I’ve seen some friends who are non-believers fall sick and go to the temple to seek the advice of other gods (e.g. god of the tiger) about their sickness. The medium will talk in a way that is not his usual self and appear as if someone has entered his body. What is the Christian view on this? Is there really a god that can enter a person’s body and give advice?
Li Ping says
Dear Apple,
It is not my place to comment on the practices of other religions, but I can give a perspective of similar practices that have been forbidden for believers.
The practice you described is a form of divination, which is an attempt to gain supernatural knowledge, either to understand why something has happened, or to predict the future.
Divination, when it seeks knowledge from any spirit or being other than God himself, is strictly prohibited in the Bible (e.g. Deuteronomy 18:10-14), because it draws believers away from God and dependence on him, and into dangerous contact with spiritual forces that are not aligned with God.
Acts 16:16 lists one such example where a female slave was able to divine the future due to her possession of a spirit. After Paul cast out the spirit in the name of Jesus, she lost her power of divination, showing that it was tied to that spirit. There is indeed a spiritual world that is populated with spirits who serve God, and those who do not. Revelation 12:7-9 speaks about how that came to be.
God desires that we go to him alone for wisdom, assurance, and healing, and we can do so through prayer (Matthew 7:7-8), through his Word (Psalm 119:105), and the wise counsel of fellow, mature believers (James 5:14-16).
