Dealing with Demons (a progressive take)

@BoSanders Hi Bo! Thank you for your response. I will respond quite shortly. I did refer to the Bible several times, both when it came to personal prophecy and driving out demons. I referred to the Spirit guiding the apostles in Acts, how Jesus only did what the Father told Him to do, how the possessed man in Mark 5 had exceptional strenghth and how demon possessed several times knew more than they could have known. Please reflect upon where you got the thesis you argue for about. Then reflect upon how you can know that it is true. How do you know that it is not tenable to interpret the Bible's description of demons as intelligent beings as if these beings do exist outside our psyche? It is quite striking that you seem to not have a problem with sharing belief with an atheist and dissharing it with those who wrote the Bible. As it is, you simply say that it is "wooden" to have another view on demons than atheists. I agree to some extent that the word supernatural causes an unnecessary division between what's natural and what's not. I think you participate to that division since you are stating above that demons are nothing more than shadows in the psyche? What hinders them to be intelligent spiritual beings as the Bible describes them? Well, what hinders you to believe that is a division between natural and supernatural. They can't be anything "above" shadows in the psyche, according to that division. Having said that, I wrote before that supernatural is a word frequently used in historical theology (like "trinity" or "Pentecostal") that describes a Biblical truth, namely the existing division between the spiritual and creation. Everything we cannot do according to our own nature, is super-natural. This includes both being born again as well as raising the dead. The Bible uses the word spiritual in this meaning, why I don't mind using the synonym supernatural. Finally, it seems like you misqouted me concerning the Kingdom through cutting my reasoning in half. My point is that it breaks through by the power of the Spirit, but it is not complete yet. If the Kingdom would have taken over everything completely, there would be no sick, no death and no demons. This will happen when Jesus (the King) returns, but currently, the Kingdom is here but not completed. It is already but not yet. John Wimber expressed this better than me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqxGVCH9qH4 God bless you! Micael

 @BoSanders  @Micael Grenholm I think you are amazing Bo!  And your argument is really an important conversation for all of us to be engaged in.  I just think we're giving too much away when we deny the existence of Satan or demons.  On the other hand, there is way too much attributed to this realm that lends itself to superstition and isn't helpful.  I hope on some of these topics we can agree to disagree. Keep challenging us!!!  And thanks for being gentle!!!

 @BoSanders Cool. Thanks for clarifying the scope of what you wrote. I agree that societal evil escalates exponentially. Take any protest movement with peaceful intentions, add enough people, and BOOM!

I guess I'm wondering whether (from a progressive perspective) evil is understood as an ontological reality or a more relational phenomenon resulting from broken humanity (or something else).

I second @pluralform 's idea: "I would like to hear your thoughts on evil, and would especially like to learn what process says about it and how it differs from the idea of evil as privation. Maybe a future TNT epi?"

 @Len MacRae  @pluralform Absolutely true but insufficient and not necessary.  Again, its easy to blame too much on a "scapegoat"  (the devil made me do it), instead of taking responsibility for our actions and behavior.  But it leaves too many questions unanswered. 

@Len MacRae Gotcha, and I get that. I gues I'm just unclear, when it comes to the issue of theodicy, what distinguishes process thought from privatio boni. I mean saying evil is not real or an absence of good and saying evil is really a "open door" or "broken window" sounds like it could be the same thing, semantics. I'm just confused :-/

 @BoSanders On the off chance I'm the "westerner who has never cast out a demon" you refer to, let me just say "gosh, I need to flesh out my communication". I don't think I ever said anything about the literal resurrection of Jesus. Just the literal, and obviously temporary, resurrection of a person.

But let me add a few things that might be useful to the discussion. Yes, I'm a westerner, but that doesn't mean my life experiences are strictly "western". My life experiences have included a variety of forays into what might be called the occult by some, shamanism (in the Native American sense) by others, or pagan. My experiences have also included altered states resulting from mind altering substances and what some might call trance-states induced by a variety of means. I've had friends sickened and nearly killed by "curses" inflicted by practitioners of the dark arts (who were also friends).

I spent quite a lot of time in churches of the Pentecostal and/or charismatic persuasion, and there experienced a great deal of so-called signs and wonders. These included prophecy, words of knowledge, healing, ecstatic utterances, being "slain in the spirit", deliverance and, deeper down the rabbit hole, all kinds of nasty, vile and abusive things I won't spell out. I had first-hand encounters with so-called "possessed" or "demonized" individuals and participated in multiple "deliverance's" or "exorcisms".

I lived with a woman (I called her Grandma) for several years who was a highly educated intellectual, a theologian, a word-faith-er, an exorcist and (for lack of a better term) a "ghost whisperer". I experienced things during this time that I don't even talk about because to do so immediately brands me a lunatic in most peoples eyes.

In short, I've gazed into the abyss and I can assure you it didn't just gaze back.

Now, having established my credentials in the world of the weird and wacky, I will tell you that I have, somehow, in spite of all my experiences, come to the point of questioning not only the "reality" of all my past experiences but even the "reality" of anything commonly called "supernatural" up to and even including god.

So this is the perspective I'm coming to you from in my questions. I'm now in my late 40's, widely read, university educated in the sciences and an armchair theologian. My past "spiritual" experiences, whether christian or other, are so widely varied and confusing that I find myself completely adrift. My studies in philosophy and theology seem to be leading me, almost inexorably, in the direction of something like process thought as one of the only systems that might actually be able to "land and stick" in the fractured wilderness that is my mind. Complete Atheism and Scientism seem to be the only other tenable option, but even though I find in them a comforting oasis from spiritual confusion, my experiences don't allow me to fully abandon the possibility that there is more going on then meets the eye.

So when I use Africa as an illustration, I use it as a stand-in for the above paragraphs and so much more that I have not bored you with. When I ask if process allows for a resurrection, what I'm really asking for is permission to close my eyes with a modicum of hope that maybe, just maybe, life had an ounce of meaning and death might be more than a whimpering cessation of the idiotic and insignificant tale.

By the way, I love you guys and what you're doing. It's on of the few expressions of xtianity that doesn't make me want to throw up.

 @BoSanders Hi Bo, I think this whole questions about how different cultural narratives interpret reality differently needs a bit more unpacking. I definitely agree with the basic idea, but what exactly is the significance as we talk about demonology? An African Christian casting out a demon may well have a different kind of cultural narrative, or way of interpreting their experience, than we do in the U.S. But does that really mean we can't examine the phenomena at all, or incorporate that into a broader worldview? Add to that the fact that many of these 'demonic looking' manifestations don't just happen in cultures overseas, they occur in churches here in our own society. 

I can see where you would say, "we don't necessarily interpret this experience in the same way that they do", and that makes sense. Not 100% sure I agree with your entire position, but it makes sense. But I wonder--when we talk about different cultural narratives there seems to be an underlying assumption that the western scientific progressive view of reality is inherently more developed, closer to "the way things really are" than other worldviews today (both overseas and in our country). This may be true, but I'd like to hold that a little more loosely. While you may want to say that "What they have been taught to call a demon is a personification with anthropomorphic characteristics," they may conversely want to say that what we call psychic shadows is a western rational-ization of personified spiritual forces.

It seems to me that in both cases we can still do a lot of healing, caring, and praying for restoration in Jesus' name. But I'm really interested in this idea of how our worldview 'creates' our reality, and what we actually mean when we say that. I'd also like that to be a mutual dialogue with other peoples and traditions.

 @BoSanders Thanks, Bo. Let me push back a little here (but please remember that I'm arguing a case, not against you personally):

OK, so Jung's example isn't germane to your position, but it is to mine! I was referencing his life as an example of the problems with psychological reductionism.

I'm going to raise a rather serious subject here ... so I don't want to be flippant. I'm absolutely with you that the vast majority of cases of that many of the cases labelled 'demonic' in certain circles should be approached psychologically. In our normal state of consciousness, we don't tend to interact directly with the 'spiritual' realm, not least because evolution has equipped us with mental circuitry that largely filters out that kind of experience (which is a darn good thing in our daily routine).

Where I'm not at all convinced, however, is when it comes to dismissing the often troubling reports of the demonic by people who have been through an ALTERED state of consciousness. And the phenomenology I'm talking about isn't restricted to Africa, so I don't think it can be explained away as generated by a 'different narrative'. Which is where Jung comes in  ...

If you've taken a peek at the transcript of Jung's Red Book (1,300 pages of 'channeled'/automatic writing and 'active imagination') or Seven Sermons to the Dead', it is really difficult to see the source of the truly bizarre and terrifying visions in the knowledge as unrelated to the fact that Jung deliberately cultivated occult techniques to get his exploration going. At the level of phenomena, it is simply too similar to so many other instances of 'spiritual encounter' found in social groups employing consciousness-altering techniques (psychoactive substances, trance states, etc.). Jung's 'scientific' theorizing that he had burrowed down to the level of the archetypes of the collective unconscious isn't convincing, and the evidence is that he didn't really find it so himself.  The alternative explanation, that Jung was part of an occult gnostic revival among European intellectuals (e.g. Madame Blavatsky, Aleister Crowley) and reaped the consequences of a serious occult flirtation, is one that seems to me both historically justified and ... well, rather sobering.

A while back one of my research projects (which you can read at www.sdgmusic.org/bannister in a lengthy series of posts entitled 'Spirituality in and out of focus') was to take a close look at the resurgence of occultism in the 1960s counter-culture in the context of the use of psychedelics and the music of The Doors, Grateful Dead et al. After really examining the source material as closely as possible I simply cannot conclude that serious Crowleyites such Tim Leary, film-maker Kenneth Anger or Jimmy Page were simply play-acting and that nothing was 'going on'. I really think it would be irresponsible of me to say that.

Dabbling in the occult is truly dangerous for reasons that reductionism cannot in my opinion explain. As rock journalist Steve Turner put it in his classic book 'Hungry for Heaven', those who mess with the Devil end up getting messed BY the Devil.

It would be really interesting to get Barry Taylor's take on all this as he was a soundman on the AC/DC 'Highway to Hell' tour!!

Shalom,

Peter B.

 @BoSanders  @Da stand das Meer .  How would Jesus have approached and dealt with the Gadarene demoniac in Luke 8:26-39 had he come in the 21st century (the postmodern) world.  Would Jesus have spoke to him differently?  Maybe instead of casting out the "legion" he would have diagnosed him as schizophrenic and prescribed him a cocktail of psychotropic medications?  Or would he have instantly healed him of a genetic brain disorder?  Did he approach the problem by accommodating the "primitive thinking" of people, exorcising demons instead of treating it as psychopathology?  Is the argument really just an argument from Scripture or are we also being influenced by bad experiences we've had in pentecostal/charismatic/fundamentalist churches?  Or unbalanced teaching that doesn't allow for both Walter Wink and Peter Wagner?  As you stated Bo, I'm gonna "hold my ground here".  I understand the  your point that we can't "solely" use the phenomenological evidence from other cultures but we can consider it?  And does my belief in a metaphysical/spiritual realm classify me as "anti-intellectual" (nobody believes in that stuff anymore).  I would be having the "opposite" conversation with my charismatic friends (lol).  I love the dynamic tension that allows me to integrate science with faith, recognizing that there is room for both.  I love the discussion and I think you guys rock!!!!