When are bad things genuinely evil, and when are they just – well, bad?
It's a question that could be sparked by Franklin Graham's description of the violence Charlottesville ('Satan is behind it all'). But it's also sparked by the church in Liverpool that's been offering sessions involving three-day fasts to 'deliver' people from homosexuality.
There's a broad consensus even among conservatives who believe gay sex is wrong that homosexuality can't be 'cured', in this or any other way – people are what they are, and gay or straight, the Church has to try and help them live as faithfully to the gospel as they can.
But what about 'deliverance'? Do people really need delivering from the powers of darkness, and if so when?
The Liverpool church is part of the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Ministry. On its website it says deliverance is 'to close the doors opened to the enemy', 'to break evil yokes', 'to kill every satanic embargo' and 'break curses and spells', among other things.
In a section called 'Who needs deliverance' it suggests 'if you were conceived in adultery or fornication', 'if you have been ridiculed all your life', 'if you are afraid of being alone' and 'if you were involved in the occult' – among many, many others.
This sort of language has, I admit, not been part of my church practice or experience. Perhaps I'm missing something – maybe my faith isn't supernatural enough.
But what I see in this approach to quite ordinary issues worries me – and it stands for a wider attitude toward life in this world. That is, there's a tendency in some quarters to see everything in terms of a battle between good and evil. We pathologise bad things in the same way medical practitioners are sometimes accused of pathologising perfectly normal variations in feelings and mental states. From this point of view, anger is not just anger, it's demonic oppression. It's the same with lust, or greed – and it's a great way of deflecting responsibility for our bad behaviour on to someone else. Most of our problems, of whatever kind, are just human. We ask for mercy and grace to help us in our time of need, and mostly we get through them.
In reality, the devil did not make us do it – we're quite capable of doing wrong on our own initiative.
But more than that, when we divide the world into good (Christian) and spiritual evil (not Christian), we're on very shaky ground. The idea that the forces of darkness are lined up against us in a particular case is a really big claim – and we need to be very sure before we make it.
Because a claim like that can very easily be used to demonise opponents – literally – and crush opposition, so that we get what we want. It can be used to control agendas and control people. They are being overwhelmed by demonic forces – and the church has the key to deliver them.
We see this in the publicity campaigns mounted by Christian pressure groups in support of those who've fallen foul of equality legislation at work, or laws against hate speech. It's us against the world, and the world is in league with Satan.
We see it in the intemperate denunciations of Christians whose theology is less conservative than we'd like – the abuse of Hillary Clinton after it was reported she was considering preaching was particularly hateful.
Is Satan active in spiritual warfare? For many today, it's an absurd question – he's just a metaphor, a way of talking about evil. There's no entity or personality behind the word. But that's a difficult position to hold with any faithfulness to Scripture – the Bible is clear that there are 'spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms' (Ephesians 6:12), and while much that Christians have traditionally believed about the devil has little if any biblical foundation, we should be slow to write him out of the script altogether.
So for most readers, the question is going to be not whether, but where and how he's active – and we might not like the answer.
Because we define Satanic activity by what God is not. God is light, implying truth, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5). Alongside that, he is love (1 John 4:8) – the two key New Testament affirmations about the nature of God. When we seek to discern the Satanic, then, we look for lies and hatred. Both are found in Charlottesville – in the violence of the protesters and their warped ideology, and in the failure to denounce it for what it was. Both are found in the work of Islamic State, where lies and hatred have left a years-long trail of destruction. Both are found in the narrative that pits people against people because they see the world differently, and seeks to create an image of Western Christians – unbelievably free and privileged as we are – as an embattled minority in a sea of enemies. And lies and hatred are also found in small, personal but intensely damaging interactions between individuals, where we harm each other because we are too selfish, lazy or malevolent not to.
Sometimes, bad things overbalance into evil. Lies and hatred are the clue; and Satan is active in unexpected places.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
