Demons

“Respectable” churches don’t believe in demon possession; it’s not so much that the members are too smart, or would be embarrassed if anyone knew. It’s not that we can write it off to some kind of psychiatric problem. Those are factors no doubt. But the biggest reason we don’t believe in demon possession is because we don’t see it. And we don’t see it because anyone with a demon and sense enough to get some help from Jesus’ people is not going to show up at a church that doesn’t believe in it. I know, chicken or the egg.

Or maybe respectable churches do see cases of demon possession, but don’t know how to call it that. Or don’t recognize anything at all.

I guess respectable churches have a lot to answer for: so many people who need real help can’t get it because we don’t confront sin, we don’t ask for repentance, we just let people drift, and then we don’t recognize the spiritual oppression people face. We listen to the sinners and cater to them. Where they need the strong medicine of Holy Spirit conviction and repentance, we want to make sure they feel welcome.

This is all coming out due to a conversation I had a few days ago. “Sue” was talking about “Dan,” who had come to church drunk and mean and scared. Drunk and mean was about all you’d see, but Sue, herself one who battled the bottle and the needle, pointed out Dan is scared. Scared as Hell, scared of Hell. And I find something he said pretty telling. I came into church with a bag of ice. He said, “You have what every soul in Hell wants.” Ice. Yes, but more: ice and Jesus.

Sue let me know part of what I already knew, that Dan is dying, and is thinking of some of the guys around us who have died lately from wearing their bodies out with alcohol, drugs, homelessness and despair. She said he told her he sees demons everywhere, feels them clawing at him, dragging him off.

Now, it’s easy enough to say, “well of course he does. He’s drunk all the time. No telling what he sees.” And that is true, literally true.

And yet here’s what else is true: Sue told me of the time she was just sobering up, getting back to church, cleaning things up. There’s no harder place to do that, she said, than along North Limestone. Every time she went anywhere, especially on her way to the church, “the demons were everywhere. Every crackhead came out of the woodwork, and it took all I had to keep going where I was going and not get dragged back into that life.”

So while he may have a desire to stop drinking--and how many times have I been in his house pouring out liquor, wrestling with him, and he has knuckled under?—there’s plenty of folks who don’t want him to stop, who want to sell him some, who want him to buy them some.

And if the demons are so brazen, so out in plain sight, and God’s people cannot recognize spiritual oppression, then it is not so hard to imagine that indeed, the closer Dan gets to death, the more he feels the tug of the grave, and the more there are demons who cannot wait to devour him for eternity.