Dearest Rachel –
This letter is going to seem pretty weird, as if it came out of left field; which it should. As I’ve said before, what Lars and I discuss on our walks generally are covered by the Las Vegas ethos: what’s said there, stays there. Besides, it’s mostly about politics, anyway, which I try to avoid here with only middling success. Meanwhile, once we wrap up and head out for a late lunch, he’s doing his level best to convince me of the beauty of “the beautiful game,” and since you were never a sports fan yourself , I won’t try to explain a topic I’m no more enthused about than you were in general.
I realize this sounds like I’m negging on you for your lack of interest in sportsball, and I don’t want it to sound like that. Sure, I had my local teams that I cheered for (and I might remind you – as if I needed to – that it was my grandmother who was the big Cubs fan, and imbued that fandom into me at an early age), and in the internet age, I developed a fondness for the “not top ten” sporting moments that ESPN would demonstrate, which you could get into. But the thing about spectator sports is that it’s a communal thing; you enjoy it because everyone around you is enjoying it. If they aren’t, that takes the fun out of it. A lot of times, I could sense you put up with it for my sake – which is admittedly several steps ahead of most wives in pop culture, who are openly hostile to it all, for whatever reason – which still drained some of the fun out of watching it. I wonder if you started to feel that way over the last few seasons of Doctor Who, when Daniel and I began to see watching each episode as an obligation rather than something to anticipate.
Sorry about that; that was a long-winded way of letting you know that I wasn’t about to be trying to tell you about the Barcelona/Paris-Saint-Germain game we were watching. I imagine I was to Lars what you often were to me during one football season or another; willing to listen, trying to understand for the other’s sake, but just as willing to ignore it if the opportunity presented itself. So that sort of eliminates most of yesterday’s actual events as topics.
Which brings me back to what I thought I’d talk to you about – and yes, it sort of comes from the news, but only as a jumping-off point, since I know next to nothing about the profession, and won’t claim a lick of expertise that allows me to pontificate about it (huh, there’s a word that’s a bit on-the-nose about it, though). I just have a lot of questions about it, though. Oh, and it’s sort of fitting as the spooky season is just about upon us.
It would seem that the Catholic church still employs exorcists, to expel demons from people. One fellow in particular is supposedly quite adept at his job, and is employed to perform it rather frequently. His skill and fame also put him in demand as a public speaker; and here’s where he gets into the news. It would seem that his political views are, let’s just say, at odds with his employers, as well as the state in which his diocese is located. Very red vs. blue stuff, you understand. He’s been handed order to cut back, if not eliminate altogether, those public speaking engagements, because of where they tend to go, and that they make certain people look bad.
Enough said on that part of the topic, if you ask me – particularly since our church doesn’t employ exorcists ourselves, and never has seen need to do so. Either those that have been saved through the ministries we facilitate haven’t been that far gone, or the Jesus we proclaim is sufficient to do the job without any of the specialized mumbo-jumbo that we lay people think of when the term “exorcism” comes to mind. I mean, for all I know, it could be absolutely nothing like Hollywood depicts it – which, given your taste for horror films, would have been a bit disappointing once you crossed over and got all the answers about stuff like that.
Or not, depending on how terrifying actual demons look like; then again, compared to the angels among which you presumably reside (added to the fact that they outnumber the netherly host two-to-one), they’re probably not that intimidating, all things considered, even if they might be one-on-one.
Which finally brings me to where the bit of news I had been reading comes to mind, and starts my own mental gears turning. As I said, unlike the worldwide Catholic church, we don’t seem to deal much with folks who are actually demon-possessed, the way Jesus and his disciples did, and it got me to wonder as to why, exactly, that is. To be sure, it may simply be due to our own provincialism; ours is a small church, relatively speaking; we have partners across the globe in terms of ministry, but we’re mostly focused on our little corner of the world, country and state. Which is enough to keep our hands full; the metropolitan area numbers in the millions, whereas we – and those we’ve brought to us thus far – are only in the thousands. We have enough work to do right here, with souls that need to be reached.
But it means that we probably don’t encounter that many people with that particular issue in our little corner. The West has been able to explain away so many ailments that would have once upon a time have been attributed to “possession”; between germ theory, bacteriology and neuroscience, we can address much with modern medicine (although certain medical issues, in particular, are easier to diagnose than cure; the best we can do is to alleviate symptoms). As a result, we feel we have little need of exorcists for the most part; whether it’s because these modern explanation are accurate, or if medical practitioners are simply modern Jannes and Jambres, able to replicate and recognize the symptoms and apparent cures, is a discussion for another time.
Then again, it occurred to me as I was reading this that the netherly hosts might be spread so much thinner than they used to. Consider that it’s generally held that the global population is estimated to have been somewhere between two and three hundred million at the time of Christ, mostly split between Rome, India and China. John’s description of the army of the East as “twice ten thousand times ten thousand” in Revelation would have been like us describing a force of ten billion today; basically the entire world’s population at the time. Meanwhile, it seemed as if everywhere Jesus and the apostles went, they had to deal with demons in one person or another that needed to be cast out. Suppose that the same number of demons exist in this world, but they’re having to try to control some thirty to forty times more people? Assuming their numbers don’t change, their increased workload precludes them from dominating us the way they used to, back in the day.
But if that were the case, and we were overwhelming them through sheer numbers, one would assume that their influence would be diluted over time. And yet, it doesn’t require a cynical mind like mine (although it probably doesn’t hurt to have one) to observe that this is clearly not the case. Mankind isn’t getting any better or more moral from one generation to the next; if anything, I challenge anyone to prove that things aren’t getting worse. And this while the demonic forces are presumably being spread so much thinner.
Then again, maybe they aren’t needed in the West, because humanity is doing a bang-up job of destroying itself without their assistance. Just as I’ve asserted that we may be our own shoggoth, we may just as easily be our own demons. If the real ones do anything, they may just give us a push in one direction or another as they see fit, but for the most part – and I’m sure I could be off on this, in estimating their numbers – they can let us go do as we please; we’re already headed in the direction they’d want us going. Which frees them to battle their heavenly opponents (after all, they’re already outnumbered); thereby reducing their influence on us, as well.
All pure speculation, of course, honey, but you can see how I get to these points. Again, I’ve no idea what you can see of these battles and how they’re going; all I can do is to comment on what I can see going on, and guess as to why. It would be nice if, given what I assume to be the broader perspective you have, you could tell us more about the grand scheme of things, but maybe within the fog of war, those sorts of battle plans are strictly on a “need to know” basis, and I don’t need to know.
Because, after all, if I did, where would faith enter into it?
