Learning Day: Magic & The Bible 🌭

Some of you aren’t old enough to remember this, but there was a time when Christians thought sorcery was real and they devoted their lives to destroying it at any cost to their dignity or their children’s happiness. It seems embarrassing now, but things were different back in the year … wha!? *RECORD SCRATCH* 2020!?

Published less than two years ago, Magic & THE BIBLE is hard to describe. It’s sort of a comprehensive list of make believe things the Bible didn’t mention but WOULD HAVE if they were real, but it’s also a collection of flimsy excuses for why someone would write it and how what they’re doing is, in fact, not crazy. I’m here to prove otherwise. Keep in mind I don’t have any formal psychology training. I’m just a man from an Earth where magic isn’t real with the research skills to know this book cover cost exactly $19.00 USD.

Magic & THE BIBLE was written by 70-year-old Becky Fischer, and if you’ve seen the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, she’s the one who crawls out of the little girl’s ear after laying her eggs. She’s a giggle coming from a desiccated corpse. The thing all those clowns are running from. “Becky Fischer” will be the dying words of the last mountain gorilla. Here she is, bursting from a Happy Flesh Day musical greeting card:

To be clear, this is not a book about the dangers of secular influences. Well, I guess it is, but it’s mostly about how magic powers are an actual part of life, and it’s important to make sure the ones you use come from God. This is all probably a grift, sure, but Becky will certainly die before admitting it, so we are going to treat her as she presents herself: as a lunatic who has dedicated her entire fucking life to defeating the tooth fairy and can’t.

This is a book meant to turn kids into dumber, more confused kids, but Becky starts by speaking directly to those poor children’s parents and grandparents:

There’s a weird self-awareness to Becky’s writing. You’d think someone who was really concerned about sorcery destroying the One True Path would be more frustrated and terrified, but she comes off more smug than anything else. She has an “I told you so,” attitude like someone who warned everyone about wizards and then sure enough, someone wrote popular books about them and killed God.

I feel bad pointing out the obvious ironic things like how this elderly woman hunting witches after Sunday School is making fun of people for thinking they know “the difference between make believe and reality.” There’s no sport in it. As a target of ridicule, Becky is a deer walking meekly into your sausage maker. She thinks “research” is quoting right wing news clickbait about the number of Millennial witches. And is that… is that sarcasm at the end there? Is that something you should risk in an actual kid’s demon hunting handbook? Becky took a liar’s word for it that they counted all the teen witches and she was like, “Oh, only six billion semen drinkers with Pokemon powers. I’m sure the white babies will be soooooo safe.”

Becky does acknowledge all the times people have tried to harness impossible forces and it didn’t work. Dark forces are quite mysterious. But the thing is, when you’re operating under the strict but unclear rules of an invisible being who can’t talk and maybe doesn’t exist, there’s no difference between sorcery and attempted sorcery. Becky puts it the only way kids will understand– think of wishing you had magic is like how fucking your friend’s wife is the same as wanting to fuck your friend’s wife.

I find analogies a useful writing tool to help a reader understand your perspective. They can be evocative and persuasive, but there is a danger in using them wrong. For instance, if someone could find a difference between extramarital penetration and pretending to be a wizard, it might unravel your entire argument. Why, you might even look like a total goddamn idiot. That’s not the case here, of course. Presto cadabra, ladies.

Becky is a master of comparisons. For example, if you’re having trouble understanding how God can be a holy ghost and also His own son, think of Him like an egg. An egg has three parts too, and she can start again if you’re confused, you dumb piece of shit. Her tone, not mine.

The book is 53 pages long, but every left one is taken up by a single piece of affordable clipart to help her illustrate a point. Like when she was trying to use eggs to explain just the very basic concept of God to her extremely Christian young readers, Becky chose a cute picture of Fӧnku Plūp Jesus with gushing crucifixion head wounds. It helps make it fun for the little ones.

And I’m not exaggerating when I say she is still going over the broadest possible Christian concepts well into the second half of the book. I don’t know who the intended audience is exactly, but I know they’re a working child necromancer who hasn’t heard of Jesus Christ.

Here she is on page 11, still explaining “souls.”

It’s complicated, kids, but souls are like the inside of an astronaut suit. And outer space is an ordinary, liveable atmosphere. Think of it like this: you’re a cosmic egg but ignore the yolk since you’re not your own Son, and reading Harry Potter is condomless anal. I can’t make it any clearer.

If you’re not familiar with Satan or “The Devil,” he’s a super hot guy who could get it. “Fill me with thine gifted dick much in the same way a Dungeon Master might draw a maze,” says Becky’s subtext.

Another trait of Becky’s writing, besides baking her head in coal gas until Jesus gives her a simile, is that she can work herself into a frenzy over the course of a single sentence. She starts by introducing you to the very concept of demons, who are out there and have powers, but their powers don’t work on her! She’d like to see their bitch asses try! Magic? Weapons!? Try Jesus blood, fuckers! Hyarrgh! HARK FORSOOTH, DEVILS! FOR BECKY SHALL REMOVE ASUNDER YOUR SEXY, SEXY PENISES!

There are a few unexpected twists in the book. Like when I learned, yes, ghosts are real, but they’re not exactly “ghosts.” They are only demons (sometimes known as serpents or scorpions) pretending to be dead people to trick you into talking about them. So in her own way, I guess she’s arrived at the reasonable conclusion “people who believe in ghosts are likely wrong.” I’d call it a deranged, unforced self-humiliation, though. It’s like saying we know eggs are real because astronauts are at war with breakfast, but we all need to take our own path to find truth. Speaking of truth, are witches real?

Like all supernatural things, Becky assures you witches are real, but you’re wrong about them. They aren’t green. But you’re right about everything else. They cast spells, pierce the veils between worlds, all that. But you’re wrong about that being a big deal. In fact, Becky wishes a witch would. STEP TO BECKY’S JESUS BLOOD, MAGIC COWARDS! YOUR WIZARDRY IS TRASH. JESUS WILL PICK A CARD ON YOUR FUCKING GRAVE.

Becky explains there are three kinds of magic. The first is “black magic,” which is the kind you use to bend reality to your wicked will and perform the impossible. The second is fun, like finding a quarter behind someone’s ear, and the third is “white magic” which is the same as the first kind of magic only used for heroism. However, there’s also only one type of magic: demonic. It doesn’t matter if you’re using sorcery for good or not at all while delighting at a birthday party, magic is from demons. I have to say, even in Christian literature, it’s rare to see an author so clearly lay out how poorly their brain works. Becky Fischer truly attacks a logic problem like a cat sneaking up on a ceiling fan for the third time.

After condemning all pagans and birthday magicians to an eternity of torment, Becky takes a breath and reminds her Christian readers they have no right to judge the demonic, weak, foul sorcerers who walk among us. And I know you’re tempted to do this since all of the powers from fairy tales are real, but do not get in a curse battle with these disgusting, pathetic secular fucks who you would never judge.

“Necromancy,” or as Mexicans call it, “DIA DE LOS MUERTOS,” is when wrong and demonic people are tricked by identity thief spirits into having conversations. Their savage Spanish beliefs are wrong and ridiculous, says author Becky Fischer.

So far Becky has hit on some broad topics, but let’s get into some specifics. What should you, as a Christian child, do about zombies?

Zombies aren’t in the Bible, but God probably wouldn’t like them, right? I’m saying if they were real, and you could ask Him, it’s reasonable He’d say “was disappointed when they arrived and were flesh eating monsters, one star.”

To her credit, Becky admits zombies don’t exist, except when they do, in a thing called “Voodoo,” which is “found in Africa and Haiti.” Still, they don’t seem to be much of a problem and it’s not really clear why she brought them up. Vampires, on the other hand…

Vampires weren’t a serious problem yet when they wrote the Bible, so Jesus didn’t have a take on them. But Becky has deduced, more from gut feeling than citation, that drinking human blood to gain nocturnal bat powers has at least some elements which go against Christian tradition. In the end, it’s your decision, kids. We can’t decide for you whether you stay in your grave or rise again as a servant of the night.

Like most of these Christian authors who are against every single thing in a world of unlimited things, Becky often has to make wild guesses about why she’s making her decisions. I’m going to go through Becky’s line of thinking here with as much good faith as possible.

So she decides she’s afraid of Pokémon Go, a thing without any clear indicators of witchcraft. Fine, but maybe it’s the lack of witchcraft which is the problem! Maybe it’s exactly this non-Satanism which “can innocently open up secret doors to the enemy.” Why would it? Well, listen: the creatures have powers, which God didn’t give them since they’re fictional and He’s not, and if they didn’t get powers from God, there’s only one other option: the Devil, who unlike God, is the kind of real that can give powers to the fictional. And that’s how, with one gut feeling and at least three questionable leaps of logic, a very dumb lady has convinced herself everything that has ever been is her enemy. Which is disappointing, because I always pictured the helplessly stupid as happy.

I think at this point of the book Becky started proofreading and hearing how crazy she sounded, so she’s now asking herself a lot of pedantic questions. Or “great questions,” as she describes them. It leads her to accidentally sum up her entire doctrine with “it’s virtuous to read about magic only if the magicians are evil because others are villainous even when they’re not.” I don’t know if I have a joke for that. It’s like something a below average pig brain would spit out if you stabbed an electrode into it.

This section, “IS IT WRONG TO WATCH MOVIES ABOUT MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT?” featuring seven dollars worth of Legally Distinct Wizard Boy clipart starts out almost beautiful.

Becky says there’s no limit to our imagination and the change it can make on this world. But she doesn’t mean any of that in the good way. She means you might accidentally imagine being Harry Potter so hard you betray God. She also tells you to follow your gut to see what God wants you to read, which is a lot of faith to put in us only 15 pages after she had to explain to us who that guy was.

Now that you know all imagination deviating from Jesus is a crime against Him, the book ends with Becky giving you conditioned permission to celebrate Halloween. So long as you do it in a way that ruins it for everyone in your neighborhood.

Becky doesn’t suggest doing normal insufferable Christian things like handing out tiny Bibles instead of treats. She is a true maniac who has created her own anti-holiday from directions you can’t have predicted. She suggests hanging confusing anti-monster signs like “EVEN ZOMBIES CAN HAVE LIFE IN JESUS’ NAME!” or “SORRY, VAMPIRES! The REAL POWER is in the BLOOD OF JESUS! (A VAMPIRE’S POWER IS FAKE POWER!)” And as for treats, how about giving “a bowl of hot chili to your visitors to bless them!” Why? If the danger of Halloween is the actual, real vampires, how is chili the opposite of that!? Becky! How dare you, after all that madness, hand me a bowl of chili and tell me the devil is defeated! This is a bullshit ending! I’ll never forgive you for this, Becky!!!!

…
This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Rev, who knows the real way to save against Hold Person is to always Hold Christ close to your heart.