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| He's out to get us. |
Moving in more supernatural directions, manifestations of the outlandish run the gamut from strange manifestations of Pentecostalism (anyone remember the fad from a few years ago when gold teeth appeared?) to Catholic statues of Mary bleeding from the eyes.
Exorcism is practiced by many different Christians who share nothing in their practices (again, one can compare Pentecostals with Roman Catholics, though there are practices in between these two). I bet most suburban Christians in America haven’t given two thoughts about real exorcism in as many years.
Visions, manifestations, dreams, demons, levitations, healings, angels, prophecies, blood, secret teachings, special revelations--the spectrum of non-normative Christianity is wide and wild. And most “normal” Christians rightly tend to stay away from the spookier edges where it is easy to get lost in the darkness of cults and wayward personalities.
And yet--take a look at the following passages:
Ephesians 1:20-21: "He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come."
Ephesians 6:12: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Colossians 1:16: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.”
1 Peter 5:8: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
Whatever one might think about the more outre practices of the Christian fringe, one must admit that the New Testament is no stranger to the supernatural, and that Paul and other writers indicate that the realm of the divine might impinge upon this material world in less than friendly ways. In other words, biblically we have a right to have a healthy spiritual paranoia. Obviously anything religious can zoom off into dangerous or bizarre areas, and the New Testament urges restraint and scrutiny. But . . . it also gives us uncomfortable pause.
Interestingly, the high points of Christian engagement with culture accept this biblical directive.
Dante, for instance, used all manner of literary resources to exemplify the reality of the Dark Side, while aware that his poem was “just” art. Demons don’t use hooks to rip apart the damned, and Satan is not miserably encased in ice at the center of the earth. But spiritually speaking, these metaphors enunciate genuine turmoil of the soul and speak to the hunger for immortal love. Some modern readers will reduce these images to mere Jungian metaphors of mental growth and stability, but Dante would have none of that Oprah-fied diminution of genuine truths.
Milton also plays around at a high level of seriousness in Paradise Lost. It is play in the sense that Satan’s persona is made-up, but it is deadly serious in the sense that the negentropic forces of evil genuinely exist and that humans are in big trouble.
William Blake in a more heretical, offbeat way explores similar territory with his fantastic mythologies derived from Christian and esoteric sources (like the Kabbalah), but his art still has the capacity to help us recognize that evil can be palpable and is not just the result of a nascent industrialism’s bad effects on society.
In a more recent vein, Charles Williams draws on his experiences with the occult to craft weird novels of supernatural realities that are both enmeshed in human lives and that exist beyond the material world. His Christian novels of the supernatural are not meant to be literal, and yet they are meant to be real. People really do give themselves over to the occult and hope to damage the goodness in God’s creation.
On the one hand--the outskirts and beyond of Christian supernaturalism, where hairbrained fanatics dwell. On the other hand--a biblically normed acknowledgement of multiple levels of the created order, some parts of which do not look upon us favorably. In the middle--serious artists who want to get beyond ooga-booga scariness of television or film and use the resources of language to remind us of something important.