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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Driving Satan From Heaven
In Luke 10:18, Jesus says that he watched Satan "fall from Heaven like lightning." With all we've learned so far, is it possible that Jesus is talking symbolically? Is it possible that the message to the Christian is that we must unveil the true issues we are dealing with - unmasking our fears and driving them from the throne of Heaven where they rule over us?
When we examine our fears, they lose their invisibility and are exposed, so that they are no longer able coerce us subconsciously. And so, exorcism becomes an act of unmasking the powers, and revealing them to be powerless after all. A collective exorcism - unveiling the powers over society, and revealing their true nature - would involve freeing a group of people from the unconscious possession of a system of unjust values.
In "Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence", Walter Wink writes:
Satan has become the world's corporate personality, the symbolic repository of the entire complex of evil existing in the present order.Within this perspective, Satan becomes a way of describing the collective shadow nature of all living things - all our fears, darkness, anger, resentment, and unresolved feelings are bound up and placed into this symbol.
Could it be that the Wizard of Oz is merely a man behind the curtain? Could it be that the "father of lies" (John 8:44) is himself a lie? That the darkness we struggle against is not a thing, but rather an absence? Just as darkness is not a thing, but an absence of light - could it be possible that Satan is not a being, but the absence of the presence of the Being?
Karl Barth wrote a collection of works on Church Dogmatics, and in the 3rd volume he wrote:
That which God renounces and abandons in virtue of his decision [i.e., to freely elect what he will] is not merely nothing. It is nothingness. . . . Nothingness is that which God does not will. It lives only by the fact that it is that which God does not will. But it does live by this fact. For not only what God wills, but what he does not will, is potent, and must have a real correspondence. What really corresponds to that which God does not will is nothingness.
Could it be that the devil spoken of in James 4:7 is merely our irrational fleshly desires and weaknesses, and that by merely unmasking them and resisting them through unconditional love, they will flee? When we face our desires and recognize them for their irrationality, it exposes their weakness - it is when we try to hide from them that they end up pursuing us and consuming us, as we learned earlier in our exploration of repression.
“Demons” - which were never spoken of in the beginnings of Scripture - are the result of the “second fall”. The first fall was the fall of personal rebellion - and this fall preceded the existence of social institutions. The second fall was the fall of the angels of the nations - the fall of the inner spirituality of society. And the third fall was the fall of the nations themselves - the systems and structures that exist to protect us from anarchy and enable us to be more productive. Understanding this, we cannot blame evil solely on individuals (as many preachers end up doing), solely on the spiritual powers (as pentecostalism is fond of doing), or solely on institutions (as materialism does).
When we cast the Accuser out of the heavenly realms of supernatural power, Satan becomes "the symbol of the spirit of an entire society alienated from God, the great system of mutual support in evil, the spirit of persistent self-deification blown large, the image of unredeemed humanity's collective life." (From "Unmasking the Powers".)
Speaking of Satan as symbol scares some people. They say things like "you're saying it's just a symbol?" I hate it when people use the word "just" like that. Symbols are very powerful things! Symbols are not "just" anything. In her book "Christ in Evolution", Ilia Delio writes:
Louis Chauvet describes the meaning of symbol as follows:Often, when we fail to realize that a symbol represents reality, but instead treat the symbol as if it were the very reality itself, we fail to unmask the powers but actually support them thorugh the symbols themselves. I recall a story of Karl Barth - near the end of WWII, there was a discussion among German theologians about demons as an explanation for what had occurred within their nation, and Karl Barth suddenly burst out: “why all this talk about demons? Why not just admit we have been political idiots?”
If one construed it transitively, one would translate it, according to the context, as “gather together ,” “hold in common,” or “exchange.” The substantive symbole designates the joint at the elbow or knee and, more generally, the whole idea of conjunction, reunion, contract, or pact. The ancient symbolon is precisely an object cut in two, one part of which is retained by each partner in a contract. Each half evidently has no value in itself and thus could imaginatively signify anything; its symbolic power is due only to its connection with the other half. It (can thus be described) as an agreement between the two partners which establishes the symbol; it is the expression of a social pact based on mutual recognition and, hence, is a mediator of identity.
Some Words on Practical Exorcism
At this point, I want to pause and ask the question: what drives us to believe in demons? The answer is so simple, and the breadcrumbs have been running through this entire series, if you haven't noticed: we want something to blame.
But maybe personal pathology, distress, neurosis, etc., can be explained as being caused by being trapped within systems of oppressive authority? Or maybe they are hurts that haven’t been dealt with? The difficulty here lies in explaining how one person within this structure transcends and is healthy, while another struggles (and so we sometimes jump to developmental deficiencies to explain). But maybe we need to retain both views (the personal and systemic issues), and accept the tension this creates - maybe we need to learn to live within this tension. And we must also realize that each person lives within an entire network of relations, and the complexity of this is very hard to analyze. Our inner demons are like a thousand sewage pipes draining into the central main, and each feeds the other - causing a complex web where they perpetuate and build on each other.
Walter Wink struggled with the tensions of explaining this complex web of relationships, and wrote about three types of possession and their corresponding forms of exorcism:
- Outer possession (possession of the individual by something external to his self, such as a master/slave relationship) - the exorcism of which might involve revealing to the entity doing the possession that they are damaging themselves, so that they will release the one being possessed.
- Collective possession (possession of groups or even nations by corporate structures of behavior) - the exorcism of which could be exemplified in the Civil Rights movement marching over Selma bridge, or Jesus’ cleansing of the temple (the accounts of the latter even use the word ekballo (exorcism) to describe how Jesus drove out the money-changers).
- Internal possession (struggle with repressed hurts - with the repression only causing the emotions to become worse) - the exorcism of which could involve an unveiling of the personal habits which are causing damage, and a resulting release from these habits. But more importantly, the individual struggling with this form of possession must be embraced in unconditional love in order to free them from the fear which prevents them from releasing their harmful habits which they have used for so long as a coping mechanism.
Exorcisms and the Placebo Effect
The fact that I speak of exorcism as being a release from issues in the "real world" might bother some - “exorcism works!”, they cry. Well, so, sometimes, did leeching, worm secretions, mummy powder, and a whole host of other placebos! I’ll let Dan Ariely explain this one (taken from “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”):
Placebo comes from the Latin for “I shall please.” The term was used in the fourteenth century to refer to sham mourners who were hired to wail and sob for the deceased at funerals. By 1785 it appeared in the New Medical Dictionary, attached to marginal practices of medicine.Before we put too much faith into exorcisms, we might want to spend a bit of time studying psychology!
One of the earliest recorded examples of the placebo effect in medical literature dates from 1794. An Italian physician named Gerbi made an odd discovery: when he rubbed the secretions of a certain type of worm on an aching tooth, the pain went away for a year. Gerbi went on to treat hundreds of patients with the worm secretions, keeping meticulous records of their reactions. Of his patients, 68 percent reported that their pain, too, went away for a year. We don’t know the full story of Gerbi and his worm secretions, but we have a pretty good idea that the secretions really had nothing to do with curing toothaches. The point is that Gerbi believed they helped— and so did a majority of his patients.
Of course, Gerbi’s worm secretion wasn’t the only placebo in the market. Before recent times, almost all medicines were placebos. Eye of the toad, wing of the bat, dried fox lungs, mercury, mineral water, cocaine, an electric current: these were all touted as suitable cures for various ailments. When Lincoln lay dying across the street from Ford’s Theater, it is said that his physician applied a bit of “mummy paint” to the wounds. Egyptian mummy, ground to a powder, was believed to be a remedy for epilepsy, abscesses, rashes, fractures, paralysis, migraine, ulcers, and many other things. As late as 1908, “genuine Egyptian mummy ” could be ordered through the E. Merck catalog— and it’s probably still in use somewhere today.
Mummy powder wasn’t the most macabre of medicines, though. One seventeenth-century recipe for a “cure all” medication advised: “Take the fresh corpse of a red-haired, uninjured, unblemished man, 24 years old and killed no more than one day before, preferably by hanging, breaking on the wheel or impaling. . . . Leave it one day and one night in the light of the sun and the moon, then cut into shreds or rough strips. Sprinkle on a little powder of myrrh and aloes, to prevent it from being too bitter.”
When someone claims to remember supernatural events, I wouldn't suggest that they were lying. However, I think that before we affirm these memories, we should know a little more about false memory syndrome / memory implantation. There have been numerous studies where psychologists have successfully implanted memories in people's heads - and they've implanted the same memory into a number of patients merely by asking leading questions. We are actually able to build memories by filling in the blank areas when leading questions are asked, and often it is difficult to impossible to distinguish between these built memories and real ones! And certain types of people are more susceptible to this than others - usually those who are seeking to displace some hurt or blame onto an outside source are particularly vulnerable. So one must ask - is it possible that exorcists like Bob Larson are preying on the vulnerable? (The last link provided goes to an excerpt from an episode of "Is It Real?", which I would highly recommend watching, if you have the means.)
In an article on Psychology Today, Dr. Stephen Diamond wrote:
Someone in the midst of an acute psychotic episode, for example, is confused, disoriented and hypersuggestible. They desperately seek some meaning to hang on to. Unless we can offer a more or at least equally satisfying explanation of the patient's disturbing experience, it is, as clinicians well know from working with delusional patients, exceedingly difficult if not impossible to rationally dissuade someone of his or her fervent conviction that they are victims of demonic possession. Sometimes the best approach can be to go with where they are and use the patient's belief system to the treatment's advantage.Likewise, in "Understanding Spiritual Warfare: Four Views", Michael Hardin writes:
Jean-Michel Oughourlian, associate professor of psychology at the Sorbonne, has examined the phenomenon of possession in light of Girard’s mimetic theory and concludes that possession is a phenomenon of a person whose desires are an imitation of the social group around them. The multiplicity of these, often conflicting, imitated desires is manifested as a form of hysteria. That is, the possessed is in the thrall of an alien Other(s); this Other(s) is not supernatural but psychosocial.So you might say "what's the harm in believing in exorcism, then?" The harm is in the fact that people like Larson strip people of millions of dollars, and the effects of their exorcisms are only temporary. The false fears remain within these victims and come back to haunt them later.
Some Case Studies
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| The Stanford Prison experiment |
In "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil", Zimbardo recounts in detail the events of his experiment, and offers some fascinating conclusions:
The negative power on which I had been running for the past week, as superintendent of this mock prison, had blinded me to the reality of the destructive impact of the System that I was sustaining. Moreover, the myopic focus of a principal research investigator similarly distorted my judgment about the need to terminate the experiment much earlier, perhaps as soon as the second normal, healthy participant suffered an emotional breakdown. While I was focused on the abstract conceptual issue, the power of the behavioral situation versus the power of individual dispositions, I had missed seeing the all-encompassing power of the System that I had helped create and sustain.
[...]
System Power involves authorization or institutionalized permission to behave in prescribed ways or to forbid and punish actions that are contrary to them. It provides the “higher authority” that gives validation to playing new roles, following new rules, and taking actions that would ordinarily be constrained by preexisting laws, norms, morals, and ethics. Such validation usually comes cloaked in the mantle of ideology. Ideology is a slogan or proposition that usually legitimizes whatever means are necessary to attain an ultimate goal. Ideology is the “Big Kahuna,” which is not challenged or even questioned because it is so apparently “right” for the majority in a particular time and place. Those in authority present the program as good and virtuous, as a highly valuable moral imperative.
The programs, policies, and standard operating procedures that are developed to support an ideology become an essential component of the System. The System’s procedures are considered reasonable and appropriate as the ideology comes to be accepted as sacred.
[...]
In just a few days and nights the virtual paradise that is Palo Alto, California, and Stanford University became a hellhole. Healthy young men developed pathological symptoms that reflected the extreme stress, frustration, and hopelessness they were experiencing as prisoners. Their counterparts, randomly assigned to the role of guards, repeatedly crossed the line from frivolously playing that role to seriously abusing “their prisoners.” In less than a week, our little “experiment,” our mock prison, receded into the background of our collective consciousness, to be replaced by a reality of prisoners, guards, and prison staff that seemed remarkably real to all. It was a prison run by psychologists rather than by the State.
- Please continue.
- The experiment requires that you continue.
- It is absolutely essential that you continue.
- You have no other choice, you must go on.
In the case where the "Learner" had expressed the existence of a heart condition, the actor playing this role had banged on the wall and complained about his heart condition. The "shocks" continued to be administrated. The "Learner" eventually ceased making all sound.
Milgram's results were frightening - 61-66 percent of each group would administrate the final shock, which was supposedly a fatal dose of 450 volts. All they had to do to stop the experiment was to speak of their discomfort four times - or merely stand up and leave.
Psychologists John Darley and Daniel Batson came up with another experiment in 1973 where they would give an assignment to seminarians to prepare a short talk on a Biblical passage, and then walk over to a nearby building to present it. Along the way to the building where the presentation would be held, each student would run into a man playing the part of a homeless beggar. Malcolm Gladwell describes the results in "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference":
The question was, who would stop and help? Darley and Batson introduced three variables into the experiment, to make its results more meaningful.There are so many other examples I could provide (a favorite of mine is the Monopoly Experiment). In each of these experiments, the subjects would respond surprisingly well to role assignments - being assigned a role seems to change people, rather than the other way around! We like to think that certain people are more ethical than others - but what if certain scenarios produce unethical people? What if, in order to exorcise our demons, we need to unveil the unethical authority structures and deal with them first?
First, they asked each seminarian on a questionnaire why they chose to study theology. Did they do it to find a means of personal and spiritual fulfillment? Or were they looking for a practical tool for finding meaning in everyday life? Then they varied the subject of the theme the students were asked to talk about. Some were asked to speak on the relevance of the professional clergy to the religious vocation. Others were given the parable of the Good Samaritan. Finally, the instructions given by the experimenters to each student varied as well. In some of the cases, as he sent the students on their way, the experimenter would look at his watch and say, “Oh, you’re late. They were expecting you a few minutes ago. We’d better get moving.” In other cases, he would say, “It will be a few minutes before they’re ready for you, but you might as well head over now.”
If you asked people to predict which seminarians played the Good Samaritan, their answers were highly consistent. They almost all say that the students who entered the ministry to help people and those reminded of the importance of compassion by having just read the parable of the Good Samaritan will be the most likely to stop. The truth is it did not significantly increase helping behavior. The only thing that really mattered was whether the student was in a rush. Of the group that was in a rush, 10 percent stopped to help. Of the group that had time to spare, 63 percent stopped.
And at some point, you may realize, as I did, that there is an element of balance when seeking an answer to the problems that these experiments reveal. There is an extreme of obeying authority without questioning which is very dangerous (and disturbingly prevalent today) - but there is also an extreme of taking things too far and questioning to the point of absurdity (the example of the recent anti-vaccine movement comes to mind).
Psychology unveils a wealth of demons - cognitive biases abound, and cause people to make very foolish decisions...repeatedly!
In addition, scientific explorations of the brain have revealed much about how diseases like Schizophrenia - which often causes patients to hear voices inside their head - works. It seems that in Schizophrenic patients, the corpus callosum - a bundle of nerve fibers that connect the left and right hemispheres of the brain - is abnormally small, which means that when messages are passed from one hemisphere of the brain to the other, the brain might not be able to understand where the message has come from, and thus it seems that it came from another being entirely.
In "The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind", Michio Kaku also describes an interesting phenomenon related to possession:
When Dr. Blanke analyzed a twenty-two-year-old woman who was suffering from intractable seizures, he found that, by stimulating the temporoparietal area of the brain, he could induce the sensation that there was a shadowy presence behind her. She could describe this person, who even grabbed her arms, in detail. His position would change with each appearance, but he would always appear behind her.So all I ask is: before you jump to the conclusion that a supernatural entity is present and at work, listen to those who have studied the mind! And look within! And pay attention to the social environments which may be contributing to psychological ailments as well!
And as long as we're talking psychology, you might want to note that psychological studies have shown that those who believe in pure evil tend to show more psychotic tendencies. Perhaps we ought to consider this particular fact in light of Jesus' teaching that we can know a false prophet "by their fruits"? (Mt. 7:15-16)
In "The Psychology of Demonization: Promoting Acceptance and Reducing Conflict", Nahi Alon and Haim Omer write:
The demonic view is a way of experiencing an evolving attitude that begins with doubt, thrives with suspicion, ends with certainty, and aims at decisive militant action. When it seeps into a relationship, a highly negative view of the other evolves, which in turn may lead to symmetrical counter accusations. Thus a vicious cycle arises in which both sides become more and more entrenched in their negative positions.Please take special note of how it ends with certainty. I can personally vouch for the fact that nothing makes a person more immune to reason than religious certainty.
It's time for another break. In the next section, we will examine Satan's connection to the Beast of Rome.
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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?
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