Those who practiced magic brought their books and burned them. Fifty thousand pieces of silver worth. That's not an abstract commitment. That's burning money. That's destroying your livelihood. That's the sound of people who've encountered something more valuable than their entire economic system.
We talk about discipleship as a spiritual matter, but these converts made it a literal one. They had invested in magic. They'd built their identities around supernatural knowledge. And they were willing to destroy it. The public burning was humiliating. Everyone would know. But they did it anyway.
I was involved in occultic practices before I became a Christian. I had books, tarot cards, journals filled with rituals. When I became a believer, I knew I had to get rid of them. It took me weeks to actually do it because I was ashamed and also because I felt like I was destroying part of my identity. But the moment I burned them, something lifted. I wasn't free before. I was just trapped in a different cage. These Ephesian converts knew something I eventually learned: some books cannot be unread, and that's the point. You don't want them read again. You want them destroyed, so you're not tempted, so you're fully converted.
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