Evil And A Divided Kingdom
- bordenmscott
- Nov 3, 2021
- 7 min read
Hello reader! This week's Overflow includes a few reflections on kingdoms of good and evil, demon-possession, Bible interpretation, and a mid-week devotional opportunity if you.
Kingdoms and Evil
In Matthew 12 Jesus teaches about a world where there is the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan, and where people belong to one or the other. This is not a way I'm accustomed to seeing the world. I often think of the world as if it is somehow neutral territory, where God breaks in with good and evil rears its head at times. But this is not the picture Jesus paints of what is really going on. And Jesus called on people to pick their side. In Matthew 12:30, for example, He said "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters." There are those who are with Jesus and gather with him, and those who opposed Jesus and scatter. That's a lot more binary that I usually try to be, but I don't see what else Jesus might mean. Does that change the way I see other people?
If I were to go around referring to my non-Christian friends and acquaintances as "citizens of Satan's Kingdom" I imagine they would find that both creepy and insulting. And that's fair, they're just normal people. I'm the weird one who believes that there is a spiritual battle being waged, often invisibly, all around. But that what Jesus believed so far as I can see. As I put it in Sunday's message on Halloween:
... if we, as Christians, think that spirits and demons and evil are as make-believe as most Halloween festivities we have a problem. Jesus, and the New Testament generally, describe a world in the middle of a major spiritual conflict. These two kingdoms - God’s kingdom and Satan’s kingdom - are actively at work all around us. We have an enemy who is dangerously cunning and working to undo us - to move us away from God and toward bondage, brokenness, lifelessness, and hopelessness.
And, as Ephesians 6 reminds us, our enemy is not other people, but "the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
For someone like me who is scientifically-minded, this is not a comfortable perspective. But it's one that I need to develop if I want to take Jesus seriously and imitate Him. There is evil to battle, people caught in its grip to rescue, and a good Kingdom to advance. And isn't that more compelling than "you should go to church and try to be a good person"?
Taking evil more seriously means recognizing it at work, naming it, and not simply diagnosing material cures for a spiritual problem. There is often great value to therapy, medication, education, and material assistance for people who are struggling. But a lot of everyday evil has a spiritual root cause that also needs to be addressed for healing and wholeness to take place.
There's more on this from Sunday's message if you missed some or all of it. Catch it on video here, in audio/podcast format here, and the manuscript can be downloaded below:
Demons
I promised to tackle the question of demons and evil spirits in the Bible and our world today in this week's Overflow, so here I go!
First of all, what do we make of the New Testament's many examples of healing given to people who were said to be possessed by demons or evil/unclean spirits?
It is easy to "demythologize" the New Testament, having never witnessed anything I would consider demon-possession or an exorcism. Some people read the many Biblical accounts of demons (or unclean spirits) being cast out as always referring to the healing of certain physical conditions (like epilepsy) or mental illnesses (like dissociative identify disorder). It's sometimes assumed that people of the first century were simply more superstitious and not medically advanced enough to know the difference.
I don't think we should be too quick to come up with an alternative explanation like this. The New Testament authors make a distinction between physical illnesses and the effect of demons at times, showing they know the difference. And the demons sometimes speak to Jesus, and are the first to recognize him as the Christ. No illness explains this.
The question of whether possession by demons can still happen today is outside of my experience. But there is a fascinating chapter in M. Scott Peck's book People Of The Lie all about it. Dr. Peck is a psychiatrist who wrote that book to explore the existence of evil as he had seen it at work in some of his patients. And Peck writes:
Of course I did not believe that possession existed. In fifteen years of busy psychiatric practice I had never seen anything faintly resembling a case. But the fact that I had never seen a case did not mean such cases, past or present, were out of the question... So I decided to look for a case. I wrote around and let it be known that I was interested in observing cases of purported possession for evaluation. Referrals trickled in. The first two cases turned out to be suffering from standard psychiatric disorders, as I had suspected, and I began making marks on my scientific pistol. The third case turned out to be the real thing.
So, is demon-possession real? I don't see a compelling reason to ignore or explain away the Biblical accounts in the New Testament, and I am open to the possibility still today. But it is not a source of worry - I'm not aware of anyone who believes that a follower of Jesus (possessing the Spirit of God) can be taken over by Satan. And Dr. Peck notes that he does not believe that someone can simply be waylaid by the devil on the way home from work. Instead their possession is gradual, a process of believing lies, bargaining, and fixating on another being that unfolds over time.
Good Interpreters
The past two weeks I've been emphasizing the importance of learning some basic principles for Bible interpretation. Being better able to understand what the Bible means is helpful for for personal devotions, and it can also cut down on bizarre and embarrassing uses of the Bible by Christians which undermine the witness of the Church. I'm not sure how much can be done about bad-faith actors who don't care what the Bible means and just mine it for ammunition to support their opinions about whatever. But what a blessing it would be if more Christians recognized the difference between such people and honest and skilled interpreters of scripture!
This Sunday I once again spent some time walking through the authorship, broad context, and immediate context of the Bible passage we were studying, as well as working to understand the meaning for the original audience. I emphasized the importance of this last ingredient more than the previous week:
God can speak as He chooses through His Word, but if you pick up the Bible and ignore the fact that it was written to somebody else in a different time and culture before it made its way to you you’re being a poor interpreter. You don’t properly know what a passage means if you have no idea what it meant to the people it was first written to.
In the case of a passage with some complicated concepts (blasphemy against the Holy Spirit?) I also talked about the value of gaining perspectives from other scholars and commentators. But who should you trust? A simple Google search can lead to answers of very different quality!
I thought I might add a few resources I think are reliable which anyone can access. I can't vouch for everything you might find through these, but it's a lot better than a random web search!
When it comes to getting background on a particular book of the Bible or learning about some of its major themes and structures Wikipedia is actually pretty good in my experience. There various resources (Bible dictionary, limited commentaries) available from BibleGateway.org, and anyone can freely access the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia online here.
It doesn't cover every passage, but when it does cover a topic I've found The Bible Project to be a very thorough and easy-to-understand resource. I've also found the resources available through BibleStudyTools.com to be pretty good.
It's a more advanced tool for most users, but BlueLetterBible lets you dig deeper than any free study tool I know of.
I've also seen good articles on Christian Answers, but I think it's a mixed bag and wouldn't be my starting place or only source of information on a topic or passage. I don't recommend Christian Apologetics Research Ministry (CARM) or Answers In Genesis (AIG), which have slick websites but provide answers from a more fundamentalist theological bent than I'm comfortable with.
If you ever wish you had some reliable commentary information on a passage of scripture you can also reach out to me! A few minutes of searching through my library software and a little copying and pasting and I can send anyone some content from several reliable commentaries to look over! Email me, I'm at your service ;-)
Mid-Week Devotional Moment
A twitter acquaintance of mine (who is an Old Testament scholar) wrote this week that all this talk about Bible interpretation sometimes misses the mark if we forget that it is not simply information retrieval. When we turn to the Bible God works on us. And it a lot more good work gets done if we bring an attitude of humility, openness, and honesty to the project. Taking care in interpretation is important, but only as important as the spiritual posture we take when approaching what we call God's word. Here is some scripture and prayer that you can reflect on and invite God to do some work on you today (drawn from The Divine Hours, by Phyllis Tickle):
Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us shout for joy to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and raise a loud shout to him with psalms. For the LORD is a great God, and a great king above all gods. (Psalm 95:1-3)
LORD God of hosts, hear my prayer, hearken , O God of Jacob. (Psalm 86:12)
I will thank you, O Lord my God, will all my heart, and glorify your Name for evermore. (Psalm 116:4)
Jesus taught us saying: 'I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more. You are pruned already, by means of the word that I have spoken to you.' (John 15:1-3)
Gracious is the Lord and righteous; our God is full of compassion.
O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your servant who calls upon you, and grant that I may know and understand what things I ought to do, and that I may have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.
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