Demons

It may be surprising to learn that demon possession is not the stuff of horror movies. Many mainline Churches still hold a belief that human beings can be inhabited by forces of evil which will cause them to behave in ways uncharacteristic to them and which may require special prayers and even the services of a specially trained priest to remove them.

However, is is certainly true that much of what was formerly ascribed to demons is not under the realm of psychiatry. In Mark 5 the demoniac is certainly disturbed - I have read in the past various psychological asessments of him. Today he would, no doubt, have been given medication and probably some time in a hospital. I wonder, though, whether our medicine would have healed him - our medicine has edges which it cannot get around, not yet anyway. Perhaps he would have been sent to a priest or a counsellor. It is impossible to assess the difference between the miraculous intervention of Jesus and human to human interaction.

But whether or not our medicine could have healed him our society would always have treated the man with some suspicion - I wonder whether those around him did, whether they waited for a relapse into insanity or whether they were happily convinced by the magnitude of the change that a miracle had taken place and was, indeed permanent.

The way we treat mental and psychological disturbance of any sort is often unkind. People still feel bound to hide illnesses which are treatable for fear of stigma or even things being worse than they are. Even when people seek help they often face folks around who treat them as somehow different, perhaps fragile or unreliable.

The body is weakened when we do not talk about these things - but talking about them is intrinsically risky for those who are already so vulnerable.