Ever since I was a kid I have, until fairly recently, believed in or at least taken for granted the existence of evil spirits, demons, whatever you want to call it. I’ve been as influenced as anyone by many of the big horror films of my day - The Exorcist, Poltergeist, The Entity to name a few. I’ve always been kind of fearful that way, being the type that lives too much out of his emotions, rationally or not. The scriptures which I took at face value at the time also tell stories involving the demonic, which was likely of chief influence on my beliefs.
At times I would be afraid of the dark, to be in a basement alone etc. I used to sleep with the light on. Things were so bad as a kid that my poor mom had to stay in my room until I fell asleep many nights. I got to thinking of these things today as my kids have been displaying the same, and I’m sure common anxiety about going to the basement alone.
I eventually came to realize, which I’m sure most would have far, far sooner that nothing ever happened. I was never possessed by the devil, nothing ever flew around the room, nothing came out of my closet and Sasquatch never showed. Being by definition more an agnostic theist of late than anything else, and no I neither need nor want a label, if such a thing as a demon was ever to make it’s presence known, it would be doing me a favor in as much as this…my faith in God and the scriptures would be instantly and irrevocably as solid as a urinal cake in a North Pole men’s room.
Charismatic tradition gives a lot of airtime to spiritual warfare and the devil. I once actually sat through what I’ll loosely term as a sermon where the “pastor” spoke of a tree in a certain location in India where a winged demon lived. If one was unfortunate enough to fall under the shadow of this alleged harpy when it took flight, woe betide. Only problem with this anecdote is that according to the laws of physics which govern this little fishbowl we live in, the same laws that make it possible for a man to get up on a stage and tell ridiculous stories, it takes physical matter to block light which if memory serves rules out spirits of any kind by definition.
To my mind, if there were a devil in an unseen background plotting my destruction, there would be some kind of evidence, a smoking gun to show for it; something that goes beyond what is common to everyday life.What purpose the authors of the bible could have had in recording stories about the devil is beyond me to know; could it have been to control by fear, an instrument for conformity? Hell…I don’t know.
At times I would be afraid of the dark, to be in a basement alone etc. I used to sleep with the light on. Things were so bad as a kid that my poor mom had to stay in my room until I fell asleep many nights. I got to thinking of these things today as my kids have been displaying the same, and I’m sure common anxiety about going to the basement alone.
I eventually came to realize, which I’m sure most would have far, far sooner that nothing ever happened. I was never possessed by the devil, nothing ever flew around the room, nothing came out of my closet and Sasquatch never showed. Being by definition more an agnostic theist of late than anything else, and no I neither need nor want a label, if such a thing as a demon was ever to make it’s presence known, it would be doing me a favor in as much as this…my faith in God and the scriptures would be instantly and irrevocably as solid as a urinal cake in a North Pole men’s room.
Charismatic tradition gives a lot of airtime to spiritual warfare and the devil. I once actually sat through what I’ll loosely term as a sermon where the “pastor” spoke of a tree in a certain location in India where a winged demon lived. If one was unfortunate enough to fall under the shadow of this alleged harpy when it took flight, woe betide. Only problem with this anecdote is that according to the laws of physics which govern this little fishbowl we live in, the same laws that make it possible for a man to get up on a stage and tell ridiculous stories, it takes physical matter to block light which if memory serves rules out spirits of any kind by definition.
To my mind, if there were a devil in an unseen background plotting my destruction, there would be some kind of evidence, a smoking gun to show for it; something that goes beyond what is common to everyday life.What purpose the authors of the bible could have had in recording stories about the devil is beyond me to know; could it have been to control by fear, an instrument for conformity? Hell…I don’t know.
2 comments:
Try reading "And the Word came with power". from Wycliffe publishers. I think demons are much more "visible" in animistic cultures. More sneaky in ours I think.
These people have the same senses and ablitly to reason as you, me and everyone else who isn't suffering from a physical or mental handicap in the West. Culturally and religiously different,yes, which plays a major role in how life's daily events are interpreted.
Westerners have been watching, living, takling with these cultures for many years; there are very few, not none, but few cultures that the white man hasn't touched and studied over the years.
Animistic cultures beleive in the paranormal, white men once believed the earth was flat, many Christian, with I'm sure the same conviction. Culture vs. fact.
We don't even have a faked plaster cast to show for existance of the devil. For anything to be visible in our world it must have mass, it must have a physical state which light can reflect off of to be picked up by our eyes. As I implied in my post, spirits are not physical, cannot block or reflect light, ergo cannot be visible.
A beleif in an actual devil I think does harm, doesn't have any redeeming characteristics although I don't disrespect folks who do beleive...whatever blows your hair back.
If demons are "...more sneaky in our[culture]...", than they are so subltle and without substance as to warrant no consideration imho.
Alas, we have no more evidence than that for Sasqautch, the Jersey Devil, Chupacabra, Nessie, Ogopogo, ghosts, Teleknesis, Psychics, and the gambit of paranormal oddities folks beleive.
I love em' all though, and hosestly, I think the world would be a more interesting place if some of these things were true.
It was once one of my dreams to join a bigfoot expedition in the Pacific Northwest...ok too much info..
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