More on the Darkside — question 92 a & b
Some more questions about demons came in at tentpegsquestion@yahoo.com so let’s deal with two of them today.
My friend did a study of demons and says that because only God is omnipotent, Satan doesn’t know everything that is going on and he relies on his demons to give him information. She said that I am probably not important enough for Satan to know who I am but that his demons are everywhere and can cause me trouble. She also says that if we don’t voice our weaknesses and temptations, the demons won’t know how to get to us. What do you think?
There is a lot that is correct in your friend’s statements but I would like to sharpen them a bit if I may. Again, I would highly recommend the readable (but thoroughly researched and footnoted) God at War by Gregory Boyd as a primer on evil, God, the devil, and the cosmic war we find ourselves in.
Satan is not omnipotent or omniscient (the latter word is the one I think your friend meant to use). He is not the polar opposite of God and we do not live in a Dualistic universe, i.e. a universe which is being disputed by two equal but opposite powers. Satan certainly does have power and evil is swarming over our planet, but God is far more powerful and, as your friend assured you, He knows what future He has declared will occur (we’ve discussed this when we went over Open Theism). It is also very possible that the devil doesn’t know your name and hasn’t noticed you, but it is frankly impossible for you to have escaped the notice of some of his angels. He has quite a multitude of them and they are afoot going from here to there and up and down upon the earth.
Demons have varying powers, skill sets, and preferred ways of doing their work. The Jews worked out a great deal of this from scripture, experience, and their greatest thinkers all coming together and much of their work was verified by the New Testament when Paul speaks of various powers and authorities in the heavenlies and Jesus tells the 70 that they would have power over snakes and scorpions (most probably not referring to reptiles and insects, but demonic powers — but I have no interest in arguing the point!) and that "this kind only comes out with prayer and fasting". (Matthew 17:21)
There is no place in scripture where the Bible expressly says that the devil or his angels can read your mind. Amazing, but true. That is not the same thing as saying that we can be certain they are unable to read our inner thoughts, though. That might be a very deadly assumption to make. Regardless, they can certainly read our actions and figure out what tempts us and what doesn’t. Once they find our weak areas, they can take twenty or forty years to work us into a place where we can be destroyed. Vigilance is a must. I often use the illustration of the night we moved into our new house in Michigan. I took my son out in the snow and dark and we looked at the house. I said, "It is our job to break into this house. How do we do that?" We looked around and found one glaring weakness that a robber could exploit and we promptly fixed it. It is useful to look at our lives and see where our weak points are, where an enemy could approach, and then take steps to remedy the situation.
I was recently in a conversation with a therapist colleague. He asked me if I thought that Christian counselors should always address the idea of generational cursings with clients. He seemed to believe that most people who were in therapy were experiencing some degree of difficulty due to the effects of God cursing his previous family members "unto the fourth (or more) generations" and that the only real cure was a "deliverance" from this previously imposed family curse from God. He was quite serious about this. I didn’t really know how to respond to him without getting into a debate about scriptural interpretation and potentially find myself being seen as an adversary to Christian thought and practice. I suggested that not every Christian viewed the Scriptures the same way and that a Christian therapist could help someone with a particular problem (our discussion was initially focused on treating co-occurring disorders) without creating a "deliverance" experience for them. I don’t think he was particularly pleased with my response. Any guidance for me on this?
I absolutely believe that people can be harassed and demonized (a better definition for the word usually translated "possessed") by demons. However, I would find myself in disagreement with your colleague on several key points.
First, I do not believe that God curses anyone. When God told us that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the third and fourth generation, that was not the result of God’s curse but man’s action. For example, when a man is an alcoholic, his life sends waves and ripples into his family that can disrupt it for generations. God didn’t cause it, plan it, or want it — it was a man’s choice. God goes so far as to explicitly state that He does not hold the sons guilty for the sins of the father, or vice versa (Ezekiel 18:18-20).
Can a family be cursed? I think the answer is ‘yes.’ There is a term used only once in Scripture but which shows up frequently in Jewish writings on this subject: Familiar Spirit. A familiar spirit is one who is familiar with your family, who knows the in’s and out’s of your behavior, weaknesses, and reactions and, therefore, tends to exploit one generation after another. Should we then start out all counseling appointments with a hearty round of power encounters with demons?
Not even close, and here’s why. First, it might not be a demon. Our enemies are three: the world, the flesh, and the devil. While the devil is the power of this world and the prince of this world, the world’s systems are constantly giving a Siren call, luring us away from God, reorganizing our priorities and plans for its own profit and our own destruction. The flesh is weak, as we all know, and cries out for its appetites to be fed regardless of consequence, ethics, or what we wish our self image, our reality, to be. The devil can and does use the flesh against us, but the flesh can sometimes trip us up without outside help. Stating that every psychological struggle is first and foremost a spiritual one is just wrong. (Even Jay Adams, the father of Christian counseling, asserted that every psychological problem had its root in sin. I cannot agree with that because I see genetics, family systems, and situation as source points for a multitude of problems that did not originate in the sufferer’s sin)
But what if you treat the individual with counseling, therapy, or medication when the real issue is a familiar spirit? Wouldn’t that guarantee failure? Here is an interesting, surprising, but true bit of information: your therapy will usually work, at least for awhile, giving the client time to gather strength and learn new coping/thinking/behavioral skills. Why? Because the enemy of all demons is truth. Reversing the lies told to the client (or that the client has told himself) and turning on the light tends to, shall we say, scatter the cockroaches. Is the solution permanent? Often it isn’t (Matthew 12:43-45) but most often, it is.
I can’t remember whether it was Minirith or Meier (they wrote books together. Both were Christian psychiatrists if I remember correctly) but one of them said, when asked about how to deal with demons and whether or not they were the cause of serious psychopathology said something like, "Maybe, but I’ve never found a demon yet that wasn’t allergic to Haldol." His point was that with proper medication and counseling, the demon’s hold on the individual was broken, the lie was disrupted, a chance for light and truth to enter was given and that usually resulted in amazing healing. Whether or not we agree with everything their statement assumes, I thought it was a great answer. The books of M. Scott Peck would seem to indicate he agrees.
Sometimes roofs leak because they are twenty years old and it has nothing to do with the devil hating you. Sometimes you wrestle with bi-polar disorder because of a specific genetic fault, not because the devil has your number. And sometimes you are despondent, depressed, and possessed of a poor self image because you had rotten parents or a rotten experience, not because the devil jumped in you. To think every issue is caused by sin or the devil is to fall prey to that old error often voiced: "to him whose only tool is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail."