Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

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Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
In my last post, we explored the story of the Gerasene demoniac together.  I proposed that, rather than there being some supernatural entity that had taken control of the demoniac, his symptoms might be better explained as a psychological break with reality as a result of the Roman oppression, and his people's response.  Now, this may upset some of my readers - but I'd like to ask: is it more important to believe demons are personal entities, or to understand how to properly resist them?

Indeed, belief in demons may actually function as a mask for the true problems - as we saw in the story of Matthew Murray.  Or it may exacerbate the issue of collective violence - as we saw in the story of George Tiller.

So I'd like to explore a few more passages where demons appear, and then go on to explore some conclusions.

The Accuser often appeared within the temple itself.

It's interesting to take an in-depth look at these cases, and try to get to the heart of the real problems behind them.  In the very first case of Jesus confronting a demon - in Mark 1:21-28 - the demon is within the Synagogue: one of the sacred structures of the religion of Judaism itself!  This demon may be symbolic of a religion that was no longer re-ligamenting or re-binding people to God, but was actually causing further separation from God through its condemning nature - and so Jesus’ first task was to cast out this spirit of separation.  I don't believe that the importance of this story lies within an argument over whether demons are personal entities or not, but rather lies in the significance that the "unclean spirit" of the Accuser's Domination System had invaded the hearts of the religious elite!  And it seems that - before Jesus - no one had confronted it directly from the pulpit!  Rather, the Synagogue had been either passively complicit with the System, or had actively supported it - and a look at history will tell you that the temple in Jerusalem did, in fact, actively support the Domination System of Rome in more ways than one!

Another passage where demons make an appearance - Matthew 12:23-28 - teaches us a valuable lesson about the spirit of Accusation: if someone is doing work which causes the structures of the Accuser to fall, we shouldn’t stand in their way, whether they are in league with the Accuser or not.  In this passage, the Pharisees accuse Jesus of casting out demons by the very power of Satan himself!  But Jesus points out the folly in their reason - if Satan's kingdom is destroying itself, why should we stand in its way?  Why not give Satan enough rope to hang himself with?  

This is a teaching that stands in opposition to the cultism of purity politics.  It is also a teaching of mimetic competition - the Pharisees want to be seen as the go-to for demon expulsion, and they can’t stand to see someone who doesn’t agree with them 100% on everything doing this work.  But Jesus is pointing out that this competitive spirit of theirs is self-harming - they are binding their own two feet together by insisting on this kind of ideological purism.  

Note also that the version of this teaching which appears in Mark 3:23 identifies it as a parable.  Looking at the teaching as a parable opens us up to the possibility that there are more lessons to learn from it - it’s not just an argument Jesus employed when he faced an accusation.  If it is a parable, we are not to take the language of demons and Satan as a character too literally - they are, rather, symbolic of accusation and violence.  Jesus uses parables because those who are caught in the lies cannot see - their senses are defective (see Matt. 6:22-23 and Matt. 13:10-14).  Through parabolic language, Jesus is teaching us that we cannot defeat accusation with more accusation - we can’t fight fire with fire.  In this light, it becomes a teaching of non-violence.  If we resort to violence in order to cast out violence, we end up harming ourselves - we become a house divided against itself.  The kingdom of God has no room for violence, division, expulsion, and accusation.  But because the kingdom of Satan is established through these tools, they act as an infection through which the kingdom tears itself apart in the end.  The irony of those Christians who believe in an eternal Hell is that they often take on the role of Accuser - they take on the mantle of expulsion and accusation, and then they try to make a place within the kingdom of God for their own private Hell.  They fight Hell with more Hell.  But the kingdom of God is an end to all expulsion and accusation, and so there is no room in this kingdom for Hell.  The kingdom of God is a release of all forms of Hell - it is an end to satanic mimesis and scapegoating.

The teaching from Matthew 12:23-28 pairs well with another story - when Jesus' disciples complain of others casting out demons who are not followers of Jesus in Luke 9:49-50, he responds: "Do not hinder him; for he who is not against you is for you."  This provides a valuable lesson on pluralism - if we see another religion that is truly helping people, is it really productive to call that religion evil?  (This might be a good place for me to promote my post entitled "Christianity and Meditation: Enemies or Long Lost Love?")

If you're still not convinced that there's a possibility that "Satan" and "demons" are symbols of a reality - rather than personal entities whom are invisible and supernatural - you might want to check Matthew 17:14-23.  In some translations, we are told that this boy is an epileptic, and in others a lunatic.  But the passage goes right on ahead and declares that Jesus cast a demon out of this boy.  Does Jesus believe that this is a personal entity?  Or is he accommodating the beliefs of the people around him in order to get to the heart of the matter and deal with it?  Interestingly enough, the very word "epilepsy" comes from the Greek word epilambanein - which means "to seize" - and alluded to the belief that epileptics had been seized by a demon.  And I doubt you'll find a high percentage of people who blame every epileptic episode as a possession from a personal entity.

I think that what we can learn from Matthew 17 passage is that Jesus’ goal was not to correct people’s scientific views, but to deal with spirituality.  Jesus never told the people in this story "um, guys, that's not a demon - it's a central nervous system disorder" (can you imagine the conversation that would follow from that one?).  He also never told his audience: "guess what, the earth isn’t flat!"  He never prophesied that one day, a man would come who would reveal that the earth revolves around the sun.  He didn't predict Quantum Mechanics, either.  These were not Jesus' priorities - Jesus' goal was to speak to the heart!

And interestingly enough, the very word "demon" has some fascinating psychological roots.  The Greeks had a concept where the human being was split into a duality of "eidolon" and "daimön".  The eidolon was the lower self, often expressed through our carnal desires.  And the daimön (which means divinity, or god) was the higher self - the inner spirit of a person which was transcendent.  Often, a person's higher self could guide them through transcendent knowledge (maybe speaking through dreams or visions) and could be a source of inspiration.  The Romans picked up this concept, and daimön was changed to daemon.  The Latin equivalent spoke of a person's genius (from which the English word genie comes, and which was derived from the Arabic jinn).  But Christianity - in competition with these "pagan" worldviews - often sought to...uh...well, to demonize them, and so daemon became demon.  When you understand the nature of the Accuser, this evolution becomes quite ironic.

The Enemy is Fear

In an earlier section of this series, I told a little bit of the story of my own wilderness journey.  I mentioned realizing that I had been infected with the disease of tribal-thinking.  But if we truly examine this disease, I believe we will find that its root is fear.  Fear is the source of the voices of Accusation. 

Jesus said (in John 8:44) that Satan is "a liar and the father of lies."  And fear prevents us from thinking rationally.  It keeps us from even examining the evidence.  I recall an incident where I was speaking to a very good friend of mine, and I had asked him what he was reading at the time.  After answering, he had asked me the same question.  I told him I was reading a book that presented two perspectives on the historical debate over Jesus.  What happened afterwards amazed me - this man I had been friends with for over a decade became upset very quickly, and his voice raised to "outside" levels.  He asked me "why are you reading that crap?"  He said that Satan was trying to deceive me, and that he was trying to use me for evil.  And all because I was reading a book!  A book that presented multiple perspectives, no less!  This shows you how much trust my friend put in my own ability to perceive and discern truth.  And it betrays a deep fear in my good friend (I still consider him that, despite the pain this incident caused me).  He is afraid to listen to perspectives that are not his own.  And I believe that until he overcomes this fear, he will become more and more confused about the nature of reality.  Fear is a liar, and the father of lies.

I John 4:18 has become a personal mantra for me.  I try to remember it as often as I can.  It says:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

What's interesting about this verse is that it uses the very same language that is used for exorcism - perfect love casts out fear.  Could this verse be subtly implying that demons are merely our inner psychological realities?

Scientific studies have shown that guilt, shame, and fear have negative effects on brain development.  Studies of the brain have identified a place called the the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) as the location of reasoning, logic, strategy and planning.  Brain studies have also identified sections called the orbital frontal cortex (OFC) and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) as the location where feelings of guilt and awareness of socially inacceptable behavior reside.  In "The God-Shaped Brain: How Changing Your View of God Transforms Your Life", Dr. Timothy Jennings writes about this, and notes how "[i]nterestingly, brain research has shown that when the VMPFC or conscience is active, the DLPFC or reason is less active, and vice versa." 

But perhaps more interesting is the interplay between these sections of the brain and another section which has been identified as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), where feelings of empathy, compassion, and love reside and which has also been identified as the place where we make moral decisions between right and wrong.  Studies have shown that the more we use our ACC, the stronger our DLPFC (the center of reason) is.  These studies have also shown that the fear centers of the brain shrink the more we use our ACC.  Dr. Jennings writes:

Brain-imaging studies have demonstrated that the more time a person spends in communion with the God of love, the more developed the ACC becomes. Not only that, the person experiences decreases in stress hormones, blood pressure, heart rate and risk of untimely death. Even in our mortal and defective bodies, love is healing. Conversely, the more time spent contemplating an angry, wrathful, fear-inducing deity, the more damage to the brain and the more rapidly one’s health declines, leading to early death.

Another article backs up Jennings' point when it states:

Once the fear pathways are ramped up, the brain short-circuits more rational processing paths and reacts immediately to signals from the amygdala. When in this overactive state, the brain perceives events as negative and remembers them that way.

I want to be very careful about how I communicate at this point.  I have implied that "Satan" and "demons" are symbols, and psychological realities.  But I want to be very careful to communicate that I am not saying that the experiences are not real.  A further example may illustrate what I mean - in the Will Smith movie, “After Earth”, his character has a quote that I found to be absolutely brilliant:

Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me danger is very real but fear is a choice.

The experience of fear is very real - even if the imagination of our fears is not - and it matters not whether we attribute this experience to an outer or inner cause.  The real problem we must deal with is: how do we handle and/or prevent this phenomenon?

Fear has a way of making horrible imaginings seem very real.  I recall a number of scary movies that planted a fear in my heart that seemed very real at the time - and were difficult to overcome.  When I was away from the church - an agnostic leaning towards atheism at the time - I watched "The Exorcism of Emily Rose".  There is a theme in the movie of manifestations of the demonic occurring at 3am, because this is supposed to be the witching hour - the inverse of the time of day when Jesus was supposed to have died.  And though I was an agnostic leaning towards atheism at the time, for months afterwards I would wake up near 3am, too scared to look around the room or get up to walk around.  Waking up at this time of night had not been a habit before, but I developed it after watching the movie, and it took a good deal of time for me to overcome this fear.  Another movie that comes to mind is "The Fourth Kind" - with Mila Jovovitch - which is an alien abduction story.  The story of this movie is supposedly based on real events, and the movie cleverly weaves footage from these events into the film - giving it a feeling of realism.  I have always been a skeptic of alien abductions, but after watching this movie I dealt with a terror regarding alien abductions that I had never struggled with before.  Again, it took me quite a while to overcome this, and in the end I had to research the facts in order to reveal the lack of evidence for alien abduction, as well as discover the alternative explanations before I could cast aside my new fears.

The most common command in the Bible has nothing to do with money, or politics, or purity, or sex, or religion.  The most common command in the Bible is: "do not fear."  It appears every time God or a messenger (angel) of God appears to man, revealing not only that the divine comes not to cause fear but to dispel it, but also revealing that often our fears disguise the divine and prevent us from seeing the sacred!  "Do not be afraid" - this should be the mantra of every Christian, and should be taught as often as possible from the pulpit, because as long as we fear we cannot experience the sacred.  The mission of the Christian - and the mission of the Church - should be to eradicate fear.  And I John 4:18 reveals that it is perfect love - unconditional acceptance of "the other", who is made in the image of God just as we are - that casts out the demon of fear.

It's time for another break.  In my next post, we will continue to explore the implications of the Biblical principles on exorcism.
 
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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?