How do “spiritual” people know they aren’t doing witchcraft?

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You… must be a Protestant. I don’t even have to guess, I can read your profile Luis. Worrying about “lukewarm Christians” is probably the most Protestant thing possible. I don’t think it gets more Protestant than that. I’d spend another paragraph trying to deduce denomination, but you’ve got “born-again” written all over you so I’m gonna say Baptist, as you’re way too hardcore even for Methodism.

I was going to try to find common ground with you, but your answers don’t reveal much about yourself. You posted one YouTube video by Mac Prayze, but you’re obviously not him. Before I give you my answer, which I know you won’t accept given your beliefs, I will offer feedback and say that you will be far more believable and relatable if you share of yourself and not just your beliefs when you spread your message online. You see, we’re all used to being talked at. I want more people to understand the gospels and, well, you exhibit patterns in your discourse that pull you away from being convincing. And let’s be real, it takes a lot of convincing to get people to crack open a Bible.

This, ultimately, is the fundamental problem with faith alone. There’s actually two problems with it. The first one is, when you go by a doctrine of faith alone, then religion becomes unavoidably political. Religion is the effort to spread belief. Salvation by faith alone seems to go further in that direction than the more reasonable works and faith. I personally subscribe to Swedenborgian theology which hinges on a person’s love. This to me is way more reasonable and makes it impossible to politicize.

It’s a simple matter, if you were a person with a certain amount of power, and you wanted to do some really gnarly stuff with that power, to declare what faith is, regardless of whether or not that definition means anything worthwhile. You may be interested to know that the Southern Baptist Convention, when formed in 1845, was pro-slavery. Now I don’t know how your moral compass swings, Luis, but I personally consider slavery to be 100x worse than selling indulgences. It was a long slide for 1400 years for the Catholic Church to descend to the depths it took for them for Martin Luther to demand a reform. It took less than 300 years for the reformed churches to get very involved in something way way worse.

So that’s the first reason why faith alone sucks. The second reason is that faith is actually really really hard to build. I didn’t understand Christianity until late in my twenties as I’d studied literally every other spiritual belief system before it having rejected mainstream religion in my teens. Wicca, Buddhism, gnosticism, I studied a number of spiritual teachers whose books you can find in bookstores, and quite a few who you can’t anymore, anything that looked interesting I read it. I’m not saying everyone has to follow the same path I did, my path was really long and arduous.

Way easier to just accept Jesus from the outset. But that’s not an easy thing to do for everyone. The methods used to teach faith, what the Catholics call catechism, are just, well, not what they used to be. Meaning every human, if they’re going to become religious, needs to find their way to the faith themselves. Which, well, suits Baptists just fine. Baptism according to Baptists can only truly happen when someone truly accepts Jesus in their heart. But there’s a whole lotta dogma that goes with it. Faith is not so easily defined, which ties back into the first reason.

If you eliminate the political angle, “Faith alone” boils down to “grace alone.” For it is only by grace that faith can grow. There is very little we can do but plant seeds.Being a good gardener is thus very very important. And we’re back full circle with my feedback. Get better at helping people understand your message. The message is Jesus. It’s not about faith, you can’t make faith happen. Nobody cares about your theology. Jesus saves. You don’t.

Okay witchcraft. I mentioned above that I’ve studied it. I not only examined how it presented itself through history, I was also a practicing Wiccan for awhile. At points in time I’ve communicated with actual demons, angels, including Lucifer, fun guy, did you remember that Lucifer is an angel, fallen, but still an angel? As well as gods and goddesses that weren’t God. What I’ve learned from the experience is that there’s no better way to find out the meaning of “God is all things to all people” than to study other religions. Is the Celtic god Freja Jesus? Of course not. There’s lots missing there. Can worshipping Freja be “good enough?”

If you can accept my arguments against ‘faith alone’ then it’s not all that hard to say yes. It’s just divinity wearing different clothes. And the more and longer you study history, the less distinctions you find concerning the various religions of the world. They differ in specific theology, as I was able to discern that you’re probably Baptist and not Methodist given your Quora history.

And well, prayer is prayer, and ritual is ritual, God is God, and Jesus is Jesus. And there’s only one Jesus, and His message is for everyone. I remember seeing a sign on the side of the road by a church professing theirs was the faith of “the <virtue> Jesus,” I don’t remember precisely which virtue the sign was professing, but I sat there wondering for half an hour racking my brain trying to come up with any other explanation but the one that this church believed that they worshipped a different Jesus than everyone else. Such blasphemy deserves a very sarcastic response! Feel my sarcasm, random South Carolina Protestant church, and repent!

Jesus is nothing if not practical. And Wicca grew out of an intense dissatisfaction with how Protestant America was treating its children. That wasn’t how I got into it but the fact that I accepted Jesus into my heart in the end should tell you that “alternative” spirituality is still spirituality.

I’ll end with a final note concerning soteriology, that’s salvation to you. I’ve mentioned above that I believe it’s love that saves. What you love, not what you hate. Those with hate in their hearts aren’t just going to Hell, they’re already in Hell by virtue of that hate. Those that love good are saved in the eyes of the Lord, despite what they believe. This is how Buddhists can be saved and Christians can go to Hell.

If you focus excessively on “lukewarm Christians,” then what you’re building up isn’t love. Jesus’ message was incredibly subversive. Many Jews of the day would have called Christians “lukewarm Jews.” God is infinitely patient, but if you want to focus on hatred, to the point where you love to hate, God’s going to ultimately place you in the afterlife into a place where you can hate without hurting or otherwise affecting others by that hate. Swedenborg calls that Hell. There can only be love, love for that which is good and true, in Heaven. Those who hate, even and especially those who hide their hate by calling it love, don’t just find themselves in Hell in the afterlife, live in Hell today.

I’d invite you to investigate where and how and why you post on social media and inquire very carefully into your own personal motives for doing so. Are they out of love, or hate? Don’t try to justify hatred by saying what you hate is okay. Hate itself should not be a motivator for action. Your will is determined by your love. If you love to hate, then your will is hate.