This post is more about the Christian faith than it is speculative, but works its way to talking about speculative fiction at the end. The title of this article may prove to be a bit misleading because I’m using the prefix “anti-” in one of its meanings in Greek, which means “as a substitute for” instead of how we usually use “anti-” in English, which is “against” or “opposite.” I’m linking an online New Testament Greek lexicon article on “ἀντί“, which if you look at it you’ll see has two definitions. Definition 1, which includes “over against” and “opposite,” is the origin of the English meaning of something that’s opposite or against something–such as these examples from a linked online English dictionary: antiwar, anti-hero, and anti-bacterial. But the second definition’s got “for, instead of, in place of (something).” It’s that second definition I’m driving at here. So by “Anti-Faith” I mean a faith in something other than where Christianity places faith. Anti-hope is likewise hope in the wrong thing. And anti-love is a substitute for love. Not the real thing but not the complete opposite, either.

(A bit off topic, but if you didn’t know already, “Antichrist” has two possible meanings in NT Greek: One who opposes Christ/is the opposite of Christ OR one who is a substitute for Christ, which isn’t the same thing as being an opposite. Which of these definitions is correct? That depends on who you ask, but I think both are right. The Antichrist will be someone who sets himself up as the equivalent of Christ, substituting, but in fact will be in opposition to Christ…)

I’m going to focus on anti-love above the others I mentioned. Because just as Christians ought to be defined by our love for one another, as per John 13:35 and I Corinthians 13 and other passages (of course far too often we are not), the modern substitute for love defines our times in a powerful way. But let me get to the subject via a personal story:

Anti-Love on the Streets of New Orleans

I mentioned last week that I’d just returned from a mission trip to Mardi Gras with a ministry called No Greater Love (I’ll shorten that as “NGL”), which seeks to evangelize certain public events including Mardi Gras in New Orleans with an emphasis in talking about the love of Christ (though they do mention repentance as well). There were other evangelistic groups I saw on the streets of the French Quarter of New Orleans, some of which had signs that said things like “GOD HATES HOMOS” and “REPENT OR BURN IN HELL.” Representing a supposed Christian message, but one focusing on wrath. Let’s call those people, “No Greater Haters.”

“No Greater Haters” in New Orleans. Photo source: Advocate.com

What the “No Greater Haters” offer is in a sense anti-love but it’s not what I meant by coining the term. Though I must say people carrying angry signs and shouting at the crowd, focusing on the wrath of God, seem to me highly unlikely to prod anyone in the direction of personal salvation. Quite the opposite.

I mean, if I were Satan (the WWSD thing I mentioned a while ago), I’d definitely work on getting the angriest and most hateful people I could find to shout the gospel with an offensive snarl, in hopes of reducing the effectiveness of anyone talking about God’s love. A bit like how Soviet propaganda films looked for the worst examples of American society to show their citizens, focusing on things like abused homeless people and racism, to counteract stories of US wealth and easy living. Perhaps instead of my cynicism about the “No Greater Haters” I should see the situation the way the Apostle Paul did in that he rejoiced even when people preached Christ with evil motivations (Philippians 1:15-18)–but in fact, I wish the “No Greater Haters” were not there at all.

But instead of anti-love as hate, what I mean by “anti-love” was seen instead in something a woman on the street shouted at us as the NGL group marched by, our lead member carrying a wooden cross as we went. Note I carried the cross part of the way both on Monday (Lundi Gras) and Tuesday (Mardi Gras), because in addition to doing other things, our group marched both days. Some people shouted at us a variety of things, some obscene (such as vulgar references to what we should do with a p-word) and some members of the crowd threw things at our group, especially at the cross. Usually Mardi Gras beads, but I also got pegged with a nearly-full can of beer from a second floor balcony. (Taking the abuse without replying in kind we saw as us demonstrating in our bodies and actions how Jesus acted when put to the cross of Calvary.)

NGL on the way to or from Bourbon Street, away from the crowds. Note in 2020 our hats were gray, to prevent them looking like MAGA hats. Source: NGL Ministry’s Facebook page

So it when a woman shouted out to us, “Find somebody to love! Find somebody to love!” it was distinctive not that she was shouting, but what she was saying. And also how angry at us she seemed as she shouted it, but without using profanity. As if we were ones not representing love, but denying love.

I immediately perceived her angry criticism, but I didn’t know right away what it was about. I wondered if maybe she was trying to say that instead of marching the street, we should be helping homeless people or something (we actually did help a number of homeless people earlier in the day, but anyway). But when she switched to screeching, “Why do you hate love? Why do you hate love?” I understood what she was talking about.

She meant love as sex. Or more accurately, as erotic love (eros in Greek) which includes emotions along with sexuality.  She saw us as marching because she thought we want to suppress sexuality. Which is not entirely true of course because we as a group did embrace married heterosexual “love” and we did not specifically single out sexual sins when we talked about the love of Christ. But it’s true our belief system did not embrace sexuality as the most important thing about a person and did include seeing sexual desire in certain contexts as wrong.

I don’t want to portray her as thinking deeper than she probably did, but there was absolutely no reason for her to use “love” as a euphemism for screwing. It’s not as if people were generally avoiding the use of profanity at that time and place.

I don’t think she meant it as a euphemism for the f-word, which we heard often enough on the streets. She meant what she shouted–for her, sex is love or else sex is so bound up with love that if a person is against sexuality to any degree, then that person ipso facto is against love: “Why are you against love?”

The woman represented a point of view I was already aware of in a way, but her shouting reinforced the idea of what she really meant. There’s nothing profound about me finally noticing, but for many people in today’s world, the meanings of “sex” and “love” are so linked together that sex has become a substitute for love.

Christian Love

Christian love can include many things, but is probably best defined by John 15:13, the key verse for the NGL ministry: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Love as self-sacrifice, love as self-denial, love even as suffering, the greatest example of which is the death of Jesus on the cross.

How well do Christians live self-sacrifice as love? Mostly not very well I would say. But that’s our ideal, one like the soldier who throws himself on a hand grenade to save his fellow soldiers or like the mother who throws herself at a wild animal attacking her children to save them.

Many, many Christians have seen sexual love as important, even though some, mostly in the historic past such as Augustine of Hippo, have felt that pleasures of the flesh even in marriage were not exactly good things. But even Christians who embrace sexuality rarely see sexual or marital love as the highest form of love. Our modern vision of love is different.

Anti-Love

That sex (more accurately eros) has risen in importance in the minds of modern people is evident from how important it is for many people to identify themselves by sexual preferences. Not just labels like gay or straight or even words like “pansexual,” but by “dominant” or “submissive” and many more labels. And people defend their rights to their full sexual expression.

Yes, sex has always been important, including of course at the time of the American Revolution. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson notoriously had many “love affairs.” But neither man fought for the right for their sexuality to be recognized and approved publicly. Yet rights to religious expression found a prominent place in their writings. So modern times represents a real change in attitudes towards what is more important, religion or sex.

That sex and love are intermingled in the minds of modern people is evident in some people having a hard time believing that David and Jonathan in the Bible were not lovers, because the Bible plainly says they loved each other. But love did not ever directly equal sex in Scriptures–genuine deep affection can happen without sex, as also seen in how some people see the disciple “whom Jesus loved.”

Sex of course does or should produce feelings of intimacy and closeness. It does link people together in a quasi-spiritual way (“the two shall become one flesh” of the Bible). It has aspects of pleasing someone else that are rather like love and can actually be accompanied by love. But in the end, it’s not the same thing.

The surge in modern Neo-Pagan religions is driven in part by the embrace of Modern Pagans of full sexual expression. They recognize powers greater than themselves. They seek the help of those powers. They actually do embrace a sense of right and wrong in the world, importing from the East an idea of Karma, that the spiritual powers ensure people get what they deserve and the powers are especially against people “doing harm” to one another. But sex is defined as not harmful, as long as the parties involved are consensual.

So free sex, with any reason to feel guilt poo-pooed, is one of the major features of growing modern religions. Sex itself is increasingly seen as a virtue–as in, there’s someone wrong with someone who doesn’t want to have sex.

So the substitution of sex for love, sex as anti-love, replaces love as self-sacrifice as Christians have always understood it.

Anti-Faith and Anti-Hope

The book of Revelation features an unholy trinity of the Devil, “the Beast” (a.k.a. “the Antichrist”), and the “False Prophet.” What I’m affirming is the virtues of I Corinthians 13 (sometimes called the “theological virtues”) also have their substitutes. Sex is the anti-love. So what are anti-faith and anti-hope?

Faith in Christianity is not a generalized trust in anyone–it specifically means to trust God. So anti-faith is to believe in people rather than God. To put it in terms of what Batman said in The Dark Knight, to believe that there still is good in the people of Gotham. Or to apply the faith in people underlying Star Trek, the notion that someday we will be able to solve all our problems on our own, to completely eliminate poverty and crime.

Or course not all modern persons have strong faith in people, but the idea that people are generally good and generally can be trusted to do right, that evil is a pathology and not a condition that’s fixed feature of the human race is a pretty common aspect of modern human beings. And fits nicely into the anti-love principle, where people see love as an act of mutual gratification between consenting humans.

The Bible, on the other hand, does not envision that human beings will ever be able to solve all their problems on their own and does not see people in general as trustworthy (e.g. John 2:24-25). While we should be able to have some trust in our fellow humans, theological faith is directed at God himself, in an important contrast with anti-faith.

Hope in the Bible I’d say is related to faith. Hope is like faith, but for things that haven’t happened yet. Hope is faith’s future tense.

Hope can refer to multiple things in the future but when the New Testament talks about hope, it often refers to looking forward to either the resurrection of the body from the grave (e.g. I Peter 1:3) or looks forward to Jesus’s return (e.g. Titus 2:13).  What’s the anti-hope that substitutes for that?

Generally, most people put their hope in this life, in this world. Generally, people avoid thinking about what could happen to them in the distant future, which is why even mentioning life after death, even if kindly, seems incredibly rude to them–they don’t want to think about it and don’t want to talk about it.

Though there is a new form of hope that directly relates to speculative fiction…

Science and Singularity as a Source of Anti-Hope

For some people, hope in the future is linked to the idea that science will be able to solve our modern problems. Science will cure hunger. Science will fix our medical woes. Science will even cure mean people from being mean–there will be a pill for that!

The faith in science (or to be consistent, the “anti-faith” in science) culminates in the hope of some for “the Singularity,” a point in the future when artificial intelligence will become so prominent that human beings will merge with it, supposedly uploading our brains into networked systems, supposedly becoming de facto immortal via strictly scientific and technical means.

The Singularity envisioned. Source: DailyStar.co.uk

While only a small fraction of the human race are looking forward to the Singularity to provide them immortality, some do have that anti-hope. Which is in direct opposition to hope in Christ’s return or hope in a bodily resurrection.

Responding to the Anti-Virtues as Christian Speculative Fiction Writers

Speculative fiction, especially science fiction, has the power to create expectations for what human beings will see in the future. The fact that much of speculative fiction, especially science fiction, downplays the role of God by never mentioning him or only giving negative or pejorative references to God we of course undo by creating expectations via stories that God will continue to matter in the future–and in other worlds, where- or whenever those other worlds may be.

We also indirectly combat the desires to obtain anti-love, anti-faith, and anti-hope by simply writing characters for whom actual love, faith, and hope have meaning and power. Faith that doesn’t stray from showing actual problems but also shows real deliverance and help from God. Hope that shows how trusting God for the future is better than trusting the collective human race or science.

Which leads to a potential approach to take in dealing with anti-love, anti-faith, and anti-hope. Write them as being central to people’s lives, but make the story a dystopia, in which the real needs of the human soul go neglected and where pleasuring the body just isn’t enough. Where the faith in people fails and the hope in science falls short.

Conclusion

So what do you readers think about my notion of sex as “anti-love” and the three theological virtues having modern substitutes? Has someone else said something along the same lines, only better and clearer than I did? 🙂 Or similar? Please share.

And what stories do you know that effectively counter hopes for a future singularity and science-as-savior? Please mention them below!

I rewatched an old favorite this week, Equilibrium. If you’re not familiar with it, think 1984 meets The Matrix. It’s a timely tale about a future that is practically at our doorsteps: black-coated enforcers dispatch “sense offenders” with ballet gunplay and thinly disguised Nazi flags fly on every corner and the Mona Lisa gets incinerated by a flamethrower because it makes people “feel.” Isn’t that where our world is heading?

Image copyright Miramax Films

All kidding and choreographed violence aside, the movie does explore an interesting premise: is mankind’s “volatile nature” worth the risk? In the film, the populace is controlled by frequent doses of Prozium, a capsule drug that essentially smothers all emotion. As the governmental figurehead named Father declares, “At the cost of the dizzying heights of human elation, we have suppressed its abysmal lows.” Anger, hatred, depression, and malice are anesthetized along with joy, excitement, love, and kindness. People are machines, not feeling anything one way or another, even if their friends or family are arrested and executed for sense offense.

Taken from a purely humanistic standpoint, there is an element of truth to this notion. If cold, hard logic reigned supreme in the hearts and minds of every person, there would be a lot less crime and bad decisions. Even the members of the Resistance, an underground society that refused to take Prozium, agreed that “without control, without restraint, emotion is chaos.” They claim that feeling is what makes life worth living, but this is a very subjective point. Someone would argue that the powder keg of emotion is worth the risk because it gives life a spark, even though it may turn into a raging fire, while another person would say that it’s too volatile and unpredictable, so just get rid of it altogether.

As our society marches further away from God, it actively seeks to deny the gifts and blessings that He gives the whole world, to believers as well as unbelievers. Emotions are one of these gifts, but in our fallen state, they have become corrupted. The Bible says that the heart is wicked (Jer. 17:9, Mark 7:21), and it takes only a moment of self-reflection to see what the mess of our feelings and desires. It also takes only a moment to look with disgust and horror at a world ruled by its emotions and appetites and see how far the depravity of man can carry itself away from God.

We know that the root of this depravity is not emotions, but the fallen sin nature of everyone that ever lived, apart from Jesus Himself. Yet the world cannot accept this truth, so it invents new ways to explain it away and new balms to soothe the wounds. In contrast to films like Equilibrium, the trend seems to swing the other way, to hyper-emotional release. The internet is a deafening beehive buzzing with vented feelings, outbursts of rage, sensory overload, and wanton gratuity. Even in casual circles, being vulnerable and open with one’s feelings is a virtue held in higher regard than being the “strong, silent type” and having “a stiff upper lip”.

What is the result? Emotionally immature adults, fractured relationships and families, impulsive neurotics, unfiltered mental data dumps, offending people at every turn, and most importantly, increased self-idolatry. Would this be solved by emotional dampers? No, because the root would still remain. A perfect utopia does not depend on everyone getting along and having the same thoughts about everything, nor is it found in unrestrained self-expression.

“Follow your heart” is terrible advice. Follow the One who made your heart.

This time it’s personal: on our latest Fantastical Truth podcast episode, we share some of your stories about how you first discovered amazing fiction.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Zackary Russell and I also share our early joy in niche and popular fantastical fiction, including:

• Superbook, a.k.a. Animated Parent and Child Theater, a Bible anime series in two seasons in the 1980s
• Star Wars, because of course
• Alfred Slote’s My Robot Buddy middle-grade book series
• Sunday-school song hero Psalty the Singing Songbook
• Focus on the Family’s long-running audio drama series Adventures in Odyssey (here is Stephen’s recent article about AiO)
• The Chronicles of Narnia, for sure
• Environmentalist TV show Captain Planet and the Planeteers
• Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara and series
• Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Left Behind and the ensuing series of novels, books, and a couple of movies
• Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy The Wheel of Time series
• (Briefly) The Prince of Egypt (1998) animated film (and now also a stage musical)

So many of you have sent us your fantasy origin stories, so we’ll share more of those during future episodes.

Next on Fantastical Truth

On Tuesday, March 10, Brian Godawa (Chronicles of the Nephilim fiction series, The Imagination of God nonfiction) joins Fantastical Truth. We’ll explore some deep doctrine magic: How does Jesus define and redeem his gift of imagination?

Thanks for listening! Get more episodes and subscribe at Lorehaven.com/podcast.

I’ve watched through several well-made anime series at least once. But I’ve only seen a few great series more than once. Not long ago, I watched Yona of the Dawn for the third time, because this story holds up wonderfully with repeat watchings.

The dawn of Yona

On her sixteenth birth, Princess Yona’s pampered world is shattered when the man she’s in love with murders her father, King Iru.

Yona is forced to flee the castle. After several encounters, she meets an oracle who tells her what she must do. He refers to her country’s founding story about an ancient king and four dragon warriors. He tells Yona that she, as the descendant of that dragon king, must find the four modern warriors who still carry the blood of the dragon warriors. Together these men will aid her.

So, accompanied by her guard Hak and the jack-of-all-trades Yun, Yona sets out on a quest to find these four dragons.

Our strong leading lady

In the past several years we’ve heard plenty of controversy about the “strong female character.” In many ways, Yona of the Dawn gives a good example of such a heroine, though I think some people would still not be happy with Yona.

When we first meet Yona, she’s a bit of a royal brat. She’s a pampered princess whose main concerns are trying to get her unruly mop of red hair to cooperate, and getting Soo-Won, the love of her life, to notice her. ¹

As the story develops, Yona grows, and her growth is hardly sudden or painless. She was raised by a peace-loving and almost pacifistic father, and had never held a weapon. In their travels, she asks Hak to teach her to shoot a bow, and her first few attempts are predictably bad. But here and there, we see glimpses of her rising early in the morning, walking a distance from camp, and shooting one arrow after another. Her arms are still weak and the arrow tip shakes. But she still shoots. So, when the time comes in the fight alongside pirates, and she takes up a bow against the leader of the enemies, her skill is not a surprise that comes out of nowhere, but a turn the story has taken time to set up.

This may be the greatest departure from the current stereotype of the “strong female character,” because in the popular version, this character must also be the strongest fighter—the gal who can kick anyone else in the story to the curb. Yona isn’t like that. She becomes a capable fighter. (In the manga, she later gets into a sword fight, and while she holds her own, she’s also hurt in that fight.) But she is not even close to the level of Hak or the dragons.

Yona does not only grow as a fighter. Born and raised in the royal palace, she knew almost nothing of the outside world. She thought the country loved her father and that people were happy and prosperous. After her exile, she’s shocked to see poor places with starving people, and to hear them speak harshly against the previous emperor, her father. Her struggles to make sense of these realities are painful to her.

This kind of character development is one of the biggest draws of this series.

Loyalty and betrayal

In flashbacks, we are shown the three main characters–Yona, Hak, and Soo-won–as children. We are given the picture of three kids who are very close to each other, and their closeness grows as they become young adults. It’s clear that Soo-won’s betrayal greatly hurt Yona.

What may not be so clear at first is how much Soo-won’s actions wounded his other friend, Hak. If any characteristic defines Hak, it’s loyalty. He was loyal to King Il, and his loyalty to Yona is based in part on his loyalty to her father. Hak was ready to stand loyally with Su-won, who was a nephew to the king and a possible successor to the throne.

After the night the king was killed, Hak and Soo-won do not meet again in the anime series. That does happen in the manga, in a scene the anime doesn’t reach, and it’s–well, for Hak, this scene is rather explosive. For once his mask slips, and we clearly see his rage and hurts.

Unexpected turns

This story’s unexpected turns easily keep viewers’ interest.

Much like The Promised Neverland, Yona of the Dawn‘s first episodes seems to show one kind of story: perhaps a teenage romance set in an eastern version of a fantasy world. Then, very quickly, the plot takes a hard turn and becomes a quest story.

Even then, the quests offer twists. The bright and enthusiastic village of White Dragon clashes with the Blue Dragon’s village, and even more with the Green Dragon’s home. And, in one final quest twist, there’s the Yellow Dragon. He shows up very late in the anime series, so there’s a lot of about him the series hasn’t reached.

The anime series’s current end brings a twist. Yona must decide what she and her companions will do.

By contrast, in other stories, the moment Yona got her overpowered dragon allies at her back, she’d use them to take down the usurper to the throne and have herself reinstalled as ruler. Sure, this would bring some sense of justice. But while avoiding spoilers, I can still note that getting revenge and regaining her position is not her immediate goal. Rather, the story turns again, from a quest to a road trip (with frequent fights and other adventures), as Yona focuses on smaller and more personal ways of helping the people of her country.

Sometimes we can try too hard to read Christian ideas into stories that are not themselves Christian. I want to avoid that here. But there is still something Christian-like in the theme of not seeking revenge, and in a wise ruler (Yona is still royalty, a princess) using her strengths to benefit her people and not for her own ends, even if those ends could be justified.

Conclusion

However, this anime series has one big problem: it’s stopped. The manga has now gone well past were the anime ended. So far I’ve come on no reliable word that the series will be continued.

For only this reason, maybe I would not rank Yona of the Dawn among my top-ranking series I’ve seen. Still, Yona of the Dawn mixes humorous moments with serious and emotional ones. Its twists and turns put new life into common story elements and character development. Given all these strengths, I recommend Yona of the Dawn as thought-provoking entertainment with insights and inspiration.

I spent the past six days involved in a story-term mission ministry called “No Greater Love” in which men from a variety of places go to New Orleans during Mardi Gras to pass out Gospel tracts and other means of overt and not-as-overt methods of evangelization, including marching down Bourbon Street while carrying a cross in order to symbolize Christ to a generally very hostile party crowd. The trip provided me copious illustrations to talk about spiritual warfare, but for this article I’m going to keep it briefer than I otherwise would (I just got back last night) and will focus on just one aspect of things I observed for the moment. That is, in mingling with Christians from other churches, I met a lot of very sincere and nice believers who believe some rather odd things. Things I’m going to call here spiritual placebos.

Since these practices relate to things Christians do in the real world, they also relate to how Christians might be portrayed in stories. This topic also potentially relates to how spiritual warfare could be depicted in stories.

The placebo effect, for the few readers here who may not be completely familiar with it, refers to treatments with no real medical effectiveness that are generally presented to the patient as having an effect and the simple thought the placebo could help really does in fact help patients to a degree, though not as much as actual medicine (note there have been some studies where patients were told they were receiving placebos and the effect seemed to have happened anyway, for more info reference footnote eight of the linked Wikipedia article on “Placebo”). In fact, medicines are routinely tested against placebos such as sugar pills. If the medication is not more effective than a sugar pill, it doesn’t get official approval–though some medicines that win approval have effects only very slightly better than placebos (anti-depressants in general are only a bit better than placebos).

Placebos Are Not Harmful–But Not Real Medicine, Either

I’m making the somewhat controversial claim that for some Christians, certain spiritual practices act like placebos. I recognize I’m treading on dangerous ground a bit. Critics of Christianity will claim all results that stem from faith come from the placebo effect–it’s all in all in our heads, none of it is real. I certainly don’t want to give them ammunition against all faith. Nor do I mean to say the practices I’m going to talk about are actively evil or from the Devil or something. Though I do think harm can come if people expect more from these practices than they should.

If I don’t think these practices are actually bad, why bring them up? Why not let Christians continue in them if they aren’t harmful? I do have a specific reason for the approach I’m taking. I hope explaining these practices and what the Bible says about them will help Christians grow in maturity and understanding, and in the long run, make them better Christians.

A Scriptural Bias Towards Epistles

I’ve said this before for a different article, but to re-phrase here, I think a proper understanding of the Scriptures divides it into groups of texts. Books that relate history of the Bible show us events that did actually happen, so the miracles they at times reference clearly could happen again. God’s ability to perform miracles certainly has not been reduced over time–though not all periods of history had an equal amount of miracles or direct revelations from God. Some periods had very few (see I Samuel 3:1), others had more. It seems God worked as the situation required or perhaps as a situation allowed.

But as a Christian I know I can learn more about how a Christian should act based on the part of the Bible that is written to Christians, as opposed to parts written for ancient Israelite priests or kings. Which means the epistles more than anything else because apostles wrote them for the direct purpose of providing instructions to churches. The practices of Christian churches should therefore be derived from epistles, though of course informed by the Gospels and history of the Bible and everything else the Bible has to say. But again: the epistles contain the marching orders for the church–that’s their purpose.

So I call something a “placebo” if it’s a Christian practice people believe in that isn’t ever commanded in any epistle. If it’s something people do that the Bible never tells us to do. Which isn’t quite the same as me saying it has no effect at all.

Note I adopt this attitude not based on skepticism per se, but on on a belief in study and that our minds are given to us by God for a good purpose. That yes, while we should be guided by the Holy Spirit, we should also be guided by Scripture and that the Scripture is something we can understand with our minds and apply as we need to. And if the Bible doesn’t tell us to do something in clear terms, the practice of doing it at the very least is doubtful–though it may in fact be wrong or even harmful in some cases.

The Bible tells us to pray. So we ought to pray. It also mentions music and congregational worship and Communion and even miraculous gifts. Among many other things. But there are other things it never says we ought to do. Such as:

Anointing Oil

The use of oil in the Bible has symbolic meaning of blessing and special appointment. All priests had oil poured on them as part of their appointment to the ministry and at times kings were anointed, as was a prophet anointed at least once in the case of Elijah anointing Elisha. Oil was also used in the temple service as part of the offering system including in ceremonial cleansing (please pardon the lack of Scriptural references at the moment).

Oil was so important in Biblical culture that one who received the oil was seen as especially blessed to the degree that “Messiah” means “one anointed with oil” and “Christ” is based on the Greek word meaning the same thing. Jesus is the one especially anointed–that’s how important the act of pouring oil on someone is in the culture and history of the Bible.

Samuel anointing David as future king of Israel. Image source: Quora

However, is anointing with oil ever commanded in the epistles? Yes, once, in James 5:14, in which it’s associated with what the elders of a church should do for someone sick and needing healing. This one passage has been looked at in many different ways and I’m not going to wade into the details at the moment to say which view is right. But let’s note there are no other commands to use anointing oil in the epistles.

So when I met a man, quite a nice person, who said he’d asked his pastor to anoint him with oil before coming to the mission trip with No Greater Love because, “Anointing is powerful,” I didn’t say anything. He was entitled to ask for that if he wanted. It would have been especially appropriate if he saw it as a sign of the pastor appointing him to a special ministry because that would echo a lot of Old Testament history. But it seemed the man felt the oil itself was somehow special. And I’d say it wasn’t or we’d be clearly told to use it in a Biblical epistle in all such cases.

Another very nice man, along the same lines, said all of us who came for the trip need to be anointed with oil so we could get the power of God for what we were doing. The leaders of the camp didn’t take time out for all of us to do that, but it was interesting the idea that the man expressed there. He wanted anointing, not because any of us were sick, but as a means of empowerment. But anointing oil for power is not only not mentioned in the epistles, it’s not mentioned in Acts, either. A book with plenty of examples of God working in powerful ways.

I think it’s safe to say thinking of anointing or anointing oil as especially powerful is a spiritual placebo. Not harmful except if you rely on it too much, but not helpful in and of itself either.

Plead the Blood of Jesus

Yes, the blood of Jesus is powerful according to Scripture (re: verses like Romans 5:9). But does anyone in the Bible actually say “I plead the blood of Jesus” in a prayer? Nope. Not once. And no epistle commands believers to pray that way.

Yet there are Christians who pray that phrase as if doing so makes the prayer extra-powerful. Does it? Well, if a person believes the phrase is important I can imagine God honoring its use–God is merciful like that. But God never commanded it or ordered it. Any effect the phrase has therefore must be something rather similar to a placebo. Maybe it makes some people feel better, but the actual effect as in moving God more than praying without the phrase is nil.

Where the Sole of Your Foot Treads

There are people who take the example of Joshua, in which God tells him wherever he walks he would conquer as a prescription for how Christians should pray (Joshua 1:3). Specifically for the ministry I was involved in, there were men who walked down Bourbon Street in the morning and prayed over the ground they walked on. Which is fine. There’s no harm in praying over what will happen on every single bit of a piece of terrain. But some people phrased their action a bit differently: that they were claiming the territory for Jesus and marking the place they walked as holy ground.

If that were something that’s important, Paul or another apostle would have laid it out in an epistle. Something like, “Walk the streets of places you proclaim the Good News to claim them for the Lord and pray without ceasing as you do so.” But that’s not there. Nor is there an example even of Paul or any other apostle walking all the streets of, say, Ephesus, to claim them for the Lord. Hey, not even Joshua walked all the streets of the cities he conquered according to what the Bible plainly states. He simply went from one city to another and his men went through all the streets.

So if you want to walk down a street with the thought that you want God to do great things there, by all means, think and pray that. But your feet hitting the ground is not some special act. You are not Joshua and if God had meant for it to be super-important for us to walk around places to claim them, God would have told us in plain terms to do so. Because God is pretty straightforward with telling us the things we really need to know!

Addressing the Devil in Prayer

Some Christians I rubbed shoulders with informed the Devil as they were praying that he was bound, that he was under the blood of Jesus that he had no more power anymore.

OK, well, we know Jesus talked to Satan when He was tempted and addressed demons when commanding them out of people. But are we ever told to address the Devil in prayer? Nope. Philippians 4;6 and lots of other places tell us to pray to God, but never gives us instructions on how to talk to the Devil.

Passages on facing attacks from Satan, of which there are a number of clear examples (e.g. I Peter 5:7-8) never mention talking to the Devil or the need to directly “bind him” with our words. Look folks, God is good and will give us what we need to know. If we needed to talk to Satan, he’d tell us. But he didn’t.

Is it harmful to address Satan directly? If your faith is in God and you submit to the Lord, God’s power will make Satan flee. So you can mention Satan in prayer but at the moment be thinking of what God will do to him. So God can honor that.

But if you’re thinking you have the power to drive away Satan based on your own merit–well, I’d call that “no bueno.” But I think people who pray that way would agree that you have to know the power comes from God.

So why pray that way at all? It isn’t especially powerful or God would have told us to do it.

Binding Sickness

As mentioned in the previous section, prayers that mention the Devil that I heard also tended to say that he was “bound” or claimed the power to “bind” Satan. That’s based on Matthew 12:29 in which Jesus stated a strong man has to be bound (tied up) before you can steal his goods as a way of explaining his power over Satan to cast out demons. By the way, I have no problem with calling on God to bind Satan as in reduce his power. That makes sense–even if directly addressing the Devil to inform him he’s bound isn’t something the Bible tells us to do.

But how about binding illness? Doesn’t that imply illness is like a demon, that it has will and can act on its own? That maybe illness actually is a demon? That by binding it you claim some kind of special power over sickness?

The Bible references multiple reasons for illness that I won’t spell out here but never states that every illness comes directly from Satan. In fact, John 11:4 and some other passages state that a particular illness happened for “the Glory of God”–not because Satan wanted it to.

And back to the epistles–do we see examples of illness being bound or a command given to bind illnesses? Nope. None.

Can God understand that you really mean healing when you talk about binding sickness? Sure. But why not simply pray it the way that makes sense–“God, please heal” instead of “in the name of Jesus I bind this sickness”? The latter is supposed to be more powerful, but it isn’t. At most, it can make people feel better. Like a placebo.

Conclusion

Again, I don’t mean to say these practices are of the Devil or that they necessarily are harmful. But why wander into doing things that God never commanded Christians to do? Isn’t what we’ve clearly been told to do good enough?

Readers, I recognize the tone of this article could be seen as especially critical of my fellow believers in Christ. I don’t mean to be–but I do mean to suggest people ought to trust the Bible and what it says more and the practices they’ve observed among other Christians less, especially those things not spelled out in Scripture.

I also don’t mean to make people feel picked on here. There is freedom in Christ to do specific things God has never commanded anyone to do if you feel so led as long as those things aren’t specifically sinful. The problem is if you feel that people who don’t practice the same way as you must be in the wrong. As in, “this guy never pleads the blood of Jesus, so his prayers must be worthless.”

I hope this makes sense and is helpful. May God bless you as you read.