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Better The Devil You Know | Satan – Part 2


 

Satan is one thing, but if we are talking about the satanic, then what about dark powers and demonic forces that exist in the world? This is something that I think Christians need to be careful around, but not in the way that you might instinctively think.

 

My personal belief is that science and medicine can account for much of what the church sees as satanic or demonic. There are people who I respect, who do see dark powers as being something spiritual, and so I hesitate to rubbish it all, but I also know that those people would say that many presumed cases of the demonic, are psychological in nature, and should be dealt with medically, and not through exorcism or deliverance ministries. Perhaps this is a healthy balance to have, and something that the church should be looking to move towards.

 

I think many churches believe so strongly in the satanic and demonic, that they jump to supernatural conclusions before entertaining any other possibilities. I get that sometimes this might come down to culture or lack of education on mental health issues, but too many churches reach for demons and Satan way too easily, when they should know better.

 

The Bible gives many accounts of Jesus dealing with demons, and whilst we might take these as proof of demonic powers, we have to remember that people in the first century didn’t have the same knowledge that we have today about medicine and psychology. I think we are already aware of this, because there are some stories in the Bible which describe demonic activity, but which are presented otherwise. The primary example of this is the account in Luke 9, where a man brings his apparently demon possessed son to be healed by Jesus. The text talks about this being a demon possession, yet many biblical translations refer to this event as Jesus healing an epileptic. We understand that the boy had epilepsy, but it wasn’t described this way in the text, because people in the first century wouldn’t have known what epilepsy was, they would have just seen a boy thrashing violently and foaming at the mouth, which to them would have looked like a demonic possession.

 

These days we are less superstitious and much more informed, and if you saw someone having a seizure, the first thing you would do is call an ambulance, and follow their advice, making sure that the person was safe until the paramedics arrived. You wouldn’t douse the person in holy water and start yelling for the demon to come out of them in the name of Jesus. The idea of trying to exorcise an epileptic might seem comical or ridiculous, because we have a much better understanding of medicine, and we know that the best way to treat people with certain illnesses, is with medication, and not by shoving a crucifix in their face, or waving sage branches at them.

 

The human mind is complicated and powerful and there is a lot that we still don’t know about it. The mind can do things which we cannot explain, and which can be frightening, but just because we might not understand something like dissociative identity disorder, it doesn’t mean it's demonic and requires exorcism. We need to keep this in mind when we deal with people who we might have been told are, or who we might personally think are demon possessed. This matters because when we go searching for demons, we do often find them, but only because we end up demonising people.

 

I don’t know whether you agree with this assessment, but whichever way you think of it, there is an important point which I ask you to consider; that we should be careful about how we present our own beliefs in demons, because whilst they might make sense to us, they can be incredibly harmful to other people. I recently heard about a church elder who was visiting someone from his church who had been seriously ill, and had told him that his condition was being caused by a demon. The guy and his wife were understandably upset by this unqualified comment, and it was a really ignorant thing to say. This elder was basically saying that if their faith had been stronger, then they wouldn’t have fallen ill. The elder may have believed that a demon was responsible for the illness, or he may have meant something else which was miscommunicated, but regardless of what he meant, I think this was incredibly insensitive and thoughtless.

 

This isn’t an isolated incident. There are countless stories of people who are reported as being demon possessed, who have actually had serious health conditions. One that jumps to mind is the case of a schizophrenic man who was denied his medicine, and instead was subjected to a deliverance where his pastor and other church leaders shouted at him for 10 hours. The fiasco was only brought to a close because the man’s son heard what was happening, and went to the church where the exorcism was taking place, rescued his father, and then made sure that he was given the prescribed treatment that would actually help him.

 

These kinds of things can be difficult to think about and wrestle with. There will be people who think that my readings of the Satan and the demonic are naive, and perhaps they are. I don’t have any firsthand experiences of dark or supernatural happenings, and I accept that there might be dark powers at play, which are beyond my understanding. But I know there is some truth to what I am saying, and they are things that we as Christians need to consider.

 

 

Text taken from “Unanswerable: Exploring the Complexities of the Christian Faith and Biblical Truth”, which is available from Amazon, and from all good book shops. An audiobook is also available at https://mindmole.bandcamp.com/music

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