Demons

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              


Reading the book of Mark, we were talking about a time Jesus made a demon leave a possessed man.

Someone asked," What do you imagine we would call demons these days ?"

I immediately, forcefully, said, "Demons."

The question seemed to presuppose that what people in Jesus' time thought were evil spirits were actually what we now know are pyschological phenomema of some kind.

That idea is not completely off-base.  Scientific research has found out a great deal more than was known 2000 years ago about such things as mental illness, personality disorders, and abberant pychological states.

All of those are real phenomena; oftentimes, they are kinds of harm that human beings do to themselves.  The Bible is about reality, and about how God saves men even (especially) from themselves: so it doesn't seem at all "Biblical" to claim that pyschological and mental disease don't exist.  They absolutely do.

And because there are so many kinds of pyschological and mental harm human beings can do themselves (and each other), the most critical skill in diagnosis is distinguishing one from another.  That's where we come back to Jesus.

When Jesus cast out demons or taught about demons, He treated them as non-corporeal beings under satan's spiritual command, who afflicted, and even inhabited, human beings.  Believing in Jesus means believing Jesus knew what He was talking about...especially when He was talking about spiritual realities.

I have no doubt He also knew everything about mental and psychological disease that scientific researchers have learned in the last 2000 years, or ever will learn.  When He diagnosed people as having a demon problem, it wasn't because He mistook their symptoms for some other kind of mental and psychological problem.

Jesus' diagnosis was infallible.  Diagnosis is always a bit iffier for us.  That's why I think one of the charismata God gave Christians is "distinguishing of spirits" (I Corinthians 12:10).  The Spirit of God is the only One able to diagnosis demons as infallibly as Jesus.

Failure to seek the Spirit throws us into one of two errors.  One is that there's no such things as demons, and man has (only) psychological and mental disorders.  The other, that all of man's non-physical disorders are caused by demons.  Either un-Spiritual attitude blinds us to reality.