who take stands against injustice gleam like jewels on black velvet, stars of righteousness shining in a long dark night. We are called to be faithful stewards of what power we have, and in a democracy each of us possess a modicum of political power. We must make that power available to those who are suffering and vulnerable.

So I'm saying it's a balancing act. A difficult one that I've struggled to both embody and articulate. Berrigan's quote gets close to it. Within history, I don't know if winning is a consistent option. And I think a fixation upon winning brings with it a suite of temptations, from hopelessness when you lose a lot to violence when you think the end of winning justifies the means. I'm with Stanley Hauerwas on this point. Winning history isn't our job.

We are called, rather, to simply stand in the right place when the Lord returns. The outcomes are above my pay grade. My location is under my control. Sometimes I'll win. More often, I'll lose. But I can be standing in the right place when the Lord returns.

Following upon the last two posts, a final point I want to make in this series concerns how the problem of evil plays out in soft versus hard magical worlds.

A great deal of intellectual effort is spent on the theological project we call "theodicy," attempts to explain why a good and all-powerful God allows evil, pain, and suffering in the world. And I think it's safe to say that, in the end, all these efforts fail in some way. None of these answers are wholly satisfactory. And I think one of the reasons for this is that theodicy attempts to address the problem of evil by creating a hard magical world.

By this I mean that theodicy attempts to "explain" the source of evil, to lay the "mechanism" bare. Maybe it's the devil. Maybe free will. Maybe God can't do anything to stop evil. Maybe God is punishing us. In each case, the ways of God are analyzed and explained. The enchantment becomes plain and accessible. A hard magical world.

The alternative move here is to say that theodicy is illicit. And not simply to say that theodicy is impossible, but that theodicy itself is problematic, even hurtful. To "explain" evil is to minimize its dark assault upon the world. To explain to a person "why" she is suffering is pastoral malpractice. Evil, to be evil, has to befuddle our minds. We don't have any answers. In short, evil, to be evil, needs mystery. To approach evil as a theological algebra problem, to situate it in a hard magical world, is to miss the key element about what makes evil so evil.

In short, like prayer and providence, evil exists in a soft magical world. We know evil exists, that the world is haunted by a dark enchantment. But the origins of evil are unclear to us. We don't know why it exists or how it works. We might try to penetrate evil's mysteries, but all these efforts ultimately fail and prove unsatisfactory. 

All we know, in the end, in our soft magical world, is that something prowls in the darkness, calling us to vigilance, righteous action, and, ultimately, trust in God.

What I've been suggesting in this series is that the contrast between "hard" and "soft" magic, inspired by the novelist Brandon Sanderson, helps us recover some apophatic distance when we speak of God's actions in the world. Christian enchantment is a "soft" magical world rather than a "hard" magical world. By this we mean that our world is filled with supernatural wonder and awe. Life is miraculous. 

And yet, this enchantment is soft because we don't know how God "works" in the world. The "mechanism" of the enchantment is not available to us. Christian enchantment embraces the mystery of it all. 

In the last post I discussed how this mystery pushes prayer away from the magical and toward the relational. We know God answers our prayers, but God's answers are often shrouded in mystery. This mystery, which is often accompanied by lament, pushes prayer toward patience and trust. Prayer cannot be used as a tool or technique, as a form of magic, to accomplish our goals in the world. 

Beyond prayer, let me suggest in this post that the soft magical world of Christianity can also help us think about God's providential actions in the world. 

As I've shared before in this space, people often get triggered when the phrase "Lord willing" gets offered up as a petition. For example, we make travel plans and then append "Lord willing." We say, "We'll see you tomorrow. Lord willing." As I've shared, a lot of ex-evangelical types get triggered by such expressions. The complaint is that if God "wills" for us to make the trip safely does that imply that God "wills" for others to die in car accidents? Is God providentially picking and choosing who dies in a car crash today?

In response to these complaints I've shared how "Lord willing" isn't a theological argument about predestination but is, rather, a simple expression of humility. My life is not ultimately in my hands. I cannot control the future. I do not know what today holds for me. Expressions such as "Lord willing" bring my finitude into view, and keep me grounded in the moment I possess here and now. "Lord willing" isn't a theological argument, it's good mental and spiritual hygiene. 

But another way to look at this issue is through the contrast of hard versus soft magical worlds. In a soft magical world, we know that God is providentially guiding the world. We trust that God is working all things toward the good. And yet, there's a mystery here. We can't see clearly what God is doing or how it all works together. Call this view "soft providence." 

By contrast, when people get triggered by expressions such as "Lord willing" they tend to describe a hard magical world, where the actions of God are clear and transparent. God wills this person to arrive safely at their destination, and God wills this person to have a car crash. Call this vision of God's actions in the world "hard providence." 

My point here is that we need to take a soft view of God's providence. We trust that God is at work in the world, but don't envision God as a puppet-master pulling strings. Soft providence leans into the mystery of God's actions and care of the world. Hard providence, by contrast, assumes that the actions of God are clear and transparent to human understanding, and therefore feels at liberty to flatly declare what God is doing in any given situation. We've all seen examples of this hard magical thinking at work, where Christian leaders look upon some tragic event and name it, with absolute confidence, as the will and work of God. In such pronouncements there is no mystery, no demonstration of apophatic humility. A hard view of providence is being articulated. God is being described as a puppet-master pulling strings.

The better way of thinking about providence, I'm suggesting, is providence in a soft magical world. We trust and know God is at work in the world. But how God is at work, and how to explain tragic events, this is hazy for us. Like with a soft magical vision of prayer, soft providence pushes us alway from overconfident pronouncements about God's will and actions in the world toward humble silence, patience and trust. 

Phrased differently, when you say "Lord willing" in a soft magical world you mean something very different from those who assume a hard magical world.

In the last post I shared that the Christian experience of enchantment is soft rather than hard magic. Our world is charged with the grandeur of God, full of wonder and awe, suffused with the miraculous. And yet, as I go on to say, this "magic" is not at our disposal. Christian enchantment is not pagan enchantment. God is not at our beck and call. God is not an energy, force, or potency in creation that we can control, direct, or manipulate. Christianity is enchanted, but it isn't a hard magical system.

However, as I also observed in the last post, many Christians are tempted to turn the soft enchantment of Christianity into something akin to a hard magical system. The example I mention in the new paperback edition of Hunting Magic Eels is the prosperity gospel. 

To be clear, I don't think the "name it and claim it" theology of the prosperity gospel is an attempt to control or manipulate God. The "name it and claim it" prayers in prosperity churches are not like magical spells. And yet, these prayers do tip toward something like hard magic. Not so much in positing some mechanism to be manipulated, but in their confidence of sure reply. 

Let me explain how confidence tips into mechanism. When the apophatic mystery of prayer is lost and replaced with overconfidence, God becomes increasingly at our disposal. Prayer begins to take on a "If A, then B" dynamic. You claim it and God will grant it. The conviction here, concerning this reliable connection, makes the relationship practically causal, and therefore mechanistic, and therefore hard magic.

You can see this causal, mechanistic, hard magical imagination at work in prosperity churches in how they struggle with lament. For lament acknowledges unanswered prayer and sits dismayed in the face of the inscrutable ways of God. Lament shatters any dream that our prayers function like spells, that God is at our disposal. 

Returning to the contrast I made between faith and magic in an earlier post, lament is what pushes prayer into a relational, rather than magical, space. In many ways, magical systems is the central debate in the book of Job. Job's friends keep defending a hard magical world. Do good and you get rewarded. Do bad and you get punished. The "mechanism" of the enchantment--"how it works"--is clear and transparent. But Job rejects this hard magical view of his situation. Job's lament concerning God's inscrutability, the infuriating mystery of his situation, pushes him into a relationship with God. Job's friends preach magic. Job seeks an encounter.  

I expect some readers will not like using hard versus soft magic to analyze these issues, finding the notion of "magic" both confusing and unnecessary. To such readers I say: Stop being a theological snowflake. I'm experimenting here, floating some thought balloons. And for my part, I find the hard versus soft magic contrast helpful in illuminating some things. Specifically, I think there is a way our overconfidence in prayer, as you see in prosperity gospel spaces, along with a marginalization of lament, puts God too much at our disposal in a way that causes prayer to tip into the magical. More simply, lament protects prayer from becoming magic. Lament shoves us back into mystery, which recenters our relationship with God. 

Lament and mystery preserve the soft enchantments of prayer, protecting prayer from the temptations of hard magical thinking.  

"Mount Zion is glad"

Out at the prison, my co-teacher is leading a study on the book of Judges. Judges is an a odd book. The are heroic deeds and adventures, but as the book progresses things get grimmer and grimmer, ultimately culminating in one of the darkest stories in the whole of the Bible. The book of Judges ends with this plaintive assessment: 

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.

And yet, when the kings do eventually show up, life doesn't get any better. Just like with Judges, as we go further into 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles things get grimmer and grimmer. The legacy of Israel's kings ends in idolatry, disaster, and exile.

In short, much of the Old Testament is dedicated to the task of chronicling the train wreck of human political projects. Even the very best of rulers, from Samson to David, are a mess. The Bible has a very critical and pessimistic vision of human politics. Perhaps especially of a human politics devoted to serving God. 

Obviously, this strikes me as having relevance for our debates about Christian nationalism. To be sure, this is a messy debate, and it's often unclear what we mean by "Christian nationalism." I found my colleague and friend Brad East's essay in Christianity Today How (Not) to Talk About Christian Nationalism to be helpful and clarifying. 

Those cautions duly noted, I remain confused about why any student of the Bible has any positive expectations or hope for human politics, or any optimism about a Christian political project. I can't see where on the pages of Scripture that hope is coming from. Politically invested Christians are constantly taking inspiration from the story of Israel, yet seem perversely unable to internalize its moral and meaning. Zion ends in ruins. Why do Christian nationalists, however defined, fail to miss this pretty obvious plot point? The Biblical illiteracy of the Biblical literalists always astonishes me. 

Psalm 48 praises God as the king of Zion. Curiously, no human king is spotted in the poem. Instead, God is the one who directly rules the city, defeats its enemies, and dispenses righteous judgments. Because of all this "Mount Zion is glad."

Psalm 48 is a beautiful vision. And yet, Israel never achieves this vision, not ultimately, because human kings, rulers, and politicians are, in stark contrast with Psalm 48, quite visible in the halls of power. Samson and King David are not Yahweh. Mount Zion is glad in Psalm 48 precisely because no human ruler makes an appearance.

For those who have ears, let them hear.

Having set out Brandon Sanderson's contrast between hard and soft magic, how might such an idea be of use in pondering Christianity?

Let's start by noting how sociologists of religion have struggled to offer clear definitions of magic and religion given the diversity of religious and magical practices across time and cultures and the often complicated ways they overlap.

One common attempt to make a contrast between religion and magic has been to describe magic as a metaphysical technology, a means via a hex, spell or ritual to harness some natural or spiritual power/force in order to achieve a goal. Magic is a metaphysical tool to make something happen. In this, magic tends toward the pragmatic rather than the relational. Religion, by contrast, involves communal, cultural, and cultic rituals, practices, and observances that instantiate a relationship between a group and a deity. In contrast to magic, religions often involve moral codes that express relational commitment to the deity. Finally, where magic tends toward individual practice, religions function to bind together social and cultural groups.

But as I said, the lines are fuzzy here. For example, Roman religious observance had a lot of magical aspects. And some Christian practices, especially when it has fused with indigenous pagan practices, can also blend with the magical. 

The reason for the blurring is easy to see. If magic is harnessing a power, and you're in a relationship with a powerful spiritual being, why couldn't you try to ask, persuade, or compel that powerful being to do things for you? 

Here's where, I think, Sanderson's contrast between hard and soft magic can be illuminating. Recall, with hard magic the mechanism is transparent. We know how the magic works. Consequently, that mechanism can be used to solve our problems. By contrast, we don't know how soft magic works. Soft magic enchants our world, filling it with wonder and awe, but we cannot harness or use it to fix things in life.

As I share in the paperback edition of Hunting Magic Eels, Christianity is a soft magical world. By this I mean that our world is full of wonder and awe. God's divine presence fills all of creation. Hope and possibilities exist in our world that cannot be found within a purely materialistic view of the cosmos. Miracles happen. Angels are encountered unawares. As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "The world is charged with the grandeur of God."  

In describing Christian enchantment as "soft magic" I mean that, following Sanderson, we do not know how this enchantment "works." Neither can we control or manipulate it. We could say that there is a apophatic aspect to soft magic, a persistent mystery. Consequently, and this is key to the point I want to make, the soft enchantments of Christianity cannot be exploited to solve our problems. God is not a tool to get us something we want. 

This is not to say God doesn't help us or answer our prayers. The point is that God is not at our disposal.  God's ways are mysterious to us. We know that he is with us and working for our good, but many of our prayers go unanswered and God's plans are often inscrutable. Our experience with God is enchanted, but it's a soft enchantment.

And yet, and here's my second big point, many Christians are tempted to turn the soft, apophatic enchantment of Christianity into hard magic. We seek God as a solution to our problems, looking for a magical fix. But God is not a Cosmic Genie in the Bottle granting our wishes, or a Cosmic Vending Machine giving us what we want if we push the right buttons. 

Relatedly, some Christians are tempted to think that God's designs are transparent to us. We can become overly confident in naming "God's will" in our lives. The humility of apophatic mystery is replaced with hubristic pronouncements about God's providential actions, intentions, and plans.

What I am suggesting is that Christian enchantment, our magical world, is soft, which is to say apophatic. God enchants our world, but in a way that is fundamentally mysterious and not at our disposal. And yet, there are some Christians who are tempted to turn the soft enchantment of faith into a hard magical system. And when this happens, a suite or problems and issues emerge. I'll turn to some examples of this in the posts to come.    

In one of the new chapters of the paperback edition of Hunting Magic Eels, "Hexing the Taliban," I use the idea of hard and soft magic to draw some contrasts between witchcraft and faith. You can check out that new chapter if you want to explore that discussion. 

Having used the contrast between hard and soft magic in the paperback edition, I've kept exploring this idea and pondering its application to different questions of faith. So, here's a series of some experimental theology, exploring how the notion of magical systems might apply to Christian theology.

To start, what do we mean by hard and soft magical systems?

As I acknowledge in the paperback edition of Hunting Magic Eels, my son Brenden introduced me to this idea. Brenden is a huge fantasy fan, and loves the work of the fantasy novelist Brandon Sanderson. 

One of the things Sanderson is noted for is his theory about hard and soft magical systems, and how these systems should and shouldn't be used in the plots of fantasy fiction. According to Sanderson, the magic in fantasy fiction should never be used to resolve plot difficulties if the audience doesn't understand the mechanics of the magic. Otherwise, the magic looks like a cheat, a deus ex machina. However, if the author explains the mechanics of the magic in enough detail, its "physics" if you will, then magic can be used to resolve plot difficulties. Understanding the "physics" of the magic allows the reader to follow along and see the puzzle the characters are needing to solve to save themselves or defeat an enemy. Sanderson summarizes this belief of his as his "First Law" in using magic in fantasy fiction:

SANDERSON’S FIRST LAW OF MAGICS: AN AUTHOR’S ABILITY TO SOLVE CONFLICT WITH MAGIC IS DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO HOW WELL THE READER UNDERSTANDS SAID MAGIC.

When an author explains the magical system in enough detail where it can be used to solve conflict in a story, Sanderson calls this a "hard magical system." As Sanderson writes:

[A hard magical system is] where the authors explicitly describes the rules of magic. This is done so that the reader can have the fun of feeling like they themselves are part of the magic, and so that the author can show clever twists and turns in the way the magic works. The magic itself is a character, and by showing off its laws and rules, the author is able to provide twists, worldbuilding, and characterization.

If the reader understands how the magic works, then you can use the magic (or, rather, the characters using the magic) to solve problems. In this case, it’s not the magic mystically making everything better. Instead, it’s the characters’ wit and experience that solves the problems. Magic becomes another tool—and, like any other tool, its careful application can enhance the character and the plot.

By contrast, there is what Sanderson calls "soft magic." In a soft magical world it's unclear to the reader how the magic works. According to Sanderson, in a soft magical world magic shouldn't be used to solve problems or conflict in the story. What's the point, then, of magic in a soft magical world? For Sanderson, soft magic is less about solving plot problems than used by the author to create a sense of wonder, awe and enchantment. Sanderson describes this, applying his system to the work of Tolkien:

[Soft magic is] for those who want to preserve the sense of wonder in their books. I see a continuum, or a scale, measuring how authors use their magic. On one side of the continuum, we have books where the magic is included in order to establish a sense of wonder and give the setting a fantastical feel. Books that focus on this use of magic tend to want to indicate that men are a small, small part of the eternal and mystical workings of the universe. This gives the reader a sense of tension as they’re never certain what dangers—or wonders—the characters will encounter. Indeed, the characters themselves never truly know what can happen and what can’t.

I call this a “Soft Magic” system, and it has a long, established tradition in fantasy. I would argue that Tolkien himself is on this side of the continuum. In his books, you rarely understand the capabilities of Wizards and their ilk. You, instead, spend your time identifying with the hobbits, who feel that they’ve been thrown into something much larger, and more dangerous, than themselves. By holding back laws and rules of magic, Tolkien makes us feel that this world is vast, and that there are unimaginable powers surging and moving beyond our sight.

As I shared, I used this contrast between hard and soft magic to draw some contrasts between Christianity and witchcraft in the new edition of Hunting Magic Eels. Having set the contrast before you here, I want to devote a few posts applying the notion of soft and hard magic to some other theological topics. 

So, our study of Revelation out at the prison kicked off last night. 

In starting the series, I surveyed four common ways people read the book. These are, as summarized by ChatGPT and edited by me:

1. Preterist:

The preterist view holds that the events described in the Book of Revelation were largely fulfilled in the past, specifically in the first century, during the time of the Roman Empire. Preterists argue that most of the prophecies in Revelation refer to first century events such as the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD or the Roman persecution of Christians under Nero and Domitian.

2. Historicist:

The historicist view sees the events of Revelation as unfolding gradually throughout the course of history, from the time of the apostles to the present day. Historicists often interpret specific symbols in Revelation as representing historical events, identifying them with different periods and figures throughout history. This view was popular during the Reformation.

3. Futurist:

The futurist view asserts that the majority of the events in the Book of Revelation are yet to occur and will take place in the future, often associated with the end times or the second coming of Christ. Futurists interpret many of the prophecies in Revelation, such as the rise of the Antichrist, the Great Tribulation, and the final judgment, as events that are still awaiting fulfillment.

4. Symbolic (or Idealist) View:

The symbolic view, also known as the idealist view, emphasizes the symbolic and timeless nature of the imagery in Revelation, suggesting that it conveys general spiritual truths rather than specific historical events. Symbolic interpreters see the book as describing the ongoing spiritual battle between good and evil, with the various symbols representing universal principles rather than concrete historical or future events.

Of course, people mix and match here. In the Churches of Christ I was raised with a mix of preterist, historicist, futurist, and symbolic readings. Most of Revelation, I was taught, occurred during the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD or the Roman persecution of the early church. Nero was 666. But I was also taught some historicist stuff, that various images in Revelation referred to Alexander the Great or the Catholic Church. The only real futurist view we held, being amillennialists, concerned the Second Coming. Finally, most of the sermons I heard about Revelation set forth a symbolic view, that we, as modern readers, can take from Revelation timeless truths and encouragements. We all struggle to "come out" from Babylons of various sorts. And as many preachers have summarized it, no matter what you think of Revelation, the book communicates one simple message: In the end, God wins.

I shared all these views out at the prison last night. I mainly did so as a therapeutic exercise. Simply appreciating the diversity of perspectives here cultivates some intellectual charity and humility. My way of reading Revelation might not be the only way. 

When the men asked me how I read Revelation I shared that my views are a mix of preterist and symbolic. I think Revelation was written to the seven churches of Asia and not to us, written to encourage those churches to hold fast during the difficult persecution they were facing or soon to face. But I take away from that encouragement truths and hopes for my own spiritual life. What inspired the seven churches of Asia to hold fast inspires me today to hold fast. In this, I read Revelation just like the other New Testament epistles, as letters written to specific churches facing particular problems that I can learn from and apply, with wisdom, knowledge, and care, to Christian life today.

But I then took my own poll, asking the men to raise their hands about which view described how they read Revelation. In a class of about thirty-five, one or two hands went up for the preterist view. One or two hands for the historicist view. One of two hands for the symbolic view. But over thirty hands up for the futurist view. 

Like I said, this is going to be a very interesting study...

In Brian K. Blount's commentary on the book of Revelation he offers a twist on how I've typically read the social setting of the book. 

Specifically, as described in the last post, I've read the social setting as being one of acute persecution. Revelation was written, therefore, to give the persecuted community hope. The theme of vindicated martyrs along with associated judgment upon the persecutors features large in Revelation.

Blount gives this setting a bit of twist. Yes, the church was being persecuted, but Christians were not being actively hunted down. As long as the Christian communities accommodated themselves to Roman culture and worship things were okay. According to Blount, it was this accommodation that Revelation is so fiercely calling out. As Blount describes:

[Christian] complicity in artisan, trade, and funeral associations allowed for upward social and economic mobility. They passed themselves off as Roman cultic devotees in order to avail themselves of Roman resources...

[John] wants the Christians to see that they are caught up in a draconian, prostituting system. The only challenge to that system resides in the will of those who refuse to participate in its many social, economic, and political benefits. Whatever it costs them, those Christians must find a way to stand up and opt out. That, in essence, is his prophetic charge.

This changes how we think of the word "martyr." Instead of a murdered person Blount asks us to pay attention to the meaning of the word. A martyr is a "witness." Not just or primarily in death, but in the visible contrast and nonconformity of our lives. Blount writes:

[John's] confessional witness (martys) language is, then, his prophetic language. Martys is a word of active engagement, not sacrificial passivity. A believer's witness might provoke such a hostile response that it leads to the believer's death, but always, at least in the first-century mind-set, it seems, transformative focus was on the provocative testimony that had to be given, not a passive life that had to be extinguished. When someone in John's turn-of-the-century environment said "witness," she meant witness, not martyr. 

In short, the prophetic and pastoral concern of Revelation, according to Blount, isn't persecution per se, but the Christian avoidance of persecution, refusing to stand up and become a witness. Christians were "passing" as Romans, reaping the social and fiscal benefits of political and religious conformity. John wants this accommodating behavior to stop. And he knows that if the Christian community comes "out of the closet," as it were, they are going to face fierce opposition, and even death. Fearlessly stepping out into the open as a Christian to face these hostile forces and bitter consequences is the demand of Revelation. Blount shares:

Here is where both John's prophetic call and a consummate prophetic problem arise. If John was indeed asking his people to stand up and stand out in a world they had accepted and that that accepted them, a world into which they had covertly and successfully passed, he was essentially telling them to go out and pick a fight! No matter the consequences! He was ordering his people to self-identify, to declare that they were not nonaccommodating Christians who could no longer participate in a world that had not really noticed them since they had heretofore been accommodating to it. In a classic "Don't ask, don't tell" (that I'm a Christian) kind of environment, John was essentially ordering his Christians to be about the business of telling on themselves, with a full knowledge of the repercussions such telling might bring...He was asking them to come screaming out of the Christian closet, knowing that it could well solicit the same consequence it had attracted to the Lamb: slaughter. 

John's visions operate in support of his effort to incite his followers to self-identify and then stand behind that self-declaration, that revelation, no matter what the consequences...

I love this, and these are stirring words. And yet, I'm mindful how easily they might be misconstrued. In the culture wars there's a whole of Christians "picking a fight" with the culture. But much of this conflict misunderstands the social context of Revelation. John wasn't asking the church to "win back" Rome. Following Blount, John was asking Christians to stop passing as Romans. In Revelation, the state is Babylon and the Christians are called to "come out" of her exploitive political, religious, and economic practices. Ponder the economic aspects of Babylon and how disconcertingly similar they are to America. In short, the proper way to translate Revelation into our context is to see America, not as Zion, but as Babylon, and to demand that Christians stop passing as Americans. 

Now that's a provocative question to ask! What might that mean to stop passing as an American? And what sort of persecution might that provoke? Such are the questions, I think, Revelation places before us.