Miracles or Magic?

"God's revelation to man isn't contrary to reason but, rather, that reason is necessary to understand God more completely."

-Aristotle.

I read that quote for the first time about a year ago, and it has been embedded in my mind ever since. Who thought it possible to link God's revelation to man with reason? Well, Aristotle apparently. He believed that a person could use logic to understand God's miracles.

Some people think of miracles as "magic." Catholicism teaches that magic is devilry, or Satan's work, and reading books such as Harry Potter is blasphemy. Other Christian religions also disagree with the morals of Harry Potter and Twilight because magic and vampires weren't in the Bible.

For once, this is an argument against a strict rule of the Catholic Church. This... rule is very irksome to most. The people reading these books don't actually believe in the waving of wands and blood-sucking immortals. There's a reason they're sold under the fiction section at the bookstore.

A theology teacher once told me that if you don't practice every single rule of your religion, then you're not a true believer. You're not actually a member of the Church. I laughed at her. Everyone has their own beliefs. Everyone is an individual. Everyone communicates with God in their own way.

Sometimes, church restrictions just wander too far away from the trodden path. There's a big difference between reading fictional stories in one's spare time for fun, and actually believing that you can go out there and defy God's will by calling up Satan's power to practice magic.

If there were such a thing as magic, it would be closely linked to miracles. Nobody knows how Jesus healed the blind men, or rose from the dead. Those were miracles; events that appear inexplicable by the laws of nature and so are held to be supernatural in origin or acts of God.

And sure, the Wicca religion practices witchcraft, but it was all derived from pre-Christian religions. I read an entire series on a young Wicca girl, who was supposedly a 'blood-witch' with supernatural powers. It was fictional. Therefore, none of it was meant to be believed. That's not to be meant offensively towards anyone, but that's just it.

The Catholic Church makes up rules like those because there are actually people out there who believe in magic and whatnot. Who am I to say it doesn't exist when I'm someone who believes in many things that can't be proven scientifically. Henceforth, it will be left at that. Where we'll end up in the end . . . that's not determined by whether or not we believed in magic. Not to be contradicting, but what else is there? To each everyone's own.