Mr. Moderate

A story is told of a family moving to a very small town in the Midwest and then looking to see what church was available for them to join. They were quite surprised to find two very large and expensive-looking churches situated right across the street from each other. A bit confused, they asked a local resident how such a small town could possibly afford to maintain two such churches, and wouldn’t it be better if they merged together? The local replied that merger was not an option as the two churches had deep religious differences that were irreconcilable. And “what are those differences?” they asked? “Well,” the local replied, “that church over there believes there ain’t no Hell, and the other one asserts ‘the Hell there ain’t!’”

Up until the time of the Enlightenment, virtually all Christians believed in demonic possession. But Enlightenment viewpoints and scientific understandings have undermined that uniformity of Christian beliefs, and these days “liberal” Christian churches have cast aside beliefs in demonic possession, preferring to view the Bible stories of such events as alegorical for political events or other meanings altogether. But the New Testament is so riddled with stories of demonic possession that it becomes very difficult indeed to reconcile modern views about the subject with the idea that the Bible is in any way an accurate narrative of the life of Jesus.

One such set of stories concerns the alleged interaction between Jesus and a Legion of demons which were cast out by Jesus and into a herd of swine. The exact location and circumstances of this story has been a matter of debate from the very beginnings of Christianity. Those scholars who have made the best attempt at harmonizing the texts with modern geography assert that the location must be near the modern Jordan town of Umm Qais. However, there are many reasons why other scholars reject such a location (see the article on Umm Qais). Another problem for the story is the fact that “pigs are excellent swimmers,” so the story of an entire herd of them running into the sea and drowning is a bit hard to accept as truth.

But of course, the real problem for the story of the Gadarene Swine is the fact that demonic possession is an ancient superstition, entirely denounced by modern science. But that does not seem to stop the Roman Catholic Church from employing exorcists to cast out demons from possessed believers. And Islam, too, has exorcist rituals.

In some ways, the idea of demonic possession acts as a convenient scapegoat for people to avoid personal responsibility for their own bad acts. This reflects in modern comedy when Flip Wilson proclaimed “the Devil made me do it” or when The Church Lady inquires as to the reason for some bad behavior using the phrase “could it be Satan?”

Science fiction author Philip K. Dick observed that “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” So, is demonic possession part of reality? Or, if we stopped believing in it, would it go away? I would say that the latter is the true case, and certainly science and medicine would agree. Think about it this way: if you had a bad case of appendicitis would you seek out a doctor or a Christian Scientist? If you answer “doctor,” then you should be ready to discard all ideas of demonic possession and replace them with ideas about germs and mental illnesses. Then we can all go have a nice swim with the Gadarene Swine.