If you've been paying attention to the world of streaming video lately, there has been a very mediocre attempt to shut down the new Amazon Prime series 'Good Omens.' 20 000 people have petitioned Netflix, the company that doesn't carry Good Omens, to shut the series down. Which I'm sure Netflix would love to do if they could, which they can't because they don't own it. It's a lot like telling Dominos Pizza to stop the manufacture of Wingstreet Wings. If that's too cerebral for you, then it would be like telling Bread of Life Lutheran church to stop handing out books of Concord.
Now, even though Netflix can't cancel the series, why are people upset about the show? They're upset because the show, in their opinion, normalizes the Devil and Satanists. It makes the Devil, demons and Satanists into something cuddly, who just have a 'difference of opinion' to God and his glory. I haven't seen the show, as I've been too busy watching children's flag football, but I would imagine that the theology is total bunk, but there's no surprise there. What I have noticed, even without watching the series, is that the world has now moved towards taking demons, the demonic, even the devil himself as largely a figure of fun rather than a matter of vital importance. We do that thing where we figure that because we don't see any evidence of demonic activity now, that there never was any. We get to thinking that any idea or notion of demonic activity through the ages was just a manifestation of some kind of mental illness, be it schizophrenia, psychosis, or something else, and that what Jesus was doing was essentially giving the possessed some lithium. Assuming that everyone displaying any sign of demonic possession was just mentally ill, though is short-selling the accounts from the Bible that talk about demonic possession, especially the account that we had from the Gospel from Sunday.
The key thing that draws a distinction between mental illness and demonic possession comes in the interplay between Jesus and the man who is possessed. If someone is mentally ill, they may very well make assertions of matters that do not exist. They may speak of things that most certainly are not happening, and that never were. When you talk to people who are suffering from mental illness, who have all manners of hallucinations or delusions of any nature, you expect them to talk of things that don't exist, but you as the person engaging with them don't act as though these things were true.
As a practical, real world example, when I go and visit people suffering from some manner of dementia, they will frequently talk about a situation different from the one they are actually existing in. People will talk about the one room schoolhouse that they attended as though they were still in it, instead of the institution that they are currently living in. Even if you were to humor said people, to talk to them as though their perceptions were true, you wouldn't behave in yourself as though they were true.
Instead of being dismissive, or talking about mental illness, Jesus deals with demonic possession as though it was actually happening as described. That is, Jesus speaks directly to the demons. He commands them, and they do what he commands. Jesus doesn't say to the person afflicted in any of these passages that they have a mental illness, he acts always as though it was a spiritual problem that needs to be addressed spiritually. As I'm fond of saying, if Jesus were to think something was important, he would address it. He had the space in the book to do it (The Lutheran Study Bible is sitting at around 2500 pages). If this was a mental health issue, and Jesus is God, he could have said something about it. But he didn't. In fact, he says of another evil spirit that it can only come out by prayer, suggesting very powerfully that this is a spiritual issue more than it is anything else.
Our big weakness right now is to think that spiritual problems, spiritual sicknesses just straight up don't exist. Every problem that we have, every malaise, every ennui can be corrected by means physical not means spiritual. We have the idea that we don't have to cure spiritual sicknesses because they just straight up don't exist. And if they don't exist, they can't be cured.
The comparison that I made on Sunday morning was that years ago, people didn't know how the cold virus spread, and they assumed that you got a cold by being cold. That, of course, is wrong now, and we all know today that the common cold is caused by a virus, and the best way to avoid it isn't to stay warm, but to wash your hands, and to wash them often. That will go a long way towards avoiding the spread of the virus towards your face, and keeping it out of your cells. The cold virus likely spread a lot more virulently when people didn't know about germ theory, and were trying to avoid getting it by doing things that wouldn't stop its spread.
This seems obvious now, but think about it in terms of spiritual sickness as well. If you were just trying to stay warm, to avoid getting a cold, that would make the cold virus very happy indeed, because you were trying to fight a problem through means that wouldn't work. Now think about the demonic forces that are trying to split you from God, to drive you away from him, to convince you that what is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right. Now think about how you're trying to treat that. Are you turning to God for aid? Are you working with prayer? Or are you assuming that spiritual sickness just doesn't happen, and doesn't need to be treated.
Not washing your hands doesn't help you. It helps the cold virus. Staying absent from worship, from prayer, from scripture, that doesn't help you. It helps the demonic forces that you would like to think don't exist. But Jesus thinks that they exist, and he behaves in every way as though they were real. And if he does, who are we to question that approach? Almost always the best step forward is to look towards Christ. If he takes something seriously, then we should too. If he can isolate a problem, then we should look towards his solutions as well. And we should be always mindful of what he recommends - understanding that our spiritual sicknesses can only be treated with prayer.
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