We Like Sheep

Acts 8:4-13

The Bible is full of sinners and their stories. This one is about a sorcerer named Simon. He probably spent his whole life practicing and honing his trade, earning the amazement and respect of the local people. Along comes Philip, an apostle of Jesus, who performs legitimate miracles. Suddenly, Simon’s power doesn’t seem so hot. At this point I feel kinda bad for him. Now I am assuming  a lot here, mainly that he was more of a practicing magician or alchemist, and not some crazy cultist conjurer or necromancer. Please bear with me while I apparently list character classes from Dungeons and Dragons, haha. But imagine if you trained your whole life to do something, and then you’re confronted with a truth that shatters all the knowledge and training you’ve undergone throughout your life. That would be pretty devastating I would imagine.

There’s a couple responses I see from this in the Bible. There are people like Simon, who eventually realize what he’s seeing is true, and try to start following Jesus. And there are others, like the Pharisees, who refuse to acknowledge it’s true, and that way cling to their beliefs and knowledge.

There is an entire other interpretation for this passage. Sorcerer can also refer to a drug giver, or pharmakeus, basically a pharmacist. They sound like they used poisons and rituals to cleanse sickness. If this is true, then Simon was some kind of magical healer, and Philip actually healing people just straight up destroys his business, and reveals him for the fraud he is. This interpretation makes way more sense to me. But I like the idea of Simon being a trickster or magician too.

Either way, I don’t think he was an actual sorcerer casting spells and stuff. So this passage doesn’t really condemn Harry Potter. Nothing does, because those books are just too good.

I read these articles to arrive at that second opinion.

http://www.naturalnews.com/031584_Bible_drug_use.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakos

Thanks for reading,

Jared