I Don’t Know What Possessed Me
April 14, 2011
Russell E. Saltzman
Thanks to Vatican II most Christian denominations now use some version of the common lectionary from 1969—a set series of scripture readings designated for each Sunday repeated over a three-year cycle conforming to the liturgical calendar. The three years in the cycle are called Year A, Year B and—yes, wait for it—Year C. And because it is a “common” lectionary Catholics and most Protestants frequently find themselves on the same biblical page on the same Sunday (or only a Sunday or two apart) reading the same passage as everyone else from one of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
I can never remember what year it is; I let the parish administrator tell me. She hands me the scripture insert for our bulletin on the Monday before and tells me go to it. Since I never know what year we are in with the lectionary, seeing the readings for next Sunday is always a surprise, and sometimes a disappointment. Some readings are just better than others. But I am told smart pastors thumb far ahead in the lectionary to see what gospel readings are coming up, so they can start homiletically mulling things over or planning their vacation absence around it if the reading is, um, weird.
I thought I’d try that. The first place my thumbing stopped was in a Capernaum synagogue where Jesus encountered a man “possessed by an unclean spirit.” This turns out to be Mark 1:21–28, Year B, fourth Sunday after Epiphany, called Ordinary Time in Roman parlance. It will show up for use on Sunday, January 29, 2012. That’s eleven months and some days before the Mayan calendar runs out on December 21 that year. Unless the world ends sooner, or I can get out of town, looks like I’m stuck with it.
The short of it is the “unclean spirit” shrieks at Jesus right there in the synagogue. And here you probably thought a crying baby was a problem. Jesus tells the “unclean spirit” to be quiet and then commands the wicked thing to leave the guy alone, which it does. Everyone is dumbfounded at the “authority” Jesus commands; why “even the unclean spirits submit [to him].” Along with submission, “unclean spirits” also tend to call him “the Holy One of God” as they do here, but nobody in Capernaum is ready to go that far.
Honest, I don’t ever remember this being in the lectionary. I don’t ever remember having preached on it. With umpteen years of ordination behind me I should have said something about it on 10.333 occasions by my count. I dipped into my dead sermon file and no, I have never preached on it. When that passage arrived apparently I always opted for the second reading, something in First Corinthians about poor deluded fools worried over eating meat first sacrificed to idols, or the first reading from Deuteronomy promising a prophet like Moses. And I know why. I think these accounts of demons and unclean spirits are just too un-modern for contemporary Christians.
Who could listen with a straight face, or preach with one? I am bothered saying it, but my reaction, I know, is a hangover from my atheist rationalist period. But still even now as a believer, well, possession, really?
Nor by the way am I the only Lutheran pastor in history who has had trouble with demons. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, a Lutheran Pennsylvania pastor through the mid to late 1700s tells in his diary of being visited by a man who thought he was possessed of a demon. Muhlenberg calmly explained to him he couldn’t possibly be possessed. That happened in Bible times, sure, but it wasn’t happening anymore. He sent the fellow on with a prayer. Today, pastors probably would default into a Rogerian chant to help the “victim” sort out “an internal source of evaluation.” Either that or ask about his medications.
I find it more than amusing that in the history of the Scottish church the Great Litany once intoned “From ghosties and goulies and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night” with the congregation going right along to “deliver us good Lord,” and they meant it.
It’s not in the Litany anymore. It would be an embarrassment. If someone does believe in ghosties, goulies, or beasties of any kind all they want to do is chase them in a dark basement with a camcorder for Ghost Hunters or sample their DNA for Monster Quest. Someday, just betcha, one of those ghosts or monsters or legged things will wise up and file a protective order.
Of course there is interest in the occult, but saying that doesn’t say any of it is real. Books are written and read about it, Ouija boards are sold at Amazon, newspapers carry astrology guides (I’m gonna have a great week, by the way, so don’t none of you mess it up in the comments section). I know a guy who is a practicing warlock in a Brooklyn coven, and I once met a then thirteen-year-old girl who practiced witchy spells hoping she could bend the universe to her will. I don’t take any of it with any seriousness.
Yet, strangest thing, I remember back to a pastoral session with a guy who had done something he regarded as unusually egregious. He ended his story with a common enough phrase, “I just don’t know what possessed me.”
Which sort of brings me back to the Capernaum synagogue. Real possession, oh, gee, I can hardly credit that. My head just isn’t built that way.
But that doesn’t matter, does it? Not really. I mean, it doesn’t matter from St. Mark’s perspective. Because the story’s not really about the “unclean spirit” anyway; it’s about Jesus and what he has to do with us. The man believed he was possessed by an “unclean spirit.” The people there believed he was possessed. Everyone believed it was possible to be possessed. Jesus did not dispute it, quibble about it, remark on it, or shy away from it. He took authority and with that authority announced deliverance and the man was delivered because the Holy One of God—I think I have this right—took possession of him.
“I just don’t know what possessed me,” the man told me. After hearing the story there were a couple notions I could have offered him, but uncharacteristically I managed to hold my tongue and I wonder now, what possessed me when my words soothed or brought laughter, and did not sting? Or when my hand caressed and did not strike? When my greedy soul wrote a generous check? When I enthrone within my palm the host that has become the Holy One of God? In whose possession am I then?
A pastor of the North American Lutheran Church, Russell E. Saltzman lives in Kansas City, Missouri. His previous On the Square articles can be found here.
RESOURCES
Mark 1:21–28
Henry Melchior Muhlenberg
Comments:
4.14.2011 | 9:19am
Stuart Koehl says:
Eastern Catholics of the different rites use their own traditional lectionaries--thanks be to God in a very literal sense. Now, if the USCCB would just let us use our own Bible, the world would be a much better place.
4.14.2011 | 10:06am
Pastor Spomer says:
“From ghosties (White guilt) and goulies (Jeffrey Dahmer et al) and long-leggedy (year-long, even decade-long) beasties and things that go bump in the night (foreign wars) ” with the congregation going right along to “deliver us good Lord,” and they (we) meant it."
Over the years of my preaching, I've found that the passages that I initially shun are the ones that are the most profitable if I look at them with an open mind and some extra effort.
Over the years of my preaching, I've found that the passages that I initially shun are the ones that are the most profitable if I look at them with an open mind and some extra effort.
4.14.2011 | 11:06am
CKG says:
Of course, these stories of demon-possession strike our modern ears (mine as much as anyone elsel's) as odd, and we scramble for ways to 'explain them away', in terms of sundry fears and insecurities, and other psychological instabilities.
But, Holy Scripture being what it is, might it not really be speaking of an actual spiritual realm, inaccessible to our physical senses? Doesn't a huge portion of Christian doctrine assume such a realm?
And isn't there something more-than-nominally evil in things like genocides and mass-murders? Isn't there something deeply, inhumanly perverse about telling mothers that the most compassionate way to care for the needs of their unborn children is to kill them?
What if those uncomfortable old stories about demons and evil spirits are, you know, really TRUE?
But, Holy Scripture being what it is, might it not really be speaking of an actual spiritual realm, inaccessible to our physical senses? Doesn't a huge portion of Christian doctrine assume such a realm?
And isn't there something more-than-nominally evil in things like genocides and mass-murders? Isn't there something deeply, inhumanly perverse about telling mothers that the most compassionate way to care for the needs of their unborn children is to kill them?
What if those uncomfortable old stories about demons and evil spirits are, you know, really TRUE?
4.14.2011 | 11:43am
JGB says:
Jesus encountering those possessed with demons and evil spirits makes sense when you think about it. If I were the Devil, and God incarnate was walking around filling people's hearts, I would feel entitled to some "equal time".
4.14.2011 | 12:43pm
Anon for this says:
This stuff is real. I have seen it myself, on multiple occasions, in one memorable instance in the company of a Catholic priest-exorcist. Many years ago, I skeptically asked a Southern Baptist friend, a meek and humble man of deep faith, who involved himself from time to time in what he called "deliverance ministry," how he could be sure that he was dealing with demonic entities here, and not psychological forces.
"If you have ever lain in bed at night," he said softly, "and the temperature in the room drops 50 degrees instantly, and objects begin floating around, and a disembodied voice starts calling out your secret sins, you know that it could be nothing else."
"If you have ever lain in bed at night," he said softly, "and the temperature in the room drops 50 degrees instantly, and objects begin floating around, and a disembodied voice starts calling out your secret sins, you know that it could be nothing else."
4.14.2011 | 2:18pm
Sophia Mason says:
"It doesn't really matter"? Yes, what "really matters" is union with Christ--possession by him, if you prefer. Measured against THAT, EVERYTHING is trivial--all the suffering in the world, and the world's deepest truths. But as human beings who have to live in the world, we do care about these trivial things; and among those trivial things, demonic possession is comparatively less trivial--certainly less trivial than, say, a hangnail or the sunburn left over from a weekend on the beach.
I'm also a little leery of shrugging off Christ's apparent interaction with demons, and hence his implicit acknowledgment of the reality of demonic possession. If we take his conversation with demons as figurative concessions to the culture of the time, what's to prevent us from taking his public prayers in the same way? "Our Father . . ." who art just an idea my Jewish brothers have, so I'll roll with it? Later on they'll figure out I didn't mean it quite so . . . er . . . literally??
Jesus was not shy about unsettling people's culturally conditioned ideas: consider, for example, his teachings on divorce and revenge. Yes, he was a man of his time, and no, he didn't go about challenging everything his culture believed. But, in the case of the man blind from birth . . . "They asked him 'Did this man sin, or did his parents?'" "'Neither,'" according to Jesus. He was not about to blame a physical condition on a spiritual one when there was no real connection. Why should he be any more reluctant to correct people's mistaken assumptions in cases of demonic possession?
I'm also a little leery of shrugging off Christ's apparent interaction with demons, and hence his implicit acknowledgment of the reality of demonic possession. If we take his conversation with demons as figurative concessions to the culture of the time, what's to prevent us from taking his public prayers in the same way? "Our Father . . ." who art just an idea my Jewish brothers have, so I'll roll with it? Later on they'll figure out I didn't mean it quite so . . . er . . . literally??
Jesus was not shy about unsettling people's culturally conditioned ideas: consider, for example, his teachings on divorce and revenge. Yes, he was a man of his time, and no, he didn't go about challenging everything his culture believed. But, in the case of the man blind from birth . . . "They asked him 'Did this man sin, or did his parents?'" "'Neither,'" according to Jesus. He was not about to blame a physical condition on a spiritual one when there was no real connection. Why should he be any more reluctant to correct people's mistaken assumptions in cases of demonic possession?
4.14.2011 | 2:43pm
Henry James says:
Rather than "possession," we moderns speak of "fixation" and "obsession."
Which seem real enough.
Which seem real enough.
4.14.2011 | 3:32pm
Phil Brandt says:
this article gives me occasion to remember distinctly two different occasions. I spent some time in India, in a conceptual world which, even for the Christians there, is filled with spirits, many of them quite malevolent. They heard these texts very differently than I did. When they encountered an account of Jesus casting out demons, they did not leap to an explanation which fit into my post-enlightenment sensibilities. They were incredibly relieved. Jesus has power of demons and they were pretty sure that the fellow down the street or the tree on the way out of the village was inhabited by a demonic presence of which they were afraid. This text removed from them real fear or at least gave them reason to hope and have courage.
The second instance happened a few years later when i sat in on a thesis defense by a senior theology student who had written about the exorcism in Mark 5. From the Philippines he also read this in a context which was not entirely post-enlightenment. The academics in the room included several who were simply blind to this possibility.
Both my Indian friends and this student were reading this text in a sense much closer to the meaning of the text. The text served to embolden and empower them. It did not leave them scratching their goatees and wondering about mental illness, epilepsy, or metaphors.
With Pr. Saltzman, I find myself sitting in a darkness which we ironically label "enlightenment."
The second instance happened a few years later when i sat in on a thesis defense by a senior theology student who had written about the exorcism in Mark 5. From the Philippines he also read this in a context which was not entirely post-enlightenment. The academics in the room included several who were simply blind to this possibility.
Both my Indian friends and this student were reading this text in a sense much closer to the meaning of the text. The text served to embolden and empower them. It did not leave them scratching their goatees and wondering about mental illness, epilepsy, or metaphors.
With Pr. Saltzman, I find myself sitting in a darkness which we ironically label "enlightenment."
4.14.2011 | 4:04pm
Assistant Village Idiot says:
I don't want to try and explain what Jesus encountered. But I've been treating psychiatric emergencies for 30 years, and it's not that. We try to hide there, I think, because it is a comforting category that we have a name for, even if we understand little of it.
Pastor Spomer, CS Lewis says much the same in his introduction to Reflections on The Psalms.
Pastor Spomer, CS Lewis says much the same in his introduction to Reflections on The Psalms.
4.14.2011 | 4:56pm
David Nickol says:
Assistant Village Idiot,
Interesting point. I once asked a clinical psychologist who had been practicing many years whether he had seen anything that might be possession. He said he had seen one case in which someone seemed to have an unusual knowledge of a language no one though she knew, but it turned out she had known it as a child. One would think that if anyone was in a position to attest to possession, it would be mental health professionals.
Interesting point. I once asked a clinical psychologist who had been practicing many years whether he had seen anything that might be possession. He said he had seen one case in which someone seemed to have an unusual knowledge of a language no one though she knew, but it turned out she had known it as a child. One would think that if anyone was in a position to attest to possession, it would be mental health professionals.
4.14.2011 | 7:38pm
Jim says:
David - it's interesting that you would assert that "if anyone would know about possession, it would be a mental health professional!" That's like saying, "if anyone knows how to design a car, it'd be a mechanic!"
4.14.2011 | 8:05pm
Boze says:
I suppose it comes down to whether we believe the Bible or our own "enlightened" thinking. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead" (Lk. 16:31).
I grew up in a church where it was preached that the miracles, visitations, and wonders of the Bible could never have happened today; for the prophets and apostles were living in the "age of faith," and ours is the "age of grace." What I realized as I grew older, and - to my complete incredulity - actually started experiencing, and encountering others who had experienced, prophecy, miracles, visions, and blatant demonic oppression (e. g., hauntings, flying objects, disembodied voices, out-of-body experiences) - is that this useful dispensational distinction was actually little more than a cover for collective unbelief. And I admit that in this respect I was as guilty as anyone. When the supernatural intrudes upon our lives, it's a question - a challenge. The question is this: "How much do you really believe in the God of the Bible?" I realized that when I talked about God, I was actually imagining a literary or historical character. I had buried Him away in the past, and in books. He was much safer there. But this isn't the kind of faith that the Bible talks about. I think we would be surprised, and alarmed, at the number of practicing Christians who are functionally atheists.
All this is going to change in the next generation. Even those who don't believe in prophecy today, will prophesy in days to come. The reality of the work of the Holy Spirit is returning to the Church. "Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb. 3:15).
I grew up in a church where it was preached that the miracles, visitations, and wonders of the Bible could never have happened today; for the prophets and apostles were living in the "age of faith," and ours is the "age of grace." What I realized as I grew older, and - to my complete incredulity - actually started experiencing, and encountering others who had experienced, prophecy, miracles, visions, and blatant demonic oppression (e. g., hauntings, flying objects, disembodied voices, out-of-body experiences) - is that this useful dispensational distinction was actually little more than a cover for collective unbelief. And I admit that in this respect I was as guilty as anyone. When the supernatural intrudes upon our lives, it's a question - a challenge. The question is this: "How much do you really believe in the God of the Bible?" I realized that when I talked about God, I was actually imagining a literary or historical character. I had buried Him away in the past, and in books. He was much safer there. But this isn't the kind of faith that the Bible talks about. I think we would be surprised, and alarmed, at the number of practicing Christians who are functionally atheists.
All this is going to change in the next generation. Even those who don't believe in prophecy today, will prophesy in days to come. The reality of the work of the Holy Spirit is returning to the Church. "Today, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb. 3:15).
4.14.2011 | 9:20pm
David Nickol says:
That's like saying, "if anyone knows how to design a car, it'd be a mechanic!"
Jim,
I disagree. It's more like saying, "If anyone knows all the ways something can go wrong with a car, it's a mechanic." When someone's behavior is strange, doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists—and also probably the police—are likely to be the first ones to see them.
Now, if you wanted to argue that people in the medical profession might bend over backwards to deny something supernatural was the cause of a patient's problem, you might have an argument. But I stick by my theory that mental health professionals are more likely to be the first to be called in when there is a strange or inexplicable change in a person's behavior.
Jim,
I disagree. It's more like saying, "If anyone knows all the ways something can go wrong with a car, it's a mechanic." When someone's behavior is strange, doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists—and also probably the police—are likely to be the first ones to see them.
Now, if you wanted to argue that people in the medical profession might bend over backwards to deny something supernatural was the cause of a patient's problem, you might have an argument. But I stick by my theory that mental health professionals are more likely to be the first to be called in when there is a strange or inexplicable change in a person's behavior.
4.14.2011 | 9:41pm
Mark VA says:
To doubt the existence of good angels and demons is, ultimately, to put the existence of one's soul under a question mark. On what ground can one deny the former, but affirm the latter?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
4.14.2011 | 10:52pm
Gil Costello says:
We can believe that God created the heavens and the earth, and that us humans being made in the very image and likeness of God, we possess real freedom, and in that freedom there is a real possibility that we will choose to reject God in the end and reside in hell for eternity. So, in comparison, what's so difficult about believing God created spirits who also had the freedom to reject God, and that in our freedom we can remain open to their influence, although they can't control our decision-making process? There are all kinds of tests that demonstrate the poverty of our faith, and why we cannot command mountains to be moved.
4.15.2011 | 7:38am
Jim says:
David - no doubt that in today's American culture that the first thing someone would do if a loved showed signs of abnormal behavior would be so seek medical attention, and that's not a bad place to start. But your earlier post sounds to me like you think they are the experts on all things human. They're not. They have their part to play, like a mechanic does is the long term care of a car. But the mechanic neither designed, nor built the car.
4.15.2011 | 9:56am
Jimbo says:
Multiple Personality Disorder: when someone is inhabited ... by another personality.
4.15.2011 | 10:45am
R. Dreher says:
Insofar as a medical professional is a scientist, and works with the methods and tools of science, he is committed a priori to a materialist view of the world. I don't say that as a criticism, but as an observation of how science works. The possibility of evil spirits affecting the body does not exist, and cannot exist in his professional worldview. When there is an inexplicable manifestation of material phenomena -- objects moving without apparent cause, or otherwise defying physical laws, humans knowing things they couldn't possibly know by natural means -- the scientist is philosophically committed to saying that either we are witnessing an illusion of some sort, or we are seeing something that can be explained through purely natural causes.
If the scientist is correct, what many think of as evil spirits are at best metaphors for physical conditions that may or may not be fully understood. But isn't it possible that in some rare cases, the observable evidence indicates that materialism, however useful a philosophy, ultimately offers an insufficient account of reality?
What would a scientific materialist have to observe to believe in the existence of some sort of disembodied intelligence with the power to act on material reality -- that is, an evil spirit, or a ghost? If he can conceive of nothing that would cause him to change his mind about materialism, then isn't it true his materialism is non-falsifiable, and therefore has the same value as religion? I was once at a dinner with Steven Pinker and his wife Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, in which they both affirmed something I'd read in a public radio interview with them -- that if they saw clear and indisputable evidence of the paranormal (e.g., ghosts), then the materialist position on the mind-brain question would collapse. I wonder, though, what would constitute convincing evidence for them, or if that's even possible. If one wants to disbelieve strongly enough in something, one can always convince oneself that one is hallucinating what is obviously in front of one.
If the scientist is correct, what many think of as evil spirits are at best metaphors for physical conditions that may or may not be fully understood. But isn't it possible that in some rare cases, the observable evidence indicates that materialism, however useful a philosophy, ultimately offers an insufficient account of reality?
What would a scientific materialist have to observe to believe in the existence of some sort of disembodied intelligence with the power to act on material reality -- that is, an evil spirit, or a ghost? If he can conceive of nothing that would cause him to change his mind about materialism, then isn't it true his materialism is non-falsifiable, and therefore has the same value as religion? I was once at a dinner with Steven Pinker and his wife Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, in which they both affirmed something I'd read in a public radio interview with them -- that if they saw clear and indisputable evidence of the paranormal (e.g., ghosts), then the materialist position on the mind-brain question would collapse. I wonder, though, what would constitute convincing evidence for them, or if that's even possible. If one wants to disbelieve strongly enough in something, one can always convince oneself that one is hallucinating what is obviously in front of one.
4.15.2011 | 11:08am
Judy K. Warner says:
Black Christians, at least Pentecostals, tend to believe in demonic possession, at least from my limited experience.
4.15.2011 | 11:53am
Howard says:
Once I dated a girl who said she believed in angels but didn't believe in God. So I told her that was akin to believing in individual colors but not in the spectrum. Sounds like Pr.Saltzman's problem is the reverse: he belives in the Spectrum, the White Light, the source of all colors, but not certain colors, especially those that muddy up the waters.
4.15.2011 | 11:54am
David Nickol says:
But your earlier post sounds to me like you think they are the experts on all things human.
Jim,
I may have been unclear. I think people in the medical and behavioral science might be inclined to be more skeptical about the supernatural than others. Nevertheless, I do think that if possession is a real phenomenon, they would be among the mostly likely to encounter people who were possessed. So I think asking people like psychiatrists and clinical psychologists if they had ever seen the kind of behavior that is associated with possession (whether they believed in possession themselves or not) would be worthwhile. Assistant Village Idiot said: "I don't want to try and explain what Jesus encountered. But I've been treating psychiatric emergencies for 30 years, and it's not that." I take that to be at least as important a statement as claims by others to have seen things like those depicted in the movie The Exorcist.
Jim,
I may have been unclear. I think people in the medical and behavioral science might be inclined to be more skeptical about the supernatural than others. Nevertheless, I do think that if possession is a real phenomenon, they would be among the mostly likely to encounter people who were possessed. So I think asking people like psychiatrists and clinical psychologists if they had ever seen the kind of behavior that is associated with possession (whether they believed in possession themselves or not) would be worthwhile. Assistant Village Idiot said: "I don't want to try and explain what Jesus encountered. But I've been treating psychiatric emergencies for 30 years, and it's not that." I take that to be at least as important a statement as claims by others to have seen things like those depicted in the movie The Exorcist.
4.15.2011 | 12:37pm
Frank Pray says:
Demons have a distinct advantage when you don't think they are real.
4.15.2011 | 1:46pm
Sophia Mason says:
R. Dreyer, good points about scientific materialism--particularly regarding its falsifiability.
I would however question one thing that seemed to be implied in your first paragraph. While the majority of modern scientists are indeed "committed a priori to a materialist view of the world," there is no necessity that this should be the case. The scientific method itself demands that scientists go from physical evidence to a theory, not start with a theory (e.g., "Material reality is all that exists") and then impose it upon upon phenomena that they cannot otherwise account for. To be philosophically committed to materialism in the face of the materially inexplicable is, frankly, unscientific.
Apologies if this is what you already intended to suggest!
I would however question one thing that seemed to be implied in your first paragraph. While the majority of modern scientists are indeed "committed a priori to a materialist view of the world," there is no necessity that this should be the case. The scientific method itself demands that scientists go from physical evidence to a theory, not start with a theory (e.g., "Material reality is all that exists") and then impose it upon upon phenomena that they cannot otherwise account for. To be philosophically committed to materialism in the face of the materially inexplicable is, frankly, unscientific.
Apologies if this is what you already intended to suggest!
4.15.2011 | 2:26pm
David Nickol says:
Frank Pray,
You say: "Demons have a distinct advantage when you don't think they are real."
Can you explain precisely what that distinct advantage is? And what do those who believe demons are real do that makes them better off than people who do not believe demons are real?
You say: "Demons have a distinct advantage when you don't think they are real."
Can you explain precisely what that distinct advantage is? And what do those who believe demons are real do that makes them better off than people who do not believe demons are real?
4.15.2011 | 3:08pm
Gil Costello says:
"Demons have a distinct advantage when you don't think they are real."
Like when my sister was possessed and she was put through the psychiatric ringer for years, her mind being strangled with drugs. If she or I believed in possession back then, she could have had an exorcism.
People who believe demons are real are more prone to embrace God's will, knowing the mystery of evil runs so deep that our human willfulness absent a submission to God’ will will never get us out of the pit, and demons are accomplished at convincing us the pit is one step away from utopia.
Like when my sister was possessed and she was put through the psychiatric ringer for years, her mind being strangled with drugs. If she or I believed in possession back then, she could have had an exorcism.
People who believe demons are real are more prone to embrace God's will, knowing the mystery of evil runs so deep that our human willfulness absent a submission to God’ will will never get us out of the pit, and demons are accomplished at convincing us the pit is one step away from utopia.
4.15.2011 | 11:15pm
R.C. says:
I'm afraid I don't quite understand the reticence about this topic.
Is there really a Christian, orthodox in every other way, who doubts that of all the angels God created, some abused their free will and became inimical to Him and to us, and that while we rarely interact with these beings, when we do, it's frightening and disturbing and causes damage to those affected?
I can understand an atheist saying there are no demons. He starts from the unfounded assumption that nothing spiritual exists, and proceeds to say that demons don't exist as a mere fleshing-out of his original assumption to higher levels of specificity.
But a Christian? A Christian necessarily believes in God and in the spiritual side of human beings.
Once a person takes that view, what rational reason is there to believe that...
(a.) We're the only spiritual beings God ever created; or,
(b.) We're the only spiritual beings who abused free will and became corrupt; or,
(c.) None of the other spiritual beings who abused free will and became corrupt are more powerful than we?
Is there any logical reason to assume any of these things? I can't think of one.
Especially since the voices of Scriptural and Patristic and Saintly authority uniformly tell us otherwise.
In the end, the sane man should probably conclude that:
1. There are demons;
2. Encounters with them are rare;
3. This is a good thing;
4. Various mental aberrations can be mistaken for demonic activity, and are far more common, and thus should generally be assumed until obvious supernatural phenomena occur which eliminate natural causes as a plausible explanation.
Most of us will never personally encounter a tornado or a Bengal Tiger. This is a good thing, too. We are well-served to focus our concern mostly on more likely threats like automobile accidents and excessive credit-card debt. We need not pooh-pooh the existence of tigers and tornadoes in order to do so.
Likewise, most of us will never personally encounter a demon. Why should we? Why should hell waste its shock troops on most of us, who are too sunk in habitual sin to represent any kind of serious threat anyhow? The old trio of spiritual enemies we heard about in childhood sermons was "The World, The Flesh, and The Devil." Well, the world and the flesh have most of us pinned down in trenches, unable to capture any serious territory from the enemy. Why, then, should he change his tactics?
Is there really a Christian, orthodox in every other way, who doubts that of all the angels God created, some abused their free will and became inimical to Him and to us, and that while we rarely interact with these beings, when we do, it's frightening and disturbing and causes damage to those affected?
I can understand an atheist saying there are no demons. He starts from the unfounded assumption that nothing spiritual exists, and proceeds to say that demons don't exist as a mere fleshing-out of his original assumption to higher levels of specificity.
But a Christian? A Christian necessarily believes in God and in the spiritual side of human beings.
Once a person takes that view, what rational reason is there to believe that...
(a.) We're the only spiritual beings God ever created; or,
(b.) We're the only spiritual beings who abused free will and became corrupt; or,
(c.) None of the other spiritual beings who abused free will and became corrupt are more powerful than we?
Is there any logical reason to assume any of these things? I can't think of one.
Especially since the voices of Scriptural and Patristic and Saintly authority uniformly tell us otherwise.
In the end, the sane man should probably conclude that:
1. There are demons;
2. Encounters with them are rare;
3. This is a good thing;
4. Various mental aberrations can be mistaken for demonic activity, and are far more common, and thus should generally be assumed until obvious supernatural phenomena occur which eliminate natural causes as a plausible explanation.
Most of us will never personally encounter a tornado or a Bengal Tiger. This is a good thing, too. We are well-served to focus our concern mostly on more likely threats like automobile accidents and excessive credit-card debt. We need not pooh-pooh the existence of tigers and tornadoes in order to do so.
Likewise, most of us will never personally encounter a demon. Why should we? Why should hell waste its shock troops on most of us, who are too sunk in habitual sin to represent any kind of serious threat anyhow? The old trio of spiritual enemies we heard about in childhood sermons was "The World, The Flesh, and The Devil." Well, the world and the flesh have most of us pinned down in trenches, unable to capture any serious territory from the enemy. Why, then, should he change his tactics?
4.16.2011 | 6:28am
Mark VA says:
RC:
You make several excellent observations.
We've become quite adept at manufacturing many types of sadness, despair, loneliness, anxieties, and destructive desires, that only deepen our overall unhappiness. Some try to escape this condition by attempting to convince themselves that they have no souls, thus all this "apparent unhappiness" is only some kind of biological, or environmental, imbalance. What strange alchemy we've stumbled into.
It would be refreshing if the sciences, especially psychology, admitted to the possibility that human beings, maybe, just maybe, have immaterial souls, and then be courageous enough to draw the logical conclusions from it. The view of a person as a soulless, exclusively biological being, is truly a spiralling downward path.
You make several excellent observations.
We've become quite adept at manufacturing many types of sadness, despair, loneliness, anxieties, and destructive desires, that only deepen our overall unhappiness. Some try to escape this condition by attempting to convince themselves that they have no souls, thus all this "apparent unhappiness" is only some kind of biological, or environmental, imbalance. What strange alchemy we've stumbled into.
It would be refreshing if the sciences, especially psychology, admitted to the possibility that human beings, maybe, just maybe, have immaterial souls, and then be courageous enough to draw the logical conclusions from it. The view of a person as a soulless, exclusively biological being, is truly a spiralling downward path.
4.16.2011 | 12:33pm
Matt K says:
A well written article.
"The short of it is the “unclean spirit” shrieks at Jesus right there in the synagogue. And here you probably thought a crying baby was a problem."
...just some levity to these excellent comments.
"The short of it is the “unclean spirit” shrieks at Jesus right there in the synagogue. And here you probably thought a crying baby was a problem."
...just some levity to these excellent comments.
4.16.2011 | 2:26pm
Gil Costello says:
In 1978 I was thoroughly secularized, to the point where I was neither religious, atheist nor agnostic: those realms were for me irrelevant. I was living in New York when I was told that my sister Darlene had a nervous breakdown and disappeared. I went to where she was last seen, Los Angeles. I spoke to everyone I could find who knew her, and I discovered she was still in Los Angeles, homeless. One person told me, “I was going to work in Hollywood. It was early in the morning. Darlene was sitting on a bus stop bench in a full lotus, and when I returned from work that evening she was still sitting there.”
I became homeless to find her, and after a month I did. I got a job and an apartment and took Darlene in. I got her into therapy with a psychiatrist who, as his first task, put her on mellaril for what he perceived as her obvious schizophrenia. She became, in the words of Pink Floyd, comfortably numb, her eyes glazed over, walking a robotic walk, never having anything to say. Then one morning as I was preparing to go to work, Darlene walked out into the living room. She was smiling and her eyes were on fire with light. Instinctually I asked her, “Did you take your medication?” She held out her hand, and in it were about 10 mellaril pills. She swallowed them and stared laughing. I told her we had to go to the emergency room, but she refused. So I called in sick and waited until the pills took effect, and then I would rush her to the hospital. But she remained in her ecstatic state all day, and at one point she asked me if I had any awareness of those who were accompany us. She was talking about spirits in the room.
That’s how it began, and over the next year of caring for her I would have many inexplicable experiences. For example, I had two friends, Sal and Betty, the most upbeat couple I have ever known. I wanted to get Darlene out to meet people, so Betty and Sal arranged a luncheon. We were all sitting in their living room, Darlene and I in separate armchairs, Betty on the sofa, and Sal sitting on the floor with his arms wrapped around his legs. We were just talking when all of a sudden Sal lay back on the floor and went to sleep, as did Betty on the sofa. I looked at Darlene. Her physical appearance had totally altered. Not only her facial structure, but her entire body. She was smiling and said to me, “You’re the first person who’s ever seen me.” My first thought was that possibly reincarnation was real (what Darlene believed) and that I was looking at the person she was first in her long journey, for the person I was looking at seemed to have existed hundreds of years ago. Then she asked me, “Do you want to see clearly?” I didn’t answer. Then to one side of me appeared a cyclical pattern of light. “Just walk into that light. That’s all it takes.” I was overcome with fear. I got up from my chair and walked into the kitchen. When I came back Betty and Sal were awake and Darlene was back.
There were many more inexplicable experiences over the next year while taking care of Darlene (although it became clear that I wasn’t taking care of her, but that she was trying to lead me in a particular direction, even at one point getting me cast in a lead role in major stage production). I was assured by knowledgeable persons that my experience was one of osmosis, that it sometimes happens to empathic persons like me, traveling inside the audio and visual hallucinations of schizophrenics. And I accepted all this until I returned to the Church almost ten years later.
When I returned, I not only thought about what I had experienced while taking care of Darlene. I thought about her childhood, how at age 5 she was radically independent, and how she would walk around on her fingertips inside a full-lotus, and how we would all laugh in amazement. Then at 14 leaving home and getting a full-time job during the day and becoming a Go-Go dancer in a birdcage at some big nightclub in Manhattan to raise investment capital, and at age 23 a multi-millionaire living in a palatial home in the Hollywood Hills.
But most importantly, how she was sought after by so many people addicted to the psychic cults. She was considered by many to be the most authentic reader in America. She never charged money. She was even doing them when I was taking care of her. I asked her one day why she sometimes used Tarot cards and other times read palms or tea leaves. She said, “Those items are for them, what they need. I see everything without them.” I would always leave when she did readings, but one day I stayed and sat in the kitchen listening. It was a young, beautiful woman, and at the end of the reading Darlene instructed the woman to totally alter her life, including the changing of her sexual orientation, that her destiny was in being a lesbian, not a straight person. And although this woman never had a sexual yearning for someone of the same sex, she began frequenting lesbian clubs solely on Darlene’s advice.
As a Catholic I know that the reason there aren’t as many possessions as during Jesus’ time is because in his redemptive act the dominion of Satan was conquered. John 12:31: “Now the prince of this world is to be driven out.” And although Satan’s influence and power to possess has been largely curtailed, in our gift of freedom God has chosen to allow him limited power in honoring our freedom. Like in Job, with us Satan pleads in his defeat, “But they’re more like me than you—they secretly yearn to be my image and likeness! And you know it! You gave them freedom. So give them a choice!” And so it is that Satan still has limited power until the General Judgment, and that limited power is more than we can imagine, its infestation creeping more subtly but definitively into our lives. As Peter warned (1 Peter, 5:8): “Keep sober and alert, because your enemy the devil is on the prowl like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
I now know that when Darlene had physically changed at Sal and Betty’s home, it wasn’t Darlene I was seeing, but the demon that was possessing her.
I became homeless to find her, and after a month I did. I got a job and an apartment and took Darlene in. I got her into therapy with a psychiatrist who, as his first task, put her on mellaril for what he perceived as her obvious schizophrenia. She became, in the words of Pink Floyd, comfortably numb, her eyes glazed over, walking a robotic walk, never having anything to say. Then one morning as I was preparing to go to work, Darlene walked out into the living room. She was smiling and her eyes were on fire with light. Instinctually I asked her, “Did you take your medication?” She held out her hand, and in it were about 10 mellaril pills. She swallowed them and stared laughing. I told her we had to go to the emergency room, but she refused. So I called in sick and waited until the pills took effect, and then I would rush her to the hospital. But she remained in her ecstatic state all day, and at one point she asked me if I had any awareness of those who were accompany us. She was talking about spirits in the room.
That’s how it began, and over the next year of caring for her I would have many inexplicable experiences. For example, I had two friends, Sal and Betty, the most upbeat couple I have ever known. I wanted to get Darlene out to meet people, so Betty and Sal arranged a luncheon. We were all sitting in their living room, Darlene and I in separate armchairs, Betty on the sofa, and Sal sitting on the floor with his arms wrapped around his legs. We were just talking when all of a sudden Sal lay back on the floor and went to sleep, as did Betty on the sofa. I looked at Darlene. Her physical appearance had totally altered. Not only her facial structure, but her entire body. She was smiling and said to me, “You’re the first person who’s ever seen me.” My first thought was that possibly reincarnation was real (what Darlene believed) and that I was looking at the person she was first in her long journey, for the person I was looking at seemed to have existed hundreds of years ago. Then she asked me, “Do you want to see clearly?” I didn’t answer. Then to one side of me appeared a cyclical pattern of light. “Just walk into that light. That’s all it takes.” I was overcome with fear. I got up from my chair and walked into the kitchen. When I came back Betty and Sal were awake and Darlene was back.
There were many more inexplicable experiences over the next year while taking care of Darlene (although it became clear that I wasn’t taking care of her, but that she was trying to lead me in a particular direction, even at one point getting me cast in a lead role in major stage production). I was assured by knowledgeable persons that my experience was one of osmosis, that it sometimes happens to empathic persons like me, traveling inside the audio and visual hallucinations of schizophrenics. And I accepted all this until I returned to the Church almost ten years later.
When I returned, I not only thought about what I had experienced while taking care of Darlene. I thought about her childhood, how at age 5 she was radically independent, and how she would walk around on her fingertips inside a full-lotus, and how we would all laugh in amazement. Then at 14 leaving home and getting a full-time job during the day and becoming a Go-Go dancer in a birdcage at some big nightclub in Manhattan to raise investment capital, and at age 23 a multi-millionaire living in a palatial home in the Hollywood Hills.
But most importantly, how she was sought after by so many people addicted to the psychic cults. She was considered by many to be the most authentic reader in America. She never charged money. She was even doing them when I was taking care of her. I asked her one day why she sometimes used Tarot cards and other times read palms or tea leaves. She said, “Those items are for them, what they need. I see everything without them.” I would always leave when she did readings, but one day I stayed and sat in the kitchen listening. It was a young, beautiful woman, and at the end of the reading Darlene instructed the woman to totally alter her life, including the changing of her sexual orientation, that her destiny was in being a lesbian, not a straight person. And although this woman never had a sexual yearning for someone of the same sex, she began frequenting lesbian clubs solely on Darlene’s advice.
As a Catholic I know that the reason there aren’t as many possessions as during Jesus’ time is because in his redemptive act the dominion of Satan was conquered. John 12:31: “Now the prince of this world is to be driven out.” And although Satan’s influence and power to possess has been largely curtailed, in our gift of freedom God has chosen to allow him limited power in honoring our freedom. Like in Job, with us Satan pleads in his defeat, “But they’re more like me than you—they secretly yearn to be my image and likeness! And you know it! You gave them freedom. So give them a choice!” And so it is that Satan still has limited power until the General Judgment, and that limited power is more than we can imagine, its infestation creeping more subtly but definitively into our lives. As Peter warned (1 Peter, 5:8): “Keep sober and alert, because your enemy the devil is on the prowl like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”
I now know that when Darlene had physically changed at Sal and Betty’s home, it wasn’t Darlene I was seeing, but the demon that was possessing her.
4.16.2011 | 3:13pm
Gil Costello says:
Mark VA,
You write, "Some try to escape this condition by attempting to convince themselves that they have no souls..."
You would appreciate a very dark comedy, "Cold Souls", starring the inimitable Paul Giamatti, who, in adding to the irony of the film, plays himself. It concerns the scientific invention of a device that can remove a person's soul so he is able to live life contentedly.
You write, "Some try to escape this condition by attempting to convince themselves that they have no souls..."
You would appreciate a very dark comedy, "Cold Souls", starring the inimitable Paul Giamatti, who, in adding to the irony of the film, plays himself. It concerns the scientific invention of a device that can remove a person's soul so he is able to live life contentedly.
4.16.2011 | 9:51pm
Mark VA says:
Gil Costello:
Thank you for suggesting this movie - I'll try to see it.
By the way, it's good that you're not easily impressed by the tricks of the devil. he's a passable psychologist, and has a rather large catalogue of effects to exploit our every weakness - some of which you so well described. Libera nos a malo, Jesu!
Thank you for suggesting this movie - I'll try to see it.
By the way, it's good that you're not easily impressed by the tricks of the devil. he's a passable psychologist, and has a rather large catalogue of effects to exploit our every weakness - some of which you so well described. Libera nos a malo, Jesu!
4.19.2011 | 12:55pm
Willard says:
Careful: belief in demonic possession, makes you more likely to have them; by self-fulfilling prophesy.
By the way? Not all science is entirely materialistic; psychiatry for example, often acknowledges the existence of a largely invisible mind or spirit. While psychiatry describes many things quite like possession; including multiple personality disorders, obsessions, fixation, and so forth. Why not regard religion and science as having common ground here? Rather than entirely denying science?
Interestingly by the way? In the Bible, it was primarily only those people with problems - those possessed by demons for example - that would openly call Jesus the "son of God." Others did not. Even Peter, who declared that Jesus was Lord or god, was himself problematic; turning against Jesus at times. So that Jesus finally called even St. Peter "Satan," in Mat. 16.23.
There are some very strange ironies in the world, after all. Even for believers, especially.
By the way? Not all science is entirely materialistic; psychiatry for example, often acknowledges the existence of a largely invisible mind or spirit. While psychiatry describes many things quite like possession; including multiple personality disorders, obsessions, fixation, and so forth. Why not regard religion and science as having common ground here? Rather than entirely denying science?
Interestingly by the way? In the Bible, it was primarily only those people with problems - those possessed by demons for example - that would openly call Jesus the "son of God." Others did not. Even Peter, who declared that Jesus was Lord or god, was himself problematic; turning against Jesus at times. So that Jesus finally called even St. Peter "Satan," in Mat. 16.23.
There are some very strange ironies in the world, after all. Even for believers, especially.
4.19.2011 | 8:10pm
Mark VA says:
Willard:
I don't think that anyone here is "denying science" - I fail to see how this conclusion follows from this discussion. On the contrary, it is the attempt to put science in a materialist straight jacket that does a great disservice to this wonderful enterprise.
On the subject of evil, I would argue that it is the temptation to become fascinated with evil that poses the greater danger, followed closely by being oblivious to it. Belief that personified evil exists tends to put one on guard, thus is of benefit. It also goes without saying that the devil knows very well that God exists.
I don't think that anyone here is "denying science" - I fail to see how this conclusion follows from this discussion. On the contrary, it is the attempt to put science in a materialist straight jacket that does a great disservice to this wonderful enterprise.
On the subject of evil, I would argue that it is the temptation to become fascinated with evil that poses the greater danger, followed closely by being oblivious to it. Belief that personified evil exists tends to put one on guard, thus is of benefit. It also goes without saying that the devil knows very well that God exists.
5.13.2011 | 8:37am
Ohashi Ex Back says:
In 1978 I was thoroughly secularized, to the point where I was neither religious, atheist nor agnostic: those realms were for me irrelevant. I was living in New York when I was told that my sister Darlene had a nervous breakdown and disappeared. I went to where she was last seen, Los Angeles. I spoke to everyone I could find who knew her, and I discovered she was still in Los Angeles, homeless. One person told me, I was going to work in Hollywood. It was early in the morning. Darlene was sitting on a bus stop bench in a full lotus, and when I returned from work that evening she was still sitting there. What would a scientific materialist have to observe to believe in the existence of some sort of disembodied intelligence with the power to act on material reality -- that is, an evil spirit, or a ghost? If he can conceive of nothing that would cause him to change his mind about materialism, then isn't it true his materialism is non-falsifiable, and therefore has the same value as religion? I was once at a dinner with Steven Pinker and his wife Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, in which they both affirmed something I'd read in a public radio interview with them -- that if they saw clear and indisputable evidence of the paranormal (e.g., ghosts), then the materialist position on the mind-brain question would collapse. I wonder, though, what would constitute convincing evidence for them, or if that's even possible. If one wants to disbelieve strongly enough in something, one can always convince oneself that one is hallucinating what is obviously in front of one.
7.31.2011 | 5:35pm
Dacres Chantell says:
Both my Indian friends and this student were reading this text in a sense much closer to the meaning of the text. The text served to embolden and empower them. It did not leave them scratching their goatees and wondering about mental illness, epilepsy, or metaphors. As a Catholic I know that the reason there arent as many possessions as during Jesus time is because in his redemptive act the dominion of Satan was conquered. John 12:31: Now the prince of this world is to be driven out. And although Satans influence and power to possess has been largely curtailed, in our gift of freedom God has chosen to allow him limited power in honoring our freedom. Like in Job, with us Satan pleads in his defeat, But theyre more like me than youthey secretly yearn to be my image and likeness! And you know it! You gave them freedom. So give them a choice! And so it is that Satan still has limited power until the General Judgment, and that limited power is more than we can imagine, its infestation creeping more subtly but definitively into our lives. As Peter warned (1 Peter, 5:8): Keep sober and alert, because your enemy the devil is on the prowl like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
12.6.2011 | 3:13pm
AKO says:
@Mark VA
"We've become quite adept at manufacturing many types of sadness, despair, loneliness, anxieties, and destructive desires, that only deepen our overall unhappiness."
I agree, yet there is still hope. People will generally do what's right in the face of despair!
"We've become quite adept at manufacturing many types of sadness, despair, loneliness, anxieties, and destructive desires, that only deepen our overall unhappiness."
I agree, yet there is still hope. People will generally do what's right in the face of despair!
If the Progessives found out about these goulies there would be a new victim class to include in hate crimes legislation.
Exorcism would get you 1 to 5.