Dear Christis,

I would like to respond to the criticisms in Martin Oliver’s letter regarding my article The Occult. Martin began by saying that he could agree with neither my conclusions nor my motivation. My motivation, of course, was the fame and money inherent in being published in Christis, my conclusions were mainly that the popular image of the occult was misleading and that Christians should respond to occultists with love rather than fear. I do believe that relativism can be a moral danger but my main problem with the Occult is that I believe its tenets to be untrue, not that I think it unhelpful.

Martin posed the question did I think the world would be a better place without New Age beliefs. Of course my answer would depend completely on the alternatives. If instead of believing in the New Age people were to begin performing human sacrifices and abusing children then I would prefer that they remain New Agers. However, I do believe the world would be a better place if New Agers became committed Christians, sincerely interested in becoming more like Christ with God’s help and attempting to follow teachings such as the sermon on the mount which I believe are the highest moral calls in existence.

Next came Martin’s more puzzling accusation, that I lumped together New Age beliefs and Occult beliefs. My article was entitled The Occult, and covered Occult beliefs, specifically Wicca and Satanism, I did not mention the words ‘New Age’ or any New Age ideas. If I had intended to write about the New Age I would have written an article called ‘The New Age’ and written about New Age beliefs. I don’t really understand how the misunderstanding arose.

Martin went on to wonder whether I really believed that Christians followed a good, God-given, absolute moral code and were therefore better than Occultists, mentioning the Inquisition, Nazism and Apartheid. I would argue that these were in no way anything to do with the God-given moral code, in James we are told to “evangelise with gentleness and respect” (not to burn and torture people as in the Inquisition) and Paul tells us that in Christ we are all equal (Galatians 3:28). Christians should follow the teaching of the Bible, problems occur when they don’t. Torquemada did not really kill people because he was genuinely worried about their souls, when they confessed heresy the Church could seize their lands. As for Nazism I think you’ll find Hitler was an occultist, not a born again Christian.

Martin took my assertion that Occult beliefs were relativist to mean that absolute beliefs were good and relativist ones bad, he then extrapolated that we should persuade atheists (who must have no moral code) to become Occultists so that they should have some kind of moral code. There are several problems with this. Firstly not all absolute beliefs are good: ‘I will do exactly what I feel like doing.’ is absolute. Secondly, atheists do have moral codes, which they have constructed for themselves, frequently quite objective standpoints such as ‘The greatest food for the greatest number’. As I said earlier I believe that relative values do hold dangers but I think Christianity’s main advantage is that it’s true.

I was also sad to see that Martin considered the articles he criticised to be “turgid and faltering”, I had hoped to avoid this by the conciseness of my article but there are always problems … Finally, the aim of my article was to try and reduce some of the misconceptions and the mystery which surrounds Occult beliefs and encourage Christians to find out about them and talk to Occultists, and I hope that to some extent it will succeed in doing this.

Sean Wordingham