Thoughts From a Superstitious Fool

On spiritual evil

I am a superstitious fool.

At least, that is how many will view me, both in the church and the academy. I made peace with this a long time ago. Over the years I have steadily become more committed to the idea of an “enchanted” world, one in which the spiritual and the material interact consequentially. When the Bible describes a God who is at work in the world in meaningful ways, I take this to be an accurate rendering of the actions and character of God. When the Bible speaks of angels or demons, I don’t take these as metaphors or symbols or superstition. I take them to be spiritual beings. They are real.

For several days I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Sonya Massey’s last words: “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

Secular commentators will suggest this is a black-church trope and/or a superstitious defense mechanism. I suggest we take her words more seriously than this. Perhaps she really perceived something demonic in the man confronting her, and it was to that something that her words were directed. CNN provides the following account of her exchange with police officer Sean Grayson:

In the footage, deputy Sean Grayson and another deputy speak calmly with Massey in her home when she goes to the stove to turn off a pot of boiling water. She then picks up the pot and the other deputy steps back, “away from your hot steaming water,” he says.

“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” she says in response.

“Huh?” the deputy says.

“I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” she repeats.

“You better f**king not or I swear to God I’ll f**king shoot you in the f**king face,” Grayson says.

He then draws his firearm and points it at her, and she ducks and says, “I’m sorry” while lifting the pot, the video shows.

“Drop the f**king pot!” both deputies yell.

Three shots are heard. After a few seconds of silence, one deputy says “shots fired” and calls for emergency medical services.

The whole scene feels demonic. It is an amalgam of panic, confusion, rage, and violence. Note the outrage of deputy Grayson not at the raising of the pot, but at her rebuke of him in Jesus’ name.

You better f**king not or I swear to God I’ll f**king shoot you in the f**king face.

Why do so many Christians in the U.S. fail to take the reality of spiritual evil seriously? Why do we reduce evil to psycho-social factors? If Massey’s response was a black-church trope, that is because, unlike mainline Protestantism and much of white evangelicalism, black Christians have tended to maintain belief in spiritual evil, as well as human evil. Perhaps this is because African Americans have endured so much evil from principalities and powers.

Clker-Free-Vector-ImagesFree-Vector-Images, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

I wish more Christians would take the reality of spiritual evil seriously. After the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, we Christians were told by Very Sophisticated People to stop clutching our pearls over the mashup of a bacchanal and the Last Supper. Christians shouldn’t be outraged, we are told, or, if we are, we can only be outraged by things the Very Sophisticated People tell us are worthy of outrage. We have bigger fish to fry, so they say.

Whether or not this is true, the whole affair was at least worthy of our concern. It was worth noting. Calling attention to evil actions doesn’t mean we are outraged. It means we want to identify them as evil and explain why we, as Christians, find these actions problematic. For those of us who believe in the spiritual forces of wickedness, they were on display here. The exaltation of a pagan god in a pagan festival while mocking our Lord’s institution of the Eucharist is demonic. If Very Sophisticated People don’t believe this, so much the worse for them.

We call out such evil because evil breeds evil. A spirit that mocks Christ will exult in other kinds of evil. Jesus does not simply teach goodness. He is goodness. He is the incarnate Logos of God—God’s divine will, reason, and order. To mock Christ is to mock goodness. It is to mock what is right and just and loving. We cannot know what goodness or justice or love is apart from him. But since he came into this world many have insisted that to reject him is good, and to follow him is both foolish and evil. Human beings have always hated God’s righteousness, though to our detriment. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isa 5:20).

To be a Christian is to learn a new way of thinking about everything, perhaps most particularly good and evil. When we are baptized, we renounce “Satan and all his works,” or perhaps “the spiritual forces of wickedness.” Our baptism is a rebuke of Satan and his minions in the name of Jesus. Thus he will assuredly attack us. He comes to steal, kill, and destroy. When we confront spiritual evil, it is proper to respond with, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

What happened to Sonya Massey is so very sad. It is a tragedy. But it is more than that. It is evil. She saw that evil, as her last words reveal.