087 – Christian Superstition

Cody Johnston 1:29
Hey everyone, welcome to the reckless pursuit. My name is Cody

Elaine Johnston 1:33
and my name is Elaine

Cody Johnston 1:33
and this is episode 87. And this is part three of our October Halloween special. Whoa man, so we have been busting our butt just to give you all like some completely unnecessary backstory on our lives. We host this huge Halloween party every single year. So if you’re ever in town, shoot us a message because you should definitely come back hang out with us sometime sometime in October every year and we try

Elaine Johnston 2:03
to outdo ourselves every year at least that’s my goal.

Cody Johnston 2:07
Yeah, we’re definitely doing that this year. It is late. We’re tired. But we know we have got to get you guys something. So we’re just going to share a little bit about something I talked about on my podcast and we’re just going to see where it goes. I have a little bit in my mind. I’m sure Elaine may have a little bit in her mind. She will see what happens but I definitely have some stuff that that I want to share. So we’re going to be talking about superstition. We’re gonna be talking about wiki boards. We’re going to be talking about a video we posted at Tick Tock Oh, and talking about a little bit of everything but before we get into that, a few things real quick, please do not fast forward through these because these are vitally important. And the first one is please go over there and click that rate button. Leave an honest review guys you do not know how amazing that is and how much It helps people passing by to know what our show is about from someone else other than just Elaine and I. So we greatly appreciate all of those reviews. And also, if you want to keep the conversation going we invite you to join nomads. It is our Facebook community group you can find nomads a safe community to ask unsafe questions in the show notes below. And finally, if you enjoy this show, share it on with a friend. That is the best way to keep the conversation going. But we’re going to get right into this episode talking about all things spooky talking about a little bit of what I was talking about on my show itinerant last week, and talking about superstition, we g boards and all that fun stuff. Here it comes.

During the reign of Saul, there was a war that was about to take place. The Philistines were gathering an army to fight against Israel. Saul gathered all of his people together to face the army that approached their land. But when he saw their numbers of fear begin to grow within him, saw cold out to the Lord intervene to give him a sign through his dreams, but nothing came. So Saul resorted to the rim and Tumen, those white and black stones we talked about in a previous episode, but God still did not provide the answer he sought. He then called on the prophets to assemble in his courts to decree the outcome of the war at hand. But every prophet drew a blank saw only had one option left, there was a woman who had contact with the great prophet Samuel. So new Samuel had favor with God and that he would be able to provide the answers he so desperately needed. So he had Georgia disguise and made the journey to a small Canaanite village in the valley of Israel. He sought out the woman and when he found her, he begged her to get in touch with Samuel on his behalf to provide him some answers. So the woman went and woke Samuel and brought him before Saul. Samuel asks, so

Unknown Speaker 5:19
why

Cody Johnston 5:20
have you disturbed me? And Saul fell on his face and proclaimed the troubling news about the Philistine army sitting at their doorstep and the war to come? Then Samuel delivered some not so great news. Has the Lord not turned away from you and became your enemy, Samuel ass. Today the Lord has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David. Samuel continued, the Lord will give Israel into the hands of the Philistines, and tomorrow, you and your sons shall join me. Saul fell face first into the ground paralyzed with fear. Not only was his nation about to be 20 Born from his grasp, but he was told he was about to join Samuel in his resting place, which may not sound too frightening until you realize who this woman saw came to see was. She was known as the witch of indoor, a conjurer of spirits, a median, if you will, which is why she was the only one who could access Samuel, because he was dead. So what you just heard was a clip from my show itinerant biblical history beyond the Bible. And just a quick thing, if you think that is something you would like to hear, if it sounds interesting to you, you can find it wherever you’re listening to this podcast right now. It’s there also. So if that’s our website, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you’re listening, it’s available to you. And I really just kind of wanted to just kind of shoot the breeze of it with you again, and let’s talk a little bit about just people’s perception. Of what witchcraft is and what the culture is. And why are people so afraid of witchcraft? We know in the Bible where it says like, Oh, don’t, you know, conjure up devils don’t conjure up spirits and everything. But why do we just like kind of pigeonhole this topic as, like why do Christians label things as witchcraft? Just because it’s outside of the realm of understanding?

Elaine Johnston 7:25
Well, it’s very interesting that you asked that because today, whenever I was looking at trivia questions for our party, actually was looking up like different things about witchcraft, Halloween, all of the war behind that I was looking at Mayday and maples and all that stuff. And one of the things that I learned was that Wicca actually just means wisdom. Like that’s what that literal word means. And I was just like, Okay, and then it said, like, what is that? Hallo. It was a spiritual person and everything. So I know like a lot of people, a lot of Christian I think that you can’t celebrate Halloween because of its the devil’s holiday or it’s a bunch of, you know, witchcraft or like, just the history of Halloween and stuff like that. And so, I think maybe if because what God means wisdom and then like in Genesis where Eve ate the fruit because she wanted to have wisdom and be like God, but then like the fall of humanity and all this stuff, I think that’s some of what it ties into is just the, if you celebrate Halloween or you are interested in any of it, or if you have a Weegee board, like you’re automatically allowing demons and dark spirits into your life and I just think, though, I do believe there is truth to some of it. A lot of it is just like we’re afraid, for no reason.

Cody Johnston 8:52
Well, and there’s a lot of different types of like air quotes here on magic and something I kind of go into in that episode is like what is magic right? What is Does it mean to be a wizard or a witch? Well, a which is a practitioner of magic, right? Well, what is magic? Like? Well, okay, so just because you practice magic, what does that mean? Magic is literally anything that is out of the natural or supernatural. Most everything from miracles, you know, if you start going through the Bible, and you start looking at all of the instances where God fearing, like the patriarchs of the Old Testament, all this, we’re avid practitioners of a lot of this kind of stuff, and some church. So church circles are more, you know, kind of like afraid of these things some more open, you know, there was this whole big thing whenever yoga started coming on the scene, which is like, Oh, it’s demon. You know, it’s, it’s worshipping the sun, blah, blah, blah. You’ve heard it. Elaine, you wrote

Elaine Johnston 9:48
that and even just the whole vision casting and vision boards and stuff like that

Cody Johnston 9:52
we Yeah, like the whole word vision, right? It’s like, Oh, well, I literally heard someone talking about vision boards, say like, It’s sinful to create a vision board because you don’t know what your next day holds. So why would you try to plan for it? And I’m like, do you have a 401k? Do you have a savings account? Do you plan to pay your bills like What does that even mean? Like all a vision board is is like goals and dreams you want to achieve like it doesn’t like the one spooky about cuz I

Elaine Johnston 10:21
know that the argument was made like oh you’re like setting idols before you you’re actually like, if you start your day and you’re like, manifesting things into your life and saying I want to have this or I want to be this or this is my life. You’re actually like worshiping the picture of Beyonce on your vision board. Right? Like

Cody Johnston 10:42
I just I don’t understand that though. Because it’s like, well, why would I mean that’s like to God not have a plan after a man’s fall like we started going into this like, just God have a plan. Oh, like, you know, like, Why is it such a sin to plan Oh, you’re not trusting in God if he closed the lilies of the field, and I’m like, Okay, that’s not those that’s out of context, which is a whole other conversation and people taking scripture out of context, which kind of ties into this too, because, you know, I want to just kind of drop a few things real quick. And I don’t want to spoil everything I really want you to go check that episode out if you if this kind of stuff interests you, because that’s, I say a lot there. But like, you know, some of our favorite Bible characters came from using magical roots, literally roots from a plant. And just to say, one in particular here, that’s really interesting. Moses, you know, Moses was raised in Egypt, he was second to Pharaoh, right? He was literally taught the arts and secrets from his birth, all of the mysteries of Egypt. Whenever it says that Moses cast down his rod and turned it into a snake, what did it say happened? Well, the Egyptian court officials, the magician’s of Egypt, literally did the same thing. Sure his snake was more powerful it ate the other ones. That’s all fine and dandy and cool and sweet and whatever. And it makes the story like oh Bible, yay. Like it’s all Jesus He now Moses was practicing magic, all of the plagues. If you look at and this is a whole other one, if you go and look at the blood over the doorpost that’s taken from a pagan, right? From a festival way before the Egyptian captivity of Israel, we can get into the whole thing about like, there’s no archaeological evidence to even prove that Egypt ever even captured Israel. That’s a whole other thing. Like, we get these weird superstitions where we’re like, oh, because it’s worded this way that makes it bad. You know, witchcraft is bad, but witchcraft is packed practicing magic But Moses and Jacob and Joseph and Abraham and Isaac, and you can keep going throughout all of them that practice this so you know, quote, unquote, magic you start looking at like the story of Israel. Getting better. bitten by the snakes and what did what did they do? They made a brazen snake to look at, right? Like it was a totem. Like we have these little totems like you can see it even today in Christianity, which this is, you know, like, we have our anointing oils, we have our cross necklaces that supposed to bring us, you know, our little angel coins. We use these totems as remembrance, and so much of our faith bleeds over into other faiths. And I think we forget that the Israelites were people who were really they were nomads for a long time, and they picked up on a lot of different cultures, they had a lot of different cultures bleeding into them. And Christianity has that and if you look at like one sect of Christianity, they’re over here saying, oh, if you do anything with herbs, that’s against the Bible, because or biology or whatever, I cant rember the exact same in the episode, but like, there’s an official name for it right? And it’s like that’s against God. Then you have this other church over here like selling essential oils. completely okay and like, so this church views that church is doing witchcraft. Now this church over here selling oils looks to this other church who burns incense. It’s like, oh, they’re definitely in witchcraft and in this church over here uses incidents and they’re looking over at someone else, like, why are you judging us for this? It’s all this weird perspective and it really comes down to the intent, right? It’s the intent of the heart. It’s like, why are you doing what you do? Sure, you can conjure up and do seances and what have you to bring darkness into your life just as much you can do those things. I mean, if you look at a prayer circle, okay, let’s just be real for a second. You look at a Bible study prayer circle, everyone holding hands, chanting something in a circle. Then you go and watch someone sit around a pentagram and hold hands and chant something in a circle. It’s the same method. All of these rituals, all of these things are the same methods that kind of goes back to the same that I always say of like, you know, every type of Religion is tapping into some stream of god it may not be the the fullness of God but there is a tapping into of God, right. And so you have these people who are so scared of what they do, but they don’t realize that the very practices they do look the same way. And I’ve shared this before, like I had a friend who was agnostic and he’s like, I can’t take communion. I can’t do communion like that just creeps me out like what creeps you out about communion. He’s like blood magic. That’s just like, that’s the darkest form of magic. I can’t get I can’t get behind blood magic. And I’m just like, oh, man, that’s, that’s intense. You know? Like, there’s just there’s this weird stigma. We put on our rituals, because they’re different. And we’re like, oh, well, God says not to do those things. But those are the very things God actually says to do. All difference the entire difference is the intent behind it.

Elaine Johnston 15:50
But I know last year, whenever we were talking about Halloween and and Ken Christian celebrate, I think we even had an episode specifically about like, we You bored and stuff like that. But back to the whole superstition thing and our Tick Tock video yeah, that got a lot of people in arms. Um, you know, so I highly encourage you to go watch that video. Can you put that in the show notes? I can link

Cody Johnston 16:18
to it people if you’re not on Tick Tock following us guys we’re, we’re doing stuff over it probably our most active social media right now we post like every day pretty much but funny videos and everything else so to

Elaine Johnston 16:34
give context for video, so I’m not going to spoil it, but I we went into our local Halloween store and there was a Weegee board placemat. Yeah, like a board game, but just a placement and with the numbers and letters and everything, and it was a video on Tech Talk. And it was like answering questions or whatever right about

Unknown Speaker 16:58
how about Yeah and

Elaine Johnston 17:00
it was stupid video you know it was just something that we did like five minutes or less we’re like okay we’re in the store what all videos can we make for you know our tech talk and and Christians and Halloween stuff and so we waited a couple weeks before we posted it or edit it and then once you post it on tape talk it got a

Cody Johnston 17:22
lot of got a lot of heat. A lot of people were like freaking out like no you can’t be a Christian celebrate Halloween. That’s of the devil. Then you have one camp over here like it’s okay to celebrate just don’t dress up as anything scary. And then you have the other other camp that’s like yeah, that like there’s nothing wrong with Halloween. Why are people so freaking out and then you have the other group over here. They’re like, why are you even holding that demonic piece of cardboard? You know? Yeah. Like what is wrong with you? And like okay, context here to just kind of get like we don’t own a week a week we GG board we don’t we don’t own a Luigi board in this house. And like The reason for that mostly because I don’t really feel like spending the money on it I don’t care like you can draw on a piece of paper and get a marble and do the same thing that

Elaine Johnston 18:10
I’m not trying to summon spirits or talk to people who have gone beyond

Cody Johnston 18:15
I’m also not like if I’m going to do kinesiology which is ok so little bit of science for you. So can easy ology or muscle testing is basically micro motor, the study of the micro motor movements in the body, and this is deemed insanely as witchcraft in so many Christian circles for the life of me I do not know why it is a major you can take in a college real colleges not in like a cult colleges no to that creepy stuff. It’s a real thing people use to understand people’s suppressed emotions. For instance, there’s a little pendulum on a string most people view this is like charting spirits and all this kind of stuff. Literally, you can ask your Self a question out loud. Do I want this? Or do I feel this way and it will swing one way for Yes. And one way for No, you have to learn what it is for you but it’s literally the micro motor skills, your body reacts naturally. Just like whenever there’s tragedy, you tremble and shake or when you’re happy you get excited you shake you move the bodies full of movement like motor skills, that’s just part of it. It’s deemed is witchcraft in so many Christian circles, which is complete bull, because it’s literally just the movement of your muscles micro movements. Anyway, the plant chat on a Weegee board in the scientific reason it moves is because your micro motor movements push it in the direction you want it to go. Am I saying you can’t summon things? I don’t know if you can. I don’t know what you can do with a week.

Elaine Johnston 19:46
But I also have never tried because I didn’t desire to

Cody Johnston 19:50
but here’s the other thing about that. If you start looking through all the different ways of talking or divination, right practices of divination practice of, of necromancy or any kind of fancy practices, speaking with the dead, anything like that. There’s a lot of different ways to do that. Okay? The Bible talks about how it’s, it’s against God to read the clouds. It’s again, like, I mean, it goes into all these different ways. Like there’s so many different variations to that. Basically what it’s saying is put your trust in God don’t try to summon the dead, which is fine and dandy, like, I mean, we saw how that happened with King Saul and obviously like he got the answer he didn’t want sometimes pay them dead fo got more knowledge that we don’t, we don’t even want to know. But the truth is like the reason we don’t own one is because we don’t have a reason to Own One. But it’s not a fear and that’s the thing I want to get into here is these people were freaking out online or a place you’re touching that you’re opening doors

Elaine Johnston 20:50
I’m like, Okay, so the alphabet and the numbers like automatically means it’s a demonic right like

Cody Johnston 20:57
guys items only have The ability and the value you place in them, right? Like you can’t have something that is like even if some group of like dark magic you know left handed magic if you’re not that is Google it. Practitioners get involved in like cursed this item, you know, as a Christian like why would I be scared like I pick it up and lick it like why do I care? Like

Elaine Johnston 21:24
I wouldn’t like it if it’s sitting in their Halloween store. I don’t know how many other people have touched that, but that’s a whole different

Cody Johnston 21:30
thing. But like, what is it like, you know what I’m saying? It’s not gonna do anything like that curse is void. It is no, I serve a power that is greater than any curse. I do not give room to that it has no place just like a wedgie board. I could gladly grab it. I can push the little plan chat around the board. I’m not scared of it. It’s just a piece of cardboard. It only has the power that a person gives it. Why would I be scared of it like that silly Timmy and that’s that kind of goes in the whole superstition thing, right? Christians get up in arms about some stuff we can get so up in arms and I just want to like, encourage everyone here you serve a God bigger than that. And I think we need to remember that like if you are truly serving a God who you believe is the one true God, the Creator of the heavens, the earth and the very spiritual practice that you are trying to avoid the very thing that you were trying to avoid if he created it all that means he had to create that part of it too. Then why live in fear of it. Now if you don’t want to own a wedgie board, that’s fine. You don’t have to own a Luigi board like that’s whatever if you don’t want to own essential oils or practice yoga or burn Sage or whatever it is, or sit around a campfire or if you don’t want to practice celebrate Halloween all those are personal convention convictions and that’s fine and dandy. You can have a personal intent

Elaine Johnston 22:52
and the purpose right what you’re doing it for,

Cody Johnston 22:55
but if someone like wants to burn sage and they feel closer to God That way that’s not against God like we they burned incense and they burned herbs in the temple to purify the temple. They just released a scientific study like not very long ago I’ve been seeing it fly around the online that burning Sage actually kills 94% of airborne bacteria in a home. This is the same thing we’ve been doing this since the beginning of time for a reason. We knew that it created a positive energy. Now science has proven it literally kills toxins that want to harm us like

Elaine Johnston 23:30
even if like the whole purification process isn’t necessarily weeding out like bad spirit spirits, but it’s weeding out bad bacteria um so for that, okay, whatever negative energy whether it’s bacteria or spirits like okay, I will burn Sage

Cody Johnston 23:47
everywhere. That’s another one. Whenever when someone says they’re sending good vibes or they can get on my Christians nerves like I don’t want your vibes I want prayer

Unknown Speaker 23:55
I used to do.

Cody Johnston 23:57
Yeah, I mean, like people get so upset about that

Elaine Johnston 23:59
funny though. Because I used to be back and forth. Now I’m okay. I’m like, send me all the good vibes. But like, originally, I was in high school and the thing would be like, I’m sick or pray for me, I have to take a test send me all the good vibes and all the positive energy. And then I remember a couple people that I was talking with, that had that same thing. They were like, well, I don’t want good vibes. I don’t want positive energy. What are you doing? Just like trying to think positive thoughts? Like how is that going to come to me? Like I only am open to prayer. I’m only open to good things or whatever. And so then I was like, Okay, yeah, like that’s totally stupid positive energy, positive positive vibes. You can’t just think something positive for somebody else. And so I was like, okay, only pray for me. Like I didn’t make like Facebook status or openly tell people, hey, don’t send me good vibes or whatever. But I did start changing my language of Hey, pray for me or whatever. But that was all I said. And now I’m like, hey, If it’s positive, send it to me. good bacteria, good spirits, good vibes, like any of it like, I am open. And I’ve also had to challenge myself, because I used to it whenever I was on the fence about it and was only saying that I was taking in prayer. I used to, like, I don’t know, I used to hear things, or see things on on Facebook or on TV or whatever people from other faiths and other religions would feel offended or people atheist even would feel offended if someone said, Hey, I’m going to pray for you or can I pray for you? And I would always think, well, that’s stupid. They’re trying to send you good energy or good vibes or whatever. Like, don’t you want the goodness of God over your life? And then I kinda was like, will die line that’s the same way if somebody of another faith or religion came up to me and told me that they were praying to whatever God they were worshiping or that They were giving me good energy from nature or whatever it is. Would I be open to that? Well,

Cody Johnston 26:06
yeah. And that’s an interesting point too, because I know in my path just speaking for me personally, if someone from another face like I’m praying, I’m worshiping my god and I’m going to ask him to intercede. I’d be like No, I don’t want your God in your seat. I want my god to intercede for me like this arrogant like narcissistic like but Hillary you know, I was like, No, I don’t need your God your God’s petty I want mine is mine God if my god is Jehovah the god I say he is. Why would that offend me? Why would I not see the beauty in the fact that they are praying to what they understand and that God can still hear their prayer on my behalf

Elaine Johnston 26:44
right whole enter sister why

Cody Johnston 26:46
can is God so tiny once again arena put God in a box so much that he can’t hear the prayer of someone else? It’s not like they’re uttering curses at Yeah, but that’s even the thing. If someone curses me What do I have to fear like you know, we recite this every Single nice I think Psalm 91 and is like 1000 may fall dead at your side 10,000 at your right hand, but no bad will happen to you like this is in the Bible like bad can happen all around you but you’re above that like God has you if someone is speaking curses at you, you retaliate with blessing like what why are we so afraid we get so superstitious of like, Oh, you know I stepped on a crack today My poor mother Oh someone else have a different faith prayed for me they’re weird God’s gonna cast evil devil vibes at me and and I want to talk about this to going back to that Tick Tock video. You can do anything for Halloween just don’t do anything spooky just don’t do anything scary because scary is of the devil. I had someone literally say just don’t dress up as anything scary because that’s demonic. But dressing up as anything else was okay. My comment literally don’t we say Satan is like the most beautiful angel. Isn’t that kind of like the whole gist of Satan is like he’s super beautiful. So what are you saying like, don’t dress up as anything pretty dress up. Escape. stuff. As a matter of fact, how scary costumes came to be, was because originally, Halloween is the fall harvest. It is the harvest festival in Ireland where it got started. It was called so in. It is a festival to celebrate and it is also to believe to be the day where the veil between spiritual and physical are is the least in in pagan tradition. all fine and dandy. That’s all good. Catholicism took root in Ireland, which is still the primary the predominant religion. If you’re from Ireland, you can back me up when I was in Ireland, I think I saw three Protestant churches they were only in the north, which is under English rule, but everything in the Republic of Ireland was Catholic. I could not find hardly any thing. I saw two Protestant churches the entire time. And so everything is Catholic, they’re Catholic came in and they were like, hey, let’s figure out how to convert this festival. Over They made it All Saints Day. And so kinda like you were saying Wicca means wisdom, right? Well, Halloween, it was literally Saints Day evening are basically like the day before All Saints Day. And so they took this holiday and the whole thing is you’re praying a course like thinking for like the saints that came that gave you the wisdom, etc. So I’m not versed in Catholic history so I’m sure many people could correct me on all the little intricacies of basically they came in. They made this holiday where people have more pagan practice could convert over easier which, mind you that’s what a lot of Christianity is. Christianity isn’t as structured as we make it out to be. It is a much more open religion than we make it out to be. It’s not dogmatic. That’s the whole point of the dang thing. And so, the reason we would adorn scary masks very specific here, scary masks were in attentional to scare away demonic spirits. Evil to ward off evil. On the day that the veil between the spiritual and natural with Dennis, this was a Christian church practice put in place. All the scary stuff around Halloween was brought to place by the Christian

Unknown Speaker 30:17
technically Halloween is biblical. Halloween is as biblical as Christmas

Cody Johnston 30:21
and Easter Actually, I would say Halloween is more biblical than Christmas and Easter, because Halloween is dedicated specifically towards spirits, which you know, the whole idea isn’t anti christian in the first place. And then the Catholics kind of Christian is that, but then you have Christmas which was the celebration of the winter solstice. And they have much more pagan traditions with like the pole and the worship and all that. Not to mention the fact that now we have a whole new thing we worship on Christmas because we don’t worship Jesus anymore. We worship the mighty dollar and we worship freakin buying things and all the consumerism and materialism so we have a whole new item and Christians lost even more of its meaning Don’t get me wrong I love Christmas Christmas my favorite holiday but next Halloween Yeah, I love Christmas a little more than Halloween yet but in the whole season it’s good but anyway so you know like it has just as much there and then you can actually go into Thanksgiving Thanksgiving has a little bit of pagan roots to you know like I know it’s that’s specifically for the for you know the United States but that has some interesting roots to that I talked about in that episode just a little bit. And then you even start getting into eastern Easter is the most freakin pagan holiday there is that we worship and it’s there you know, worship. It’s a bit like it’s the most pagan holiday of all. And when I say pagan I actually mean like kind of more along the lines of like the stuff that Christianity would be completely against. You know, why do we frickin hide eggs at our church? Why do we do Easter bunnies All that Well, we’re worshiping fertility goddesses. Let’s don’t even talk about the origin of the steeple and what that meant. I think you can kind of start putting two and two together there. But it’s it’s right in there. And Halloween is probably the chill list of all of them, but we bandwagon and attack it because we are so afraid of what we don’t understand. And that is my thing of Christianity. We quit being afraid of what it doesn’t understand and pursue what it doesn’t understand and welcome and allow God to work through things. It’s all about mindset. It is all about mindset. If you come into anything with a god based mindset, you can bring positivity out. All right guys, branch over. Let us know what you think. Let us know how you feel head over there asked to be a part of nomads a safe community for Christians to ask unsafe questions. We want to hear all of your great Halloween and other holiday questions. We love you guys. We’re going to wrap this right on up and we look forward to our next of our October Halloween special next week, and as always be brave, be bold and be reckless.

Unknown Speaker 33:08
We’ll talk soon