"The idea of being a victim of evil is quite a comfortable one," writes Norberto Keppe in his book, Psychotherapy and Exorcism. "But what's really going on," he continues, "is that the human being actually selects the type of evil he wants in his life."
Well, that's sobering. I hope this happens unconsciously because the conscious choice for evil seems rather terrifying. Keppe's view that we summon evil contradicts the common idea that we are victimised by it. Even the exorcists, those most graphic of illustrations of possession by evil, show the possessed as being unwilling recipients of the accursed spiritual invasions.
What Keppe is trying to alert us to here is the very real presence of evil spirits in the human experience, and our considerable role in giving them so much freedom to run amok on our planet.
But there's another aspect at play in this process ... the subterfuge of the demons. And that's not a once-in-awhile thing. It's constant.
Seduction by Evil, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.
Click here to listen to this episode.
Thursday, February 28, 2019
Friday, February 08, 2019
Man's Greatest Enemy
All of us, if we've lived a little, have had to contend with the lure of temptation. From the mundane, "Just one more piece of chocolate cake," to the come on of a cold beer when you've got a drinking problem, to the more serious attractions to violence and crime, we all know the experience of that voice in our ear.
Our modern scientific perspective prefers evidence-based interventions as solutions, leading us to explain away vice and bad habits as weakness, upbringing, chemical imbalance, even genetic disposition. We seldom in our modern world even think of putting temptation down to influence from nefarious spirits. Reason over superstition would read the promotional literature for the modern point of view.
But are we missing something in excluding the theological view? After all, Jesus warned us time and again of our unhealthy subservience to demons, and perhaps we should listen more carefully to that advice.
Man's Greatest Enemy, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.
Click here to listen to this episode.
Our modern scientific perspective prefers evidence-based interventions as solutions, leading us to explain away vice and bad habits as weakness, upbringing, chemical imbalance, even genetic disposition. We seldom in our modern world even think of putting temptation down to influence from nefarious spirits. Reason over superstition would read the promotional literature for the modern point of view.
But are we missing something in excluding the theological view? After all, Jesus warned us time and again of our unhealthy subservience to demons, and perhaps we should listen more carefully to that advice.
Man's Greatest Enemy, today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head.
Click here to listen to this episode.
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