So, demons. I\u2019ve written on this topic before<\/a>, but it\u2019s been a while, and when I last wrote on this topic my children were too small to be scared of the dark. When I was a girl, I was taught that demons were real. My dad used to pray a \u201chedge of protection\u201d around our house, to keep the demons out. My parents told me that there\u2019s an invisible world all around us, in which angels and demons are at war, constantly.<\/p>\n At one point when I was girl, another woman in my parents\u2019 Bible study group told a story about confronting a demon in her hallway late at night. It must have\u00a0been let in, she said, by some rock music her teenage daughter had been listening to that afternoon. I found that freaking terrifying. I wondered, sometimes, what I might do that might accidentally invite a demon in? I was terrified\u2014utterly petrified<\/em>\u2014of getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n All of this was brought back to my mind\u00a0when I read Pat Robertson\u2019s recent comments<\/a> on whether\u00a0it\u2019s okay to listen to rock music:<\/p>\n It depends on what rock you\u2019re listening to\u2026\u00a0Some of the stuff is just evil. They used to talk about killing your parents<\/strong>\u00a0and there were just some evil things.\u00a0There were odes to Satan.<\/strong>\u00a0You don\u2019t want that stuff coming into your mind.<\/p>\n There\u2019s some beat that\u2019s out there that, you know, probably isn\u2019t all that bad, although in one Indian context, they were playing rock music, and the person said, \u201cWhy are you calling on the demons?,\u201d because\u00a0that was the kind of music they used to, you know, summon demons.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n And it was so much more than just music. At one point my aunt came to visit and stay for a few days, and brought with her a book she was reading. This\u00a0was a problem, because the book was Harry Potter. My dad made her leave it in the car lest it invite demons into the house. The irony is that, a decade\u00a0later, they decided that Harry Potter isn\u2019t bad after all, and my mom is now in the process of reading through the series. But at the time, it was incredibly serious.<\/p>\n My parents are college educated, and my dad, especially, is very intellectual. He was always reading new books, learning new things, and taking in\u00a0new information. I adored him, and I trusted him, and so when he was the one saying these things\u2014talking about keeping demons out of the house, and praying a hedge of protection around our family\u2014I accepted it completely. And I was frightened.<\/p>\n I\u2019m serious when I say that having to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night was a serious problem for me. I was so profoundly frightened. I would lay in the bed with the covers over my head and my eyes tight shut, afraid I might see a demon if I opened my eyes. I was terrified. But alas, my bladder was such that I couldn\u2019t fall back asleep when it was full. Eventually, terrified, trembling, I would slip out of bed and make a mad dash for the bathroom, do my business, and then run back into bed and pull the covers back over my head.<\/p>\n My daughter Sally is now six, and somehow that makes all this feel only more relevant. Sally has read books about vampires and zombies, and once when it was time for bed, she was scared and told me she was frightened of vampires. I reminded her that they\u2019re not real, talked with her about it a bit more, and then sent her off to bed feeling much better. And then it struck me\u2014I am dismantling my children\u2019s nightmares, as best I can, while my parents only fed mine. They told me that demons were as real as you and I, and taught me that I had good reason to fear. And fear I did.<\/p>\n And yes, my parents also told me that I had the power to cast demons out, in the name of Jesus. But being the studious child that I was, I knew my Bible well, and I knew that in Acts 19<\/a> a demon beat up a group of men who attempted to cast it out in Jesus\u2019 name, because those men were not Christians. \u201cI recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?\u201d the demon asked. I suffered from salvation anxiety<\/a>\u2014the fear that I wasn\u2019t truly, really saved\u2014and those words terrified me. I imagined myself being confronted by a demon at the foot of my bed, attempting to cast it out in Jesus\u2019 name, and then looking on in horror as it laughed at me.<\/p>\n Now I am very sure that my parents had no idea how afraid I was. When I went to my mom about my salvation anxiety, she told me that if I was worried about whether I was saved, I most certainly was saved. That helped, though it didn\u2019t completely fix the problem. And as for demons, well, the literature they encouraged me to read didn\u2019t help, either. Frank Peretti\u2019s books, which depict the demonic world and its integration with the real world, were particular terrifying. I think they thought it was enough that the good triumphed over evil, but the evil still terrified me\u2014especially because I believed those books were a realistic depiction of our world.<\/p>\n I may need to do a page-by-page review of a Peretti book at some point. They\u2019re terrible, and they very badly need picking apart.<\/p>\n I\u2019m honestly not sure what the solution is. It would be easy enough to say that teaching children that demons are a real and present threat in their lives is misguided at best and abusive at worst, but evangelicals like my parents really and truly believe these things. It\u2019s not as though they set out to terrify me. It\u2019s just that their beliefs<\/em> were terrifying. If nothing else, I think we need to call attention to the ways religion may affect children in different ways from how it affects adults\u2014and, perhaps, to the fact that some religious ideas are just plain frightening whatever your age.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just religion, of course. Had I confirmed Sally\u2019s fear of vampires, had I told her I had once encountered one and barely escaped, that could have serious consequences for\u00a0her mental health as well. I could see Sally always carrying a wooden stake with her at night\u2014she\u2019s well versed in vampire lore\u2014if I were to build up\u00a0her fears rather than taking them apart. At one point in my childhood I became obsessed with UFOs, and checked out all of the books the library had on them. If my parents had told me that aliens from other planets did indeed roam our back roads looking for humans to kidnap, I imagine I would have been terrified too.<\/p>\n Of course, what they told me about UFOs had its own problems. They said UFOs were illusions created by demons to prepare the way for a mass deception after the rapture\u2014Satan would make\u00a0those left behind believe that those who had been raptured had simply been kidnapped by aliens, and thus prevent them from gaining true knowledge of what had happened and through it attaining salvation.<\/p>\n\n