{"id":25125,"date":"2015-03-17T05:00:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T09:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=25125"},"modified":"2015-03-15T23:11:27","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T03:11:27","slug":"when-demons-are-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2015\/03\/when-demons-are-real.html","title":{"rendered":"When Demons Are Real"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019m sure by now nearly every one of you has heard about Arkansas state representative Justin Harris\u2019s decision to \u201crehome\u201d his two adopted daughters<\/a> with a man who then sexually abused them. Most of you have probably heard, too, about the impetus for Justin\u2019s decision\u2014that he believed the girls were possessed by demons.\u00a0Justin called in specialists to conduct an exorcism and kept the girls separated because he believed they could communicate telepathically.<\/p>\n

I might very well\u00a0think this story to bizarre to be true if I didn\u2019t know first hand how strongly\u00a0entrenched\u00a0demons and spiritual warfare are within evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity.<\/p>\n

I grew up hearing stories about demons. A friend of my parents\u2019 told a story\u00a0at Bible study about confronting a demon in the hall in her home at night. She explained that her teenage daughter had been listening to secular music, and that that must have let the demon in. I checked out books by Frank Peretti at the church library, and read hair-raising stories about demonic activity. I went to a dramatic reading of C.S. Lewis\u2019 Screwtape Letters with my parents.<\/p>\n

My parents were very clear about demons. They told us that the world around us was locked in conflict between demons and angels. This conflict was going on everywhere around us, unseen.<\/p>\n

I struggled with fear of demons my entire childhood. I would lay awake in bed with my eyes clenched shut, afraid that if I opened them I would see a demon at the foot of my bed\u2014demons, after all, could make themselves visible to the human eye if they so chose. I was afraid I would invite a demon to attack me by thinking the wrong thoughts, and fearfully\u00a0tried to keep my mind away from anything that might seem like an invitation.<\/p>\n

My parents always told me that the name of Jesus would protect me from demons. All I had to do was evoke that name, and the demons would flee. But I read in the Bible<\/a> about a case where a demon beat up some men\u00a0even though they evoked the\u00a0name of Jesus, because the\u00a0men weren\u2019t \u201ctrue\u201d believers. This frightened me, as I also suffered from salvation anxiety\u2014I was so concerned that I might not actually be saved that I prayed the sinner\u2019s prayer continually throughout much of my childhood.<\/p>\n

On a recent visit home, my mother told a\u00a0story about\u00a0praying demons out of my youngest sister when she had a migraine. She said my sister vomited violently as the demons left, and then the migraine was gone.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s bring this back around to Justin Harris.\u00a0My parents believed demonic possession was real, and not just a thing of the past. I was taught\u00a0that much of what we call mental illness today is in fact demonic possession. It seems Justin Harris believed this too, and interpreted his adopted daughters\u2019 very normal adjustment troubles as demonic possession<\/em>.<\/p>\n

My daughter Sally has a friend who was adopted out of foster care when she was three and her sister was four. Both girls have had adjustment issues, but their adoptive parents expected that and have showered\u00a0them with the love, attention, and careful guidance they need. It breaks my heart to think that natural adjustment issues\u2014often the result of past trauma\u2014could be interpreted as demonic possession.<\/p>\n

I am reminded of this exchange from the Doctor Who episode Curse of the Black Spot:<\/p>\n

Captain Avery<\/strong>: The ship is cursed!<\/span><\/p>\n

The Doctor<\/strong>: Yeah, right. Cursed. It\u2019s big with humans. It means bad things are happening but you can\u2019t be bothered to find an explanation.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m honestly not sure what the solution is. Belief in demons as real and active entities is integral to fundamentalism and evangelicalism. But then, my mother once told me that she did believe some forms of depression could be caused by actual chemical imbalances, so perhaps there is some wiggle room\u2014perhaps it is possible to educate individuals like Justin Harris on the psychological explanations\u00a0behind behavior like that of his adopted daughters. Perhaps, returning to Doctor Who, having an explanation will dispel the need to\u00a0invoke demons.<\/p>\n

Although actually, I\u2019m not sure much could have been done for\u00a0Justin Harris himself. Anyone willing to threaten a department\u2019s funding to push an adoption through and then give his adoptive children away<\/em> under the\u00a0table without so much as a background check is probably too far gone.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I struggled with fear of demons my entire childhood. I would lay awake in bed with my eyes clenched shut, afraid that if I opened them I would see a demon at the foot of my bed—demons, after all, could make themselves visible to the human eye if they so chose. I was afraid I would invite a demon to attack me by thinking the wrong thoughts, and fearfully tried to keep my mind away from anything that might seem like an invitation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[171],"class_list":["post-25125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","tag-demons"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen Demons Are Real<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I struggled with fear of demons my entire childhood. 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