As Gen Z Turns To The Occult, How Should We Respond?

In Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal, the protagonist—a knight returning disillusioned from the Crusades—encounters a witch about to be burned at the stake. As she’s being bound, he tells her he wishes to meet the Devil. When she asks why, he responds, “I want to ask him about God. He, if anyone, must know.”

He has a point, doesn’t he?

Surely Satan has a better understanding of just who God is—his existence (and the existence of a whole spiritual realm beyond humanity’s sight and ken), his power, his glory—than any mere human. No one’s ever seen God (John 1:18), but Satan waltzed into his presence for eons (Job 1:6).

Maybe that’s why so many from Gen Z are turning to the occult. To dabble with the dark arts is still to discover “more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of” in modern humanism’s enlightened, disenchanted rationalism. It’s a chance to ask Satan about God.

What’s Going On and Why

A recent survey of 13- to-25-year-olds conducted by the Springtide Research Institute found that more than half practice tarot cards or fortune-telling, with 17 percent of those doing so daily and another quarter practicing once a week. A 2023 Barna study found that only 16 percent of U.S. adults had their fortune told, so this represents a significant demographic shift. It’s worth noting that the Barna study found that 20 percent of adults had ever used a Ouija board, 17 percent had ever had their palms read, 10 percent had used crystals for healing, and 6 percent had tried casting a spell or mixing a magic potion.

So interest in the broadly spiritual (and manifestly supernatural) is high among the whole population, even as interest rises among the younger generation.

To dabble with the dark arts is still to discover ‘more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of’ in modern humanism’s enlightened, disenchanted rationalism.

Our culture’s spiritual curiosity points to the failure of disenchantment. The New Atheists sought to convince a generation that God isn’t good, religion poisons everything, and we’ll be better off once we cast off regressive myths and outdated superstitions. It seemed to them that humanity was on the brink of a new and glorious age of enlightened rationalism and scientific materialism.

But materialism strips the world of wonder. We all long for more than what we can touch and see. We long for justice, beauty, truth, love, and hope. Thus, even some of the most strident and antagonistic atheists began to express nostalgia for lost meaning. If we’re just an accidental collocation of molecules—chemical scum on a midsize planet of no importance—then nothing we do really matters. We’re just glorified amoebas unthinkingly dancing to our determining DNA. While that may prove intellectually satisfying to some, it proves psychologically—we could even say spiritually—stultifying, stripping us of all transcendence.

No wonder we’re seeing a recovery of interest in the spiritual. God set eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11). We can’t shake the sense we’re made for more than brief lives of nothingness. So a whole generation is slowly stepping into the knight’s shoes, cavorting with the prince of darkness to catch a glimpse of the light.

What should Christians make of this newfound interest in ancient and dubious practices?

Challenge

While the church may rejoice that Gen Z is at least expressing newfound spiritual interest, we must be clear-eyed about the challenges. After all, many who investigate New Age spirituality and the occult have consciously chosen not to investigate Christianity. They’ve come of age in a society with Christian, churched roots, and to some degree, they’ve been inoculated against biblical doctrine.

In What’s Wrong with the World, Chesterton famously noted, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” That’s not the opinion of those turning to alternative sources of spiritual truth. Christians seeking to reach this audience will have to work to overcome strong biases, encourage curiosity about the gospel story, and show how little the popular imagination has understood of Christianity.

But convincing Gen Z spiritualists that they don’t know Christianity is only half the battle. For Christ bids us “come and die,” whereas alternative spirituality invites people to maintain absolute control over their thoughts, desires, and choices. Tarot cards, palm readers, and horoscopes allow fortune-seekers to maintain mastery over their lives; they reinforce personal autonomy. Christians don’t know what tomorrow holds, so we temper our every plan with “Lord willing” (see James 4:15) and surrender every decision to his authority. Mixing a love potion promises a young woman she can have the object of her desire. But Jesus calls us to deny ourselves and relinquish our selfish desires. Magic is easy, but discipleship is costly. As Christians, we offer self-denial to a generation seeking self-actualization.

The challenge is real, but so is the opportunity.

Opportunity

The emerging generation treads a well-worn path. In his wise providence, God often leads his wayward children home to him via circuitous routes. Before he brought Augustine back to his Word, God brought him to the Platonists and opened his mind to the possibility of deeper (spiritual) realities. Augustine needed to stretch before he got into the game. “I think it was Your will that I should come upon these books before I had made study of the Scriptures, that it might be impressed on my memory how they had affected me,” he remembers in his Confessions.

Could the same be true for those dabbling with the occult, those asking Satan about God? If horoscopes, tarot cards, and palm readings open a generation’s mind to the possibility of deeper spiritual realities, we can pray God uses that for his glory and their good. How many people’s “confessions”—shared at baptismal fonts before awestruck congregations—will acknowledge God’s will in leading them through crystals to Christ?

Magic is easy, but discipleship is costly. As Christians, we offer self-denial to a generation seeking self-actualization.

By God’s grace, we’ll have a part to play in their stories through the power of our ordinary testimonies. Gen Z may ask Satan, but we can give them God’s perfect answer. Peter expected the pagans of his day to wonder about the hope ordinary Christians exhibited (1 Pet. 3:15). Surely we should expect neo-pagans today to ask us about our invincible joy, peace, love, and hope.

What people seek when they visit a medium, we possess superabundantly. What they long for when they mix a potion, we’ve been granted irrevocably in Christ. Want to know the future? We know him who holds it in his hands and has ordered every day for his glorious purposes. Want to guarantee you’ll be loved all your days? God demonstrated his unfathomable love for you in this: While you were messing with Ouija boards, he sent his one and only Son to die for your sins.