Do you believe that there is such a thing as demons?
I know people with almost every conceivable view on the subject. Some believe that every day they encounter personal struggles attributable to activity by evil spirits. Others think the idea of demon possession is a lamentable holdover from ancient ignorance of what we now recognize as mental illness. I know people who spend significant time each week praying for spiritual evil to be purged from plots of ground. I know others who think of evil as a kind of corporate ‘zeitgeist’ corrupting human systems exorcized by voting or radically redistributing power.
I have my own beliefs on all this, but my purpose here is not to make the case for one specific viewpoint. Rather, I find myself interested in exploring the worldviews that underlie these diverse perspectives on evil.
This matter of worldviews has been on my mind because of a wonderful book I read recently by African theologian Esther Acolatse. In Powers, Principalities, and the Spirit: Biblical Realism in Africa and the West, Acolatse contrasts the “hypervigilance” around spiritual forces found among many African cultures with the demythologizing tendencies of western cultures that are more inclined to explain (and address) all experience as natural phenomenon. Acolatse considers how these perspectives on evil are tied to the experiences and worldview assumptions of diverse communities. At the heart of her book lies a provocative question: to what extent are Jesus followers, whatever their culture, bound to take the worldview of the Bible itself seriously as a description of reality?
This strikes me as an incredibly important and consequential question that isn’t asked nearly often enough. Even if we have never thought about it, we cannot avoid defaulting to some answer. All of us impose some kind of worldview grid on what we see and hear and read. This worldview grid operates like a kind of a sieve that allows some data through and blocks other data out. This grid determines the range of options we consider in interpreting the meaning of our experiences.
Acolatse does not argue that anyone should—or can—completely eliminate their cultural worldview grid. Her work does suggest, however, that Jesus followers would all do well to consider carefully what their grid is, where it comes from, and the limits of the structures it imposes on the world. All kinds of biblical words from “demon” to “justice” to “love” can be backfilled with cultural meanings so that, even as we say we are respecting the text, we are comprehensively overriding its claims about the nature of reality.
Textual claims, one might say, can be believed or not believed. But they cannot simply be exchanged as if they have no practical consequences. Cultures can redefine their conceptions of gravity, but these theoretical constructions will not change how gravity operates. And there’s a difference between a cultural conception that highlights some specific contextual application and one that redefines physics itself.
I have said that my purpose here is not argue for a particular viewpoint on the nature of evil. But I will say that my own experience has made me extremely sympathetic to Acolatse’s argument that Africa and the West have important things to learn from each other about what is within range of robust biblical account of evil. And speaking as someone starting from a westernized perspective, it strikes me that the failure to interrogate our culturally-inherited western worldview filters really could have the potential to leave us with costly blind spots and dangerous vulnerabilities.
The night before his death, Jesus warns, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat” (Luke 22:31). A few hours later he appeals, “Why are you sleeping? Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation” (Luke 22:46). It’s never easier to get played than when your eyes are closed, when your guard is down, when you believe that you rest in a field with no active opposition. I find myself wondering, “Am I fully awake to the story I am part of? What might having my eyes shut even now be costing me?”
There is no easy answer to the dilemma of worldview. But reality continually asserts itself. At the very least, what it seems we owe the worldview of the Bible, of Jesus and the early church, is serious consideration. Seen through a different set of eyes, one set of threats may be revealed as mere mirages. And another seemingly clear trail may be discovered to be littered with unsuspected booby traps and invisible obstacles. The story we tell won’t change what’s there. But it may change what’s in our toolbox of available responses.
