“…life-transforming, Satan-crushing, God-glorifying…”

Could it be that in the West the presence of the demonic is muted not because demons have ceased to exist or never were, but for the precise reason that no one fights against nothing? Perhaps, as long as lukewarm faith exists, perhaps the demonic need not be troubled nor trouble themselves. While the purpose of the Christian life is not to irritate demons and incur their wrath through spiritual attacks, a quasi Christianity that is washed out and bears little resemblance to what is epitomized in the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles and demonstrated in the account of Jesus in the Gospels is also bankrupt in holiness and power. It is probably that the lack of knowledge and experience of the presence of the demonic in modern times – through to our current times – has made it easy to turn Christianity into a primarily cerebral, morality-infusing code for civilizing humanity, rather than the life-transforming, Satan-crushing, God-Glorifying powerful religion or lifestyle that was intended… We seem to have exegeted (almost exorcised) the power out of the Logos and propped it up with philosophy.

I’ve been thinking about this passage from Esther E. Acolatse’s fascinating book in the aftermath of this weekend’s massacres in El Paso and Dayton. I understand how it is that people who are not Christian can ignore the spiritually malevolent forces wreaking havoc in our violent society. But what about the Christians? Those who are more liberal in their disposition are clear about the profound problem of gun violence but their strategies rarely seem able to even acknowledge the existence of, as Acolatse says, the demonic. On the other side are the conservatives who, while often acknowledging what Paul calls the spiritual forces of evil in Ephesians 6:12, are ideologically unwilling to apply this belief to the terrors of gun violence.

Readers of this blog won’t be surprised to hear me next say that this strange relationship to what Jesus assumed to be a normal part of the Christian life – that is, engaging with Jesus in the battle against immaterial evil – seems to me a characteristic of white Christianity. There are plenty of churches where this bifurcation has been avoided. It is to these Black and immigrant churches that the rest of us would do well to turn and humbly learn from if we are ever to do more than mourn the impact of an evil we have thus far been barely able to name.