Most educated people believe that what we call “demon possession” is simply a dubious expression of mental illness, satisfactorily treated by pharmaceuticals. After all, even the Bible arguably invites conjecture in its listing of demon possession alongside various other physical and mental illnesses (Matt 4:24). Certainly some of the symptoms appear to be treatable by modern medicine. But at the end of the day, if demons are real, they cannot simply be zapped away by a dose of anti-psychotic drugs. Even much of the medical community no longer equates demonism with epilepsy.1 Naturally, the secular world still remains sceptical. If demons are real, life-altering action is required. Yet no one is comfortable with change. The scientific mind does all within its means to avoid an imminent cognitive dissonance. At a certain level the empire of scientific thought is founded upon quasi-religious principles of faith seldom attendant upon truth. A serious invitation to criticism or openness to a falsification of their claims, by means of a long awaited dialogue with the reputable religious community, is simply too dangerous a risk to take. As things stand, Christian believers are outliers. Their scholarly research is written off as paraphernalia while secularized “scientific” theory is blindly embraced as fact. Although truth is not contingent upon majority rule, the post-structuralist reprehension—that reality is at least partially a product of social construct—is applicable to this deteriorating arena of “academic” discourse. Although the platitudes of the secular world insinuate that the Christian Church is delusional, blurring the distinction between fantasy and reality is a rapidly-spreading problematic among the unbelieving populace.
The Church Fathers help us understand why the world is, literally, so confused. One cannot safely set out on a journey without a reliable map. Such a map is based on an accurate reading of reality. Most unbelievers are materialists. By denying the existence of the spiritual realm as entirely different from the physical one, the way they reason follows a fallacious map of a fictional land which, in turn, informs their distorted worldview. In contrast, the Christian map incorporates both the visible and invisible planes of reality. St. Augustine, one of the most important Fathers of the Western Church, organized these spiritual and earthly realities under the respective categories of the “City of God” and the “Earthly City,” while investigating the implications of the overlap between them. This distinction between these two realms furnishes Christianity’s ability to interpret the human experience in accordance with a dual-lensed spectacle of the “two cities.” In contrast, the secular world filters phenomena through a single-lensed epistemological hermeneutic informed by a metaphysic of the “one city.” Reasoning through this “single-city” logic is inherently demonic because it collapses God-given distinctions. For instance, the ability to judge moral events by a higher or “heavenly” standard is diabolically perverted by the absence of a meaningful ethical grid. We encounter examples of this inability to critically evaluate cultural norms throughout any given day. For example, most traffic jams are caused by an endless line up of curious bystanders determined to observe the damage of a traffic accident. Is the rubbernecking altruistic? In other words, do drivers slow down in order to determine how they can be of some philanthropic assistance or do they do so because of a grotesque interest or even a sadistic desire—albeit subconscious? For the vast majority of our desensitized population, the unspoken feeling on the matter runs something like, “It’s a free show—what’s the problem?” Reality-TV stars are the new gladiators in the coliseum of our living rooms. The Romans catered no ethical dilemmas either. What compels an individual to prioritize videotaping their pending consumption by a hurricane or Tsunami over their own physical security? Television watching is indisputably harmless, right? Perhaps, unconsciously, we believe that placing a photo lens between the threat and our cornea provides the same protection. “How could my life possibly be endangered in the middle of a tweet!” the tourist protests as he is engulfed by an enormous wave. Not only do we blindly trust our media, but we unwarily depend on their mediums as our authorities—and so they become our gods. The objectification of the female and male form warps the ability to realistically evaluate the beauty of one’s spouse. We tithe an unsettling amount of our income to the image of a billboard in pathetic attempts at approximating our aesthetic qualities to a plastic prototype or a Hollywood star that has just undergone another series of futile face-lifts. Beauty is not in the eyes of the beholder but in the eyes of the culture. And yet the archetype is a fake and a lie. A critical approach to advertisements is driven by the awareness of our interaction with an artificial reality. The goal of most ads is to breed covetousness. They rarely fulfill our needs. Usually they stealthily create wants and then trick us into believing that we have always needed them.
Navigating safely through this dangerous spiritual labyrinth of temptation, vanity and conflicting desires and intuitions is vital for Christians who claim to be counter-cultural disciples of the cross. Godly judgments require sharpening through prayer and study of God’s Word since the domineering single-city logic inhibits one’s ability to carefully distinguish between differing realities. For those who view the world along that single and simple plane, appellations, demons and spirits, if they exist at all, must be recordable on radiation detectors and other physical apparatus. For them, it is unfathomable to envision even spiritual bodies as belonging to some other sphere besides the earthly one with which we are all fully familiar. Given these presuppositions reincarnation makes some sense. Like our bodies, our souls remain trapped within the single-planed bubble of temporal reality. So, too, some Christians insist that souls have mass.
If the veins in your brain are presently pulsating, that’s a good sign. Thinking deep sometimes hurts. However, allow me one further illustration to clarify the strenuous point. As a chaplain deployed to the Middle East, I remember peering through a set of binoculars with a few sentry guards from the top of a cliff. Even though we were participating in a surveillance of enemy territory, the landscape was spine-tinglingly beautiful. The fantastic feeling that people often have when fixing their eyes on a desirable object was immediately interrupted by a disturbing crunching sound underneath the soles of my combat boots. When I looked down below my feet, it quickly became apparent that I was stepping on some bones—human bones! As a matter of fact, I was standing in the midst of a skeletal rib cage. Widening the perimeter of my vantage point, I noticed that not only was I standing on a few, I was surrounded by an endless sea of bones mixed with sand, dust and rubble. The entire hill appeared to have consisted of human bones.2 Tripping over a chunk of skull, I was inclined to join with Dorothy’s observation after arriving into the Land of Oz: “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Ezekiel had a vision of a valley of dry bones. Here I was standing on a mountain of them! The Church operates within the presumption that there are two planes to reality.3 Yet only those who turn their heads can clearly see with this double vision. St. Augustine would call that “conversion.” Most non-Christians are myopic. They tend to view only a landscape and fail to perceive another simultaneous reality directly beneath them. Just like I had lost my footing in my hypnotic fixation, conducting one’s life in neglect of this double-vision is sure to result in a tumultuous and unpredictable voyage. In Holy Baptism Christians receive a new lens that governs their lives, not only informing their moral compasses, but acting also as an internal GPS that allows them to better understand wider societal trends and chisel away at conventional wisdom.
One final example (I promise): on the one hand, spiritually-sensitive people today have heedlessly turned environmental sustainability into a pagan religion, paying homage to the pantheistic goddess “Mother Nature.” The well-meaning ecological principles of this animistic worldview operate within a one-planed