HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 14, 2024 – Someone contacted me the other day, wondering what could be done about a witch in the family. I had written about this dilemma a few months ago, and my answer remains the same: You continue being a follower of Jesus. That’s how you deal with a witch in the family.

What does being a follower of Jesus mean? You live the Gospel teachings.

What are the Gospel teachings? Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength; treat others as you want to be treated; love your enemies; and keep the Commandments.

Keep the Commandments. All of them. Especially the one about honoring your mother and father, keeping in mind that honoring means to be respectful of them in your words, deeds, and thoughts. If you have issues with your mother and father, you take them to God, not to your minister or random strangers on the internet or “health professionals” or friends, neighbours, relatives, or spouses. You take your issues to God and God only, in prayer, and ask God to help you keep the Commandment.

Spiritual warfare isn’t waving crosses around and dousing the offending person in holy water. Spiritual warfare is being kind to people who are unkind to you – kind to them in your thoughts as well as in your deeds. Being kind to them in your thoughts is the most difficult and highest level of spiritual warfare, but also precisely the level of warfare that we’ve been called and equipped to do as born-again believers.

Spiritual warfare is also helping people who come to you in sincerity looking for help. For those people, God will give you the means, wisdom, and wherewithal to help them. But like the person who contacted me about the witch in his family, the people coming to you for help might not always want to hear let alone heed your advice. They will probably want immediate action to end the offending behaviour, but that’s not what the Gospel teaches us. We don’t wave a magic wand and make everything nice and good in an instant. That’s not what we’re called to do. We respect other people’s free will to make the choices they make; we don’t have to respect their choices if they choose against God, but we do have to respect their free will. God does.

We also need to remember that prayer (which should always be our default in every situation, whether good or bad) is not talking to God but talking with God. If you’re not hearing from God (that is, if your conversation is one-sided), you’re not praying, you’re petitioning. You can petition God all you want, in the same way as you can send someone a letter in the mail when you instead could just visit them in person. Prayer is visiting God in person.

As a born-again believer, you should always visit God in person. Jesus sacrificed himself so you could do that.

Once upon a time a long time ago, I was the witch in the family. My grandmother prayed for me without telling me she was praying for me, and she did so for nearly 36 years. That’s a long time to be praying for someone while seeing the someone you’re praying for get progressively worse and worse. My grandmother didn’t confront me or throw holy water on me or wave crosses at me: She simply was kind to me in all her interactions with me and prayed for me with a grandmother’s heart, in her room with her door closed, not announcing it.

God showed me all this after I was born-again; that is, he explained it to me after I was born-again, because although I’d seen evidence of it at the time, I hadn’t understood what was being done behind the scenes, being blind and deaf and dumb as I was.

We don’t get to the top of the mountain by flying there; we can’t fly there, because we don’t have wings. We get to the top of the mountain by walking there step by step, prayer by prayer, kind thought by kind thought, helping hand by helping hand, prayer by prayer by prayer by prayer.

The world is under Satan. God made the world and then put it under Satan’s administrative authority. All those who aren’t God’s people are Satan’s. There is no third option. With the majority of the world being under Satan’s administrative authority (with God’s permission), it’s no wonder that we all now have at least one witch in the family, likely more. But the answer isn’t to rant at them or warn them of their coming perdition if they don’t change their ways: They’ll be too blind, deaf, and dumb to hear you, like I was when I was a witch. Pray for them. Treat others as you want to be treated. Love your enemies. Keep the Commandments.

Being a follower of Jesus rarely involves grand gestures in the worldly realm of Satan; the grand gestures take place behind the scenes – in God’s realm in your prayer closet and in your heart, soul, and mind.