I come from a generation that got the majority of their information from books and blogs. We did not have, at least for a lot of the time I lived with my parents, cable, so I was not exposed to the 24-hour news cycle until I was older. Twitter did not exist until I was already an adult. The short-form video was a novelty, limited to bizarre Vines videos. We had the beginnings of social media, but it was not the juggernaut that it is today.
If someone came along espousing questionable ideas, one had to look for a book or a blog debunking it. This sometimes took a lot of work, especially if the idea was still on the fringes. Oftentimes, these ideas stayed on the edges because there was not as much ability to make the ideas spread the way they do today.
Things are different now.
Bad ideas can spread like wildfire and it does not take much for that to happen, thanks to algorithmic social media curation. A hashtag begins trending, and any idea can be plugged right in and become a part of the mainstream often before the content moderators have a chance to stop it, assuming they even try.
We have already seen the consequences of this internet environment politically. Baseless claims and conspiracy theories have become ingrained in the worldview of an entire political party here in the United States. But it has the potential and has begun to have an impact on our religious beliefs as well. It has taken a little longer to gain traction. Still, it is beginning to bubble up to the surface and I do not think it is going to be long before we are faced with a spiritual crisis beyond just the infiltration of politics into the ideology of the church.
As institutional Christianity bleeds adherents, the potential for theological error becomes more and more likely.
And not just for those outside the walls of the local congregation.
This past weekend was my daughter's weekend to stay at our house for her bi-weekly overnight. We use the time to go to the zoo and watch campy horror movies. We also listen to the Cognitive Dissonance and The Scathing Atheist podcasts in the car. She's 14 and has a lot of questions and these help us have some very meaningful conversations. She appreciates too that I was raised in a Christian home, went to school to be a pastor, and yet have an open mind to ideas vastly different from those I was taught.
Because of my schooling, one of her close friends asks my daughter religious questions to pass on to me based on viral TikToks that show up on her For You page. She'll relay messages back and forth between us and we have some really great conversations.
Sunday morning, during breakfast, her friend text her with a question that I had not thought much about since I was in college. Well… not her question specifically, but the broader premise of the question. She text asking, "Does the Bible say that Greek Mythology is demonic?"
Apparently, a video showed up in her feed claiming that very thing. I have not seen the video so I am not sure what Bible verses they might be using or how their arguments go, but my answer was that I think the Bible actually seems to acknowledge that these other gods exist but that they are lesser or weaker gods and that YHWH is the supreme god over all of them and that they are the one people are supposed to worship, rather than all of these peripheral ones.
Of course, how I worded myself was much more palatable to a teen than how I said it here.
The question of evil has plagued humanity for a long time. In trying to answer the question of the origins of all the evil in the world, Christians came to somewhat of a consensus with the doctrine of Original Sin. But I am not convinced that it really answered the question. Nor am I convinced that a lot of Christians actually believe it.
Enter the demons.
According to the doctrine of Original Sin, because of Adam's screw-up in the garden, sin is hereditary. It has been passed down from generation to generation and has become a part of the human condition. To quote John Calvin:
For our nature is not only destitute of all good, but is so fertile in all evils that it cannot remain inactive.
In other words, sin has become ingrained within humanity's nature.
And yet, despite sin being supposedly inherent in all of us, it is always something or someone outside of ourselves that takes the blame for the evil that happens in the world.
Drag queens.
The gays.
Abortionists.
Liberals.
Immigrants.
Catholics.
Protestants.
Witches.
Demons.
As times have changed, the outsider that has caused all of the evil in the world has changed, but there has been one that has kept on messing with us, and that is the demons. Some groups of Christians are more concerned about them than others, but demons have held a special place in our understanding of the causes of evil than any other. From milk spoiling to possession, demons have become a religious pop culture icon. We love to hate them. We are fascinated by them.
And we still like to blame them for damn near everything.
Let us take a look back at the Garden of Eden. God made this peaceful, beautiful place for their creation to live and thrive, but they put one rule in place: leave that tree in the middle alone. But then a talking snake shows up and distorts God's words and the woman eats the fruit and then gives some to Adam and they all start blaming each other instead of taking responsibility for their own actions.
I am well aware of the verses that speak to an inherent desire to do evil at all times. To quote the book of Genesis:
"And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5)
But I do not think this is entirely accurate. In fact, I am willing to say that I do not think this is accurate at all. But people need a language to explain why bad things happen. So we say they're all just evil. It is always them. Those people a long time ago were bad so God flooded the land as punishment.
But what if it is not that everyone is " evil continually" and rather that it is those who have the tendency to do bad that are the ones who also have the most influence? And the evil that exists has to do with our lack of desire to stop the evil? What if we do not desire to do bad, but rather we lack the will or means to put an end to it?
What if original sin is less about an inherent desire to do evil and instead an unwillingness to take responsibility to make sure evil stops happening?
So we blame demons and liberals and whoever or whatever else in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for standing against evil.
Greek Mythology is demonic but a pastor exploiting his congregation so he can buy a private jet is not. Hillary Clinton is demonic because [insert made-up reason here] but Donald Trump is innocent even though he stole money from a charity intended to help children with cancer.
Evil exists not because demons are running amok, but because we are not doing what is necessary to make sure that evil does not. So we have exaggerated the influence of spiritual forces in order to say that things are outside of our control so we can’t actually prevent it.
There are good people and there are bad people. But even good people have the potential to succumb to the wishes of the bad ones. Some people are evil to their core, but not all of them. We see this and acknowledge this despite what our churches might be teaching on the matter of evil.
Going further, we blame the evil in the world on outside influences because we are often unable to see the evils that are being done within our own circles. Or if we do see them, we are seeking a way to make sense of the evil by avoiding the conversation altogether. By blaming someone else, we can carry on the illusion that we are always the good guys. Or if we can find the one or two bad things that they did, even if they are minor offenses, we can exaggerate their influence and distract ourselves and others from the evil occurring in our own midst.
Maybe this is contradictory to my original statement, though. Maybe by saying that we are unwilling to deal with our own evil, it shows that every one of us actually is “only evil continually”.
Or maybe we created a problem by attempting to codify a set of beliefs about something that we rather should have been spending our time trying to stop.