 A few years ago, someone called me sounding genuinely frightened. She had found a strange little trinket near her doorstep, along with a hostile note wishing harm on her family.
"Am I cursed?" she asked, her voice trembling. "What do I do?" In a culture fascinated by astrology, tarot, and modern witchcraft, even devout Christians quietly wonder: Can a curse actually harm me? And if I feel spiritually attacked, what do I do? The Christian tradition does not meet that fear with mockery, denial, or fascination. It meets it with steady theology, honest attention to the wounds people carry, and practical pastoral care—all resting on the One who has already claimed you in Holy Baptism. Not All "Curses" Come from a Fortune Teller When we hear the word "curse," most of us picture something dramatic: the “evil eye,” a carnival fortune teller, or some creepy object bought at a flea market. But in real life, the most common—and often the most damaging—"curses" are usually much closer to home. They are spoken judgments, lingering wounds, and toxic patterns that get lodged deep in a person's soul:
Do Spiritual Curses Have Any Real Power? Christian tradition understands an occult curse as an intentional attempt to call on evil powers to harm someone. That can sound terrifying. But Scripture is remarkably unimpressed by such attempts against God's people:
Think of a curse as a letter with a forged signature. It may look official. It may even frighten you for a moment. But it carries no true authority, because the One whose name actually matters has already signed something different over your life. In Baptism, Jesus placed His name upon you. That is why the note on that person’s doorstep mattered, but not in the way she feared. The person who left it most likely wanted to create terror. A threat meant to be found is intimidation, not sorcery. It only works if it tricks us into handing over our peace. In many cultures, tales are told of sorcerers naming someone for death. The story almost always turns on belief: the village believes it, the victim believes it, and terror and isolation do the rest. When someone dies, it is remembered as proof. The many for whom nothing happened are forgotten. A threat like this lives in shared belief. That is why the Church's task is to be the community that flatly refuses to believe the lie, surrounding the frightened person with blessing and truth instead. What About Hidden Threats? I told the person who called me about that strange object that if someone truly skilled in this sort of thing had been trying to harm her family, she probably would not have found the item at all. Malifices tends to work best in secret. Still, that leaves a lingering worry: What if there's a hidden curse or object I haven't found? The answer is still the same. Your safety does not depend on being vigilant enough, spiritually spotless enough, or perceptive enough. It rests entirely on Jesus’s completed victory. Unrepented sin, occult involvement, and agreeing with lies do matter, not because they cancel God's protection, but because they pull us away from the One who protects us. If you are prone to scrupulosity, please hear this gently: God's protection is not a fragile system you must keep from crashing. Even in cases of genuine spiritual harassment, the remedy is never panic or improvised rituals. It is returning to God through the ordinary means of grace, with your pastor's help. What Can Every Believer Do? You do not need a special title or a dramatic deliverance service to walk in freedom. In the Christian tradition, the baptized already have real vocations as believers, parents, neighbors, and members of a household. Here are some ordinary, sturdy practices:
Where the Pastor Comes In Any Christian can speak the comfort of the Gospel to a neighbor. A pastor's role is different, but not because a pastor has some personal spiritual power that ordinary Christians lack. A pastor speaks publicly on behalf of the Church by virtue of a public call. That distinction matters. It protects believers from spiritual overreach, clericalism, and emotional manipulation. When persistent distress or deep guilt remains, a pastor can offer, on the Church's behalf:
When to Seek Other Help Spiritual care and professional care are not mutually exclusive. They work hand in hand. Persistent anxiety, intrusive thoughts, deep hopelessness, or chronic sleeplessness deserve the attention of a physician or licensed mental health professional. There is no shame in that. Wise pastors often refer parishioners to clinical help and work alongside therapists. If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of self-harm, call or text 988 in the U.S. for immediate support. Additionally, if you receive a genuinely threatening note or suspicious object on your property, take a photograph, do not confront anyone, keep the evidence, and report it to local law enforcement. Blessing your enemy and locking your doors are completely compatible actions. Living in the Light So, back to that phone call. We did not panic. We did not hunt for counter-spells or search the internet for clearing rituals. We prayed together, asked God to bless the person who left the item, took comfort in Jesus’s promises, and left the rest in His hands. She also kept the note and reported the incident to local authorities. Luther once observed that the best way to drive out the devil, when he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to flout and mock him, for he cannot endure scorn. Whether you are carrying an old judgment spoken by a parent years ago or facing a threatening trinket left on your porch today, the Christian response is never panic or fascination. It is simple, joyful nearness to Jesus Christ. When the Word of God has secured your identity, no word spoken against you gets the final word. If a wounding word has been echoing in you, the answer isn't to fight it harder. It's to be re-anchored in what is true. I've prepared a free companion to this series, A Daily Armor Prayer, a short morning practice based on Ephesians 6. It begins with the Belt of Truth: a daily return to what God says about you in Christ. [Download it here.] Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV). This is the first in a five part series called “Deliverance in Context—From the ground up!” Next week: Ground Level Deliverance: There’s Something Not Quite Right About That One House on the Cul-de-Sac. Every neighborhood has one. The house nobody can quite explain, the room that never feels right, the place where three different families all left in a hurry. What pastoral care for a place actually looks like, and why “just pray about it” isn’t an answer. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack] The Marginal Note — Theology for people who are still paying attention. Free monthly newsletter. Subscribe at Substack. ©2026 Steve Stutz. All rights reserved. Brief quotes welcome with attribution; full reprints require permission. Details at https://www.stevestutz.com (bottom of page)
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 Most advice about Sabbath sounds like it was written for people who already have room to breathe. Turn off your phone. Leave the errands alone. Let the inbox wait. That is good advice, but it can land hard when every hour feels claimed already. If you are picking up gig shifts, working a second job, caring for your family, or searching for work with the kind of urgency that makes rest feel irresponsible, the problem is not that Sabbath is a bad idea. The problem is that the usual advice may not be speaking to the life you are actually living right now.
So let’s be honest about Sabbath when a full day of rest simply is not possible — not in theory, but in the actual week sitting in front of you. Sabbath Was Never Really About Having Nothing to Do The commandment was not first given to people with open calendars and flexible schedules. It was given to a people who had just left slavery — people who knew what it meant to have rest refused to them. In Exodus 20:8–11 and Deuteronomy 5:12–15, Sabbath is not presented as a perk for people who have finished everything. It is a sign that God’s people are no longer owned by endless labor. Martin Luther says something similar in his treatment of the Third Commandment in the Large Catechism. The day of rest exists for ordinary people, servants, and laborers, “that for a day they may retire in order to rest and be refreshed.” Rest is required “so that both man and beast might recuperate, and not be weakened by unremitting labor.” In other words, the call to stop is not, “You’ve earned a break.” It is, “You are not a slave anymore, and the proof is that you are allowed to stop.” Sabbath protects the worker’s body, but it also tells the truth about the worker’s worth: you are not only what you produce. So if your honest question is, “What if I truly cannot afford a full day off?” that is not a sign that you have failed the commandment. It is a hard circumstance, and sometimes a painful one. The commandment is not blind to that kind of pressure. Scripture makes room for real necessity: an ox in a ditch, acts of mercy, healing that cannot wait. The principle survives contact with hard constraints because it was made for real human lives, not ideal ones. What This Isn't This is not a productivity hack with a spiritual label slapped on it. “Rest better so you can work harder” misses the point. Sabbath is not another way to optimize yourself. And it is not another reason to feel guilty because you cannot manage a full day of stillness in a season that will not allow it. Measuring your Sabbath by whether you hit a perfect twenty-four-hour mark can turn a promise into another performance. It can make God’s gift feel like one more assignment you are already behind on. Luther warned against treating the commandments as a new spiritual burden; they are not meant to crush people who are already tired. If this season only allows for an hour, take the hour, and let it truly be Sabbath instead of treating it like a smaller version of failure. That does not mean a partial practice has to stay partial forever if your circumstances change. It only means grace can meet you where you actually are. Start Smaller Than a Day If a full day is off the table, Sabbath does not have to arrive in a twenty-four-hour block to be real. It can be an hour. It can be a meal. It can be putting your phone away and actually keeping that boundary. For some people, that hour will come late at night or early in the morning — the only opening the week gives them. That still counts. The theological point is not the exact length of time. It is the act of stopping on purpose, even briefly, to listen to something larger than your own survival. Sunday morning worship can be that one sacred hour when nobody gets to demand your labor. A family dinner with notifications off can become unhurried holy ground. Even the fifteen-minute commute between shifts can be spent in quiet instead of job alerts, mental math, or work-related noise. An hour kept faithfully every week can do more than a perfect day you keep planning and then losing under pressure. Before that hour begins, give yourself one small signal that this time is different. Close the laptop and set it in another room. Step outside. Light a candle. Or simply say out loud, “This hour is not for work.” The boundary does not have to be dramatic. It only has to remind you who gets to interrupt you — and who does not. Separate "Can't Stop Working" from "Can't Stop Striving" There is a difference between the hours you are actually on shift and the hours you spend anxious about work while technically off it — refreshing job boards at 11 p.m., running numbers in your head at dinner, carrying the job search into every unscheduled minute. The first may be a real economic constraint. The second is often anxiety wearing a productivity mask. Sabbath cannot give you more hours, but it can give you permission to stop inventing work when none is required of you. That, too, is a real form of Sabbath, even inside a week that has no room for a full one. Let It Be Communal, Not Just Personal In Scripture, Sabbath was never only a private discipline. It was something a household and a community practicedtogether. If your week has little room for solitary rest, look for the kind that happens in company: a shared meal where nobody checks their phone, Sunday worship as one hour genuinely set apart, or a standing coffee with someone who will not immediately ask what you have lined up next. Rest does not have to happen alone to count. For many people, shared rest is the version that is most possible — and most sustaining. The Stopping Is the Point Whatever size Sabbath comes in — an hour, a meal, a walk without your phone — the stopping itself is doing the theological work. It reminds you, week by week, that you are not only as valuable as your last shift, your last application,or your last productive hour. That was true for people who had just left slavery, and it is true for you now, in whatever version of rest this week can actually hold. This week, pick one hour. Not the perfect hour — just one you can protect. Put it in your calendar as a recurring appointment, and treat the reminder the way you would treat a shift you cannot miss. When it comes, do one thing: stop calculating. Let the hour be received instead of achieved. That is Sabbath, and for now, it is enough. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack] The Marginal Note — Theology for people who are still paying attention. Free monthly newsletter. Subscribe at Substack. ©2026 Steve Stutz. All rights reserved. Brief quotes welcome with attribution; full reprints require permission. Details at https://www.stevestutz.com (bottom of page)  Here's a verse nobody puts on a coffee mug: God sends a lying spirit to deceive a king, and a false prophecy leads him straight to the battle where he dies (1 Kings 22). Read that enough times and it starts to feel like it contradicts everything else Scripture says about God's character — his truthfulness, his goodness, his justice. So what do you do with a text like that? Ignore it? Explain it away? Or is there an actual biblical framework underneath it that holds together?
There is. It's called judicial hardening, and once you see the pattern, it changes how you read the whole Bible. Short answer: God does not lie (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18) and does not author sin. But Scripture repeatedly shows him permitting and governing deceptive agents as an act of judgment against people who have already rejected the truth. I count at least five major texts where this pattern shows up. What Is Judicial Hardening? Judicial hardening is the biblical pattern in which God does not implant deception into a neutral heart, but confirms and accelerates the trajectory of a heart that has already resisted the truth. It reflects the distinction theologians draw between God's active will — what he directly causes — and his permissive will — what he allows as judgment. Think of it like a current in a river. A person sincerely seeking God is swimming against the current of their own sin. Judicial hardening is what happens when God stops swimming against them and lets the current of their own rebellion carry them exactly where they've chosen to go. He doesn't push anyone into the rapids. He simply removes his restraining hand and lets the natural consequences of a rejection already made run their course. The clearest picture of this comes from the Divine Council — the biblical worldview in which God is shown enthroned among a host of spiritual beings to whom he delegates real, though subordinate, authority (see 1 Kings 22, Job 1–2, Psalm 82). Five Biblical Examples of Judicial Hardening 1. The Heavenly Council Meeting (1 Kings 22:19–23) — the volunteer deceiver. The prophet Micaiah describes a heavenly council scene: Yahweh asks who will entice King Ahab to his death, and a spirit volunteers to be a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab's four hundred court prophets. The Lord permits it. Ahab — who has rejected true prophetic counsel for years — goes to battle and is killed. 2. Pharaoh's Hardened Heart (Exodus 4–14) — the man who hardened himself first. Pharaoh hardens his own heart in the early chapters before God is ever said to harden it. The later hardening confirms a trajectory Pharaoh already chose. 3. The Compromised Prophet (Ezekiel 14:9–11) — judgment on the corrupt clergy. God states that if a prophet is deceived into speaking a word, "I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet" — judgment on a prophet already willing to be bought, speaking to a people who had already turned to idols. 4. "God Gave Them Over" (Romans 1:18–32) — God's most terrifying action: stepping back. Paul describes a threefold divine judgment — God "gave them over" to their own desires, dishonorable passions, and a debased mind — the passive, allowing form of divine wrath against those who suppressed the truth. 5. The Strong Delusion (2 Thessalonians 2:9–12) — the end-times trap. Paul writes that God sends "a strong delusion" so that those who refused to love the truth would believe what is false — judicial blindness given to people who had already rejected the truth when it was offered. Also relevant: Saul and the harmful spirit (1 Samuel 16:14) and the divine hardening language in Romans 9, both of which follow the same pattern — confirmation of an existing trajectory, not the creation of a new one. Why This Feels Unfamiliar: The Sunday Lectionary Gap If this theme runs through both Testaments, why do so few of us ever hear it preached? Part of the answer is structural. Congregations that follow the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) never hear these five texts read on a Sunday morning: Passage Status in the 3-Year Sunday Lectionary
That's roughly thirty verses, across five passages, with zero exposure in a three-year cycle designed to expose congregations to the full range of Scripture. Here's the uncomfortable reality: if your only exposure to the Bible is Sunday morning, you wouldn't even know these passages exist. The Revised Common Lectionary — the reading schedule used by millions of churches — silently bypasses every one of them. That means the average Christian hears about God's love every Sunday, but never hears about God's judicial severity. This isn't a conspiracy. It's an oversight. But it's an oversight that leaves us spiritually unprepared to understand the weight of rejecting the truth. This is one reason the daily office lectionary is worth adding to your own devotional life alongside Sunday worship — its two-year cycle is built to move you through nearly the entire canon, including texts the Sunday lectionary sets aside. [See my guide to praying the daily office] for how to get started. How to Apply This Without Misusing It Two cautions matter here. First, this is not a threat to sincere believers. Jesus says, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God" (John 7:17). Judicial hardening describes people who have already refused the truth — not people honestly seeking it but not yet certain. God's ordinary way of guiding a sincere heart is through Word, sacrament, and the counsel of the faithful, not through withholding truth as a trap. Second, this pattern is diagnostic, not just historical — and the diagnostic case is already sitting inside the text itself, without needing to borrow one from outside it. Pharaoh hardens his own heart for chapter after chapter before God is ever said to harden it (Exodus 4–9). That's the pattern in miniature: refuse the truth long enough, on your own initiative, and what eventually looks like God's action is really God confirming the direction you'd already chosen and stepping back. The question worth asking isn't whether you're as stubborn as Pharaoh. It's simpler than that: am I searching Scripture for wisdom, or for a permission slip? A Final Word of Hope Does God use deception? No. But he does respect our choices — even the terrible ones. The sobering truth of judicial hardening is that a conscience can be permanently seared. The hopeful truth is that Jesus is the one who broke the trajectory before it could break us. On the cross, He experienced the ultimate "giving over" — abandoned so that we wouldn't have to be. If you're reading this and feeling something closer to conviction than curiosity, that itself is evidence you haven't been handed over yet. That's not nothing. Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack] |
