It is significant that we witness right at the start of Christ’s public ministry, the extent of His authority both as a teacher and as an exorcist.
There is no doubt that He was a teacher par excellence. A good teacher always draws the students towards enlightenment. Many of us have cherished memories who our good teachers were in school. Through the mazes and labyrinths of raw information, they help us organise our thinking and knowledge, inspiring us to greater freedom and integrity. In the Gospel, beyond the authority to teach, the crowd was also attracted to Jesus’ authority over nature.
At the heart of Christ’s exercise of authority, He battled with the forces of evil. In fact, many of His encounters were with spiritual forces. Without second thoughts, we are used to glossing over the accounts of Him spectacularly sending a legion of devils into a herd of pigs plunging off a cliff to their death, silencing a shrieking spirit or simply casting out a demon and we think nothing of them.
Yet, a major feature of Mark’s Gospel is a Jesus who was a prolific exorcist. The problem is with the notion that exorcism was central to Christ’s ministry always feels antiquated. It explains why we pay scant or little attention to this aspect of His ministry. His exorcisms are not as significant as viewing Him under the light of our current focus.
What does this mean? We resonate with a notion of a revolutionary maverick—a political kind of Christ who came to set us free. Liberation is often measured in terms of political progress and material improvement meaning that our standard of freedom is calculated in terms of a better social standing. A good life is basically seen through the lens of material comfort which means we seldom equate Christ’s liberation in terms of exorcism.
Fascination with the horror genre in broadcast and print media could be an explanation because evil is reduced to sensational entertainment. More than fascination or entertainment, we may have also banished the reality of satanic possession to the margin. Since such a spiritual reality cannot be explained scientifically, it is consequently translated as non-existent. In fact, science already does not look too kindly on spiritual realities like God or angels let alone spiritual infestation. For example, how many people ask for house blessings, especially in the West?
Mark records many actions of Christ freeing people from the oppression of evil. The span of His pastoral activities covers quite a lot of spiritual warfare where He is seen fighting against forces inimical to the Kingdom. Yet, this important ministry forms less than 1% of a priest’s life today. Of course, what was described of as demonic possession may simply be psychological from the perspective of modern medicine. For example, what could be considered possession in the past could very well be symptoms of a chemical imbalance. A person suffering from bouts of seizures would be considered to be a person possessed when in fact, he could just be an epileptic. The miracles associated with healing could be also psychological. The case of the mother-in-law of Peter is instructive. When Christ visited Capernaum, He went to Peter’s house and all He needed to do was to assure the elderly woman and she got well.
The danger arises when we try to explain everything away under psychology forgetting that evil is a spiritual reality at work in our world. Our scientific mindset may have driven the devil into oblivion with the last witches of the Dark Ages. We are at east that evil remains portrayed in movies—the sinister and menacing type whose function is to scare us. But such an attitude may be too naïve and trusting. The forces of evil are at work and because we have rationalised evil to almost non-existent, we may fail to recognise it even if evil has been staring us in the face. It may not be hideous, as portrayed in the movies but it is nevertheless effective in holding us hostage.
We are comfortable that Jesus taught with authority. But we do not share His concern about evil forces that try to subjugate humanity. It is a kind of naïveté to focus solely on Jesus who taught authoritatively without also appreciating His battles with the forces of Satan’s machinations. We ignore this central aspect of Christ’s ministry to our eternal peril. However, this is not to suggest that every nook and corner is infested or that every abnormal behaviour is sign of demonic possession. Not at all. When a case is presented as demonic, the first thing to do is to rule out that it is not psychological. The point to note is that Christ wrestled with Satanic forces and we must not lose sight of this reality.
Taking the scientific axiom that nature abhors a vacuum, we should be aware that scepticism creates a kind of emptiness. When we no longer acknowledge the reality of evil presence, then we have created a vacuum. When God created the world, His Holy Spirit roams about it. But when God is absent by our choice, that is, when we do not admit the reality of evil, then we have in a way created a vacuum for Satan to wreak havoc. The devil becomes powerful when we make God absent.
