[Magdalen] Exorcism

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

My main problem with the idea of some incarnate evil is that I cannot
imagine how such a thing could or would be created by God.  For people who
subscribe to the old view of god, this is no problem. They say god is and
does whatever god chooses to do, and this god brings good and evil on all
of us as It chooses.  This monstrosity is no different from Al Quaeda or
ISIS, however, and I am not convinced that God is at all like that.

I maintain that satan is merely a literary device used to personify the
many evils of which an unthinking human is so readily capable.  "Lead me
not into temptation, 'cause I can find it just fine all by myself."  Also,
Satan rarely shows up in scripture, and when it does, it is often described
very differently, such that we have ask if this is the same person
portrayed elsewhere.  We also have such things as the serpent in Genesis
(which is metaphor through and through in any case) which is a beautiful
portrayal of the ancient venerable trickster god.

Evil also is not so much a force as much as it is an absence of those
things which bring goodness, such as adequately thinking through matters
and their consequences.  Just as there is no darkness, but merely an
absence of light, evil is the absence of those things which bring forth
good.

For those reasons, the comments of Dr. Peck and others notwithstanding, I
am inclined not to accept an incarnate evil as real.

Comments in scripture are reports written down decades after the events
they describe. Some may be accurate records, but there is ample reason to
expect that the writers wrote what they felt described what they believed;
they didn't really care whether it was literally true or not. That practice
goes on into recent times, by the way.

The RCC chaplain where I was last, a Fr. LeBarr, was an exorcist.  He
maintained that no exorcism had ever, ever failed. Curious man.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 9:18 AM, Ian Gomersall <ian.gomersall at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I wonder what people's views are on evil as an entity - and so also on
> exorcism.
>
> We're running an occasional series on Big Questions at our church and
> Exorcism is the current one.
>
> Have a look at:
>  https://stchrysostoms.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/exorcism-a-big-question/
> <https://stchrysostoms.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/exorcism-a-big-question/>
>
> When I think of some of the evil things that groups of people have done /
> do, I can't help but think the whole is greater than the sum of the parts
> ...
>
> Ian
>
> *Ian Gomersall*
>