MJMCCULL@OWUCOMCN (Mike McCully) (01/14/90)
I was listening to the radio last night and heard part of a John Muncy show (for those of you who have never heard of him, like I hadn't, he seems to be a Christian version of Morton Downey, Jr. -- a down-to-earth person who likes to have controversial topics on his show and interacts a lot with his audience). He was discussing the symbol of the "crescent moon and star", which he argued was an occult symbol being applied secretly (without the average person's knowledge) to various things in American culture. For example, if I remember correctly, this symbol was on the cover of Prince's _1999_ album, Jon Bon Jovi or someone in his band had it tattooed on his body, and it is found (on top of?) a well-known mosque in Perrysburg, Ohio (near Toledo). This discussion raised several questions in my mind. (1) At least in the portion of the show that I heard, it was never clear what this symbol was supposed to mean, in the beliefs of the people who actually utilized it. What is the occult interpretation? I would suspect that Islamic people give it a completely different interpretation; does anyone have knowledge in this regard? (2) The second issue relates to why this type of symbol is "bad". I can think of two possibilities, and I am interested in your opinions. (a) One potentially scary fact is that symbols are attractive and psychologically powerful; Christians may become attracted to the symbol itself (in a non-verbal way) and then later may be attracted by non-Christian verbal interpretations of such symbols, and thus fall away from the faith. I agree this could be a danger, though my personal response would tend to be an effort to "Christianize" the symbol rather than getting rid of it (admittedly Christianization is not always a practical strategy, for example if one had tried to do this with the swastika in Nazi Germany). (b) Some conservative Christians have told me that symbols themselves have power, even if the average person has no knowledge of this. For example, if you buy an album that has an occult symbol on it, the music will have an evil effect on your life regardless of how innocent the songs seem, and regardless of whether you intended to invite Satan in, because the symbol itself is evil and its presence in your house provides Satan an opening through which to attack you. Similarly, I lived with a Christian one summer who took consecrated oil and anointed all the doors in the house with a cross, trusting that this symbol would protect everyone in the house, both Christians like myself and our non-Christian roommates who presumably didn't put much faith in the cross (and who perhaps didn't even know what he had done, because he did it when most of us were at work and the oil itself left few traces on the wood). Personally I have a hard time understanding how symbols could have power in the absence of a human person's belief. I feel that the psychological power of symbols for good and evil is mostly a learned behavior, culturally taught. People who have no knowledge of what the symbol means can't be affected by it. If material objects or symbols could be "blessed" and have a power for good or evil on everyone they come in contact with, why don't we have more empirical evidence of the effectiveness of this? Having stated this opinion, let me add that I remain genuinely open-minded about the matter and am interested in hearing other people's opinions, both Biblical evidence that people might wish to cite as well as philosophical reasoning, and any personal stories. Thanks, Mike
D2MG@SDSUMUS (Kurt Evans) (01/14/90)
Mike M.,
I pretty much agree with your position on the power of symbols.
In 1 Corinthians 8:4, it says, "An idol is nothing in the world" (also
translated "an idol has no real existence"), which I take to mean that
it is physically powerless unless demons choose to change their behavior
in response to it. It seems unlikely that they would do so apart from
some kind of human faith being placed in it.
Many Christians believe the mark of the beast will be one of the
occult symbols such as Nero's Cross (also known as the "peace symbol"),
which society is seduced into accepting. I think this idea is certainly
plausible, but I also think Christians should keep an open mind about
end-time prophecy. God will show us clearly what we need to know when
we need to know it.
In Christ,
Kurt