“The Devil made me do it,” the comedian Flip Wilson would say. And though we may have said that in jest about something we have said or done, didn’t it feel at times like there was truth there? That we weren’t in full control of ourselves—we weren’t acting with full awareness and intention….
The poet William Butler Yeats said it this way,
And in my heart the daemons and the gods
Wage an eternal battle…
And in our hymnal there is a song called “Silence! Frenzied, Unclean Spirit”. The second verse reads this way:
Christ, the demons still are thriving in the grey cells of the mind:
Tyrant voices, shrill and driving, twisted thoughts that grip and bind,
Doubts that stir the heart to panic, fears distorting reason’s sight,
Guilt that makes our loving frantic, dreams that cloud the soul with
fright. (Words by Thomas H. Troeger—New Century Hymnal)
While demon possession may seem beyond our imagination or experience, is it really?
