Fascination with Evil
I don’t like to talk about the devil - not with friends, not with family, and not even with you here. It’s not that I intentionally ignore his tricks or pretend they don’t exist. I simply don’t enjoy giving my attention to what is evil.
But the Gospel this weekend begins, “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil,” so perhaps we should let that same Spirit lead us into a word about one particular way that same devil tempts us today.
The old expression about the his trying to convince the world he does not exist still holds true, but equally as effective is his promotion of an unhealthy fascination with evil. This is one of the devil’s most effective means of entering in to someone’s life.
The Rite of Exorcism, for example, is very interesting. That a priest can, even now, cast out demons through prayer is - even if terrifying - admittedly amazing. But it is possible to become obsessed with it too. And that’s not good.
When the Pharisees accused Jesus of “casting out demons by demons,” He rebuked them saying, “If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?" Makes sense. But He goes on to say something even more revealing about the way evil works. He taught that sometimes a person may cast out a particular demon by another (for example: giving up drugs by taking up drinking, or resisting an affair by getting into pornography). About these ways of dealing with evil, Jesus said the first demon comes back, “bringing seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.”
To those examples of trying to escape some particular evil by trading one demon for another I would add the attempt to overcome the fear of evil by watching lots of videos about driving it out. Such people may end up going deeper into its grasp.
So how do we overcome evil? We can learn from the Syro-Phoenician woman who begged Jesus to cast out a demon from her daughter. Jesus exorcised it by inviting her (the mother) to assume the necessary spiritual posture by saying, “It isn’t right to take the food of the children and give it to the dogs,” to which the mother replied, “Even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table.” Jesus replied, “For saying this, the demon has left your daughter.”
What drives out demons is not fascination with evil; that often makes it worse. What does drive out demons is fascination with Christ. +