Demons In the Church?

 

        For reference, I grew up with a close-minded theology that teaches demonic entities are real, but one cannot actually see or hear them in the physical realm.  (And if someone says differently, they’re lying ::insert gasp::)  Believing in the tangibility of evil forces opens up a whole ‘nother view of the spiritual realm that our fundamental doctrines did not support.

       Shortly after we moved to Alaska (circa 2014), we started attending a new church. It was different and the pastor took the Bible literally - basically, they believed that if Scripture said something was possible, it is still possible today.  This meant re-visiting a lot of beliefs we had been taught and it was very eye-opening.  

        Since the pastor at this church taught literal scripture, one of his teachings (it may also have just been a statement, not a whole teaching) was about how demons existed in the church - like, they were real and they do come to church - total shock to me.  I mean, it does make sense, but also, one of my few flaws is that I personally struggle with accurately identifying if someone has a demon or not, so how am I supposed to recognize one in the real world? 

    Shortly after receiving this new knowledge, I found myself and my new bestie sitting in a Sunday School class like good Christian girls, trying to earn a leadership badge for material that we already knew, with a non-interesting teacher and doing our best to take notes (or at least look like we were). 

     Towards end of class, I heard it.  The most terrifying thing in my life up to this point - my friend’s name had been whispered. Low, gravelly....demon-like (Because, of course, my only relation to "real world" demons up to this point was everything on TV since I had been raised with the notion that they're just about invisible now-adays).

      The demon spoke my friend's name again. A bit louder this time.  Still as frightening.  I looked at her- she looked at me. I scanned the room (which had plenty of witnesses) and yet, all of these spiritual giants had not heard this demonic entity speaking. Why was I able to hear it? It was calling to my friend, not me.  It was her fate that hung in The balance now, subject to this evil force.  How did I end up in the crosshairs??

        Well, like it or not, I was involved now. I had been roped into this unanticipated journey led by a demonic force, all to reinforce the lesson I’ve just learned that demons are, in fact, real (Frank Peretti has a really great book illustrating how this possibly looks) and they do come to church with us, and this one just so happened to decide to make itself present to my friend and I and no one else. Because that’s how it works.

       Clearly, I was untrained for this situation and needed to witness this type of event before diving in to help disperse this foul beast.  I scanned the room, looking for clues.  As I glanced at my friend, she looked back at me. I peeked at everyone else in the room- no one was reacting to this strange event except for my unfortunate friend and I. 

       Gripped with panic (don’t worry, I’m getting business cards made), I grasped my friend’s arm (rather hard) and screamed “Save me!” because I didn’t know how to rid the room of this demonic entity that NO ONE ELSE could either hear or see, and I needed someone to rescue me. Now, I know that we all have different giftings, so SURELY one of the spiritual giants in this room should have either seen or heard this demon. Or, maybe they did, and they deemed it a minor threat and decided to ignore it, knowing that it could only afflict minor damage and there were larger ones lurking about that we needed to save all of our spiritual strength to battle. Someone, please. ANSWER ME

       Once she acknowledged the depth of the panic in my soul, my dear friend attempted to gently calm me down and inform me that the "big scary voice" I had heard was a mutual friend whispering through the crack in the door- because apparently you CAN have fun in church too. Demons and fun. Who knew??  

         In an attempt to restore order to what little bit of class was left, my friend tried to assuage our teacher and classmates by letting them know that everything was okay and that I had just gone “full dummy” (we now call these episodes “full Michelle").  Class ended shortly after and our fellow classmates, 100% completely unaware of the scope of the drama that had just unfolded, decided that their time would be best well spent encouraging my friend to “be a better friend” and giving me scriptures on fearing not - because that is super helpful when you're being confronted with a pretend demon.

         My take-away?  Demons may be in the church, but so are pranksters.  Use wisdom, dear friends, and try to not panic. And if you ever find yourself in need of a Professional Panicker, call me.