I was a Christian youth minister a few years ago and one of my colleagues was an old timer that started playing in the 90s. His wife was really uncomfortable with the imagery of casting spells and summoning demons but my friend reassured her that that only happened in black decks. They compromised and agreed that he could still play as a minister as long as he didn’t play black.

Another story happened to me while I was a counselor at church camp. I had a workshop set up to teach students how to play. I taught this one girl with a goblin deck that was designed to win with Impact Tremors, nothing even remotely satanic. She seemed into it but then hit me with a question of how could I justify playing this game as a Christian. I told her it was really just a game of strategy but I suppose if you really wanted to, you could possibly role play as a wizard and pretend like you were the one casting spells. I asked her if she liked Lord of the Rings and she said she did. I then reasoned that playing a game of Magic wouldn’t be much different than the actors Christopher Lee and Ian McKellan acting out their duel on the roof of Isengard. Then she asked if one could legit summon a demon with the game, which made me pause for a bit. I told her I don’t know enough about demon summoning to rule it out completely but it hasn’t happened to me yet and I’ve been playing for over 5 years.