Modern Westerners are pretty-much unique in the history of the world in failing to perceive that this world is one of unseen spiritual warfare, between 'supernatural' forces of good and evil. At any rate, the fact should be obvious to Christians, since it is a major theme of the New Testament.
In one sense spiritual warfare is a metaphysical assumption - which means that it can neither be proven nor disproven by factual evidence.
But on the the hand the reality of spiritual warfare is apparently the spontaneous human inference about the facts of life - which suggests that most modern Western people are artificially suppressing their natural way of thinking, and thereby doing violence to inbuilt common sense.
(Deliberate self-distortion of common sense is always a hazardous move - because where does it end? Well, look around you - that is exactly where it ends-up.)
This means that it is normal, natural, spontaneous common sense for humans to believe in the reality of 'demons' - i.e. real life, supernatural, personal and purposively-evil entities.
(Note: 'evil' can concisely be defined as willed destruction of the Good - and the Good can be summarised as Truth, Beauty and Virtue in unity.)
Therefore it is seriously weird not to believe in demons - further evidence (if it was needed) that we live in an insane world.
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Need more convincing? Read this excerpt from Greg Boyd's God at War:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/reality-of-unseen-warfare-excerpted.html
6 comments:
And angels too. I have had many incidents where I received very direct, explicit signs that God sees that I am sinning. I used to think these were signs directly from God but I am beginning to wonder whether God uses angels to do this.
Presumably, however,it must have at some point seemed extremely weird or indeed *pathological* to you to believe in demons or conspiracy theories of malign supernatural forces acting in the world, given that that kind of belief is the bread an butter of a psychiatrists work dealing with psychotic patients? I imagine therefore you must have gone through a phase where you realised that what is diagnosible as mental illness is actually, in certain respects a marker of mental health? By definition therefore it would seem that you might now regard the psychiatrists of the world are routinely more mentally ill and deluded than the patient that claims there are demons in an unseen supernatural world? Was your belief in demons contingent on your conversion to Christianity or was the shift in metaphysical assumptions more gradual and cumulative. I am intrigued to know what your experience was like.
@David - Yes, of course. I was probably much deeper into the modern psychosis than most people - and I remember what it was like. As for people being menatlly ill - there is more to it than beliefs - my main convicition is that the large bulk of 'mental illness' diagnosed nowadays is iatrogenic - mostly caused by psychopharmacology - esepcially dependence, withdrawal, and long-term side effects of antipsychotics and 'antidepressants'.
What is your opinion about "astral travel"? Do you believe it is possible, or is it a sign of mental delusion?
If it is possible, do you accept the views of many Christians that astral travel is an occult practice or type of sorcery that is inherently evil and forbidden to Christians?
@Q - I don't know what you mean.
Channeling Kant, I will say this: we either want to do good, or we fall back to the default (emptiness/destruction/entropy/evil).
Our time is demonic because it has chosen the path away from good, purely so that the ego can feel "in control" (hubris).
If we imagined demonism as a number, like a six, then everyone who ends up at a level six becomes by default demonic... that to me seems to explain much of what is going on.
As to whether or not it is possession, surely it is: possession by evil. But as always, evil is cleverer than good, and disguises itself as good through the filter of human individualism/narcissism.
However, the tide seems to be turning... people are tiring of both the lies, and the hellish (no pun intended) society they create.
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