Hostage to the Devil

by Malachi Martin

  The difficulty comes, instead, from the insistence of latter-day opinion makers that the religious view of good and evil is outdated; that the personality of each man, woman, and child exists only as a cross section of single traits and attributes best revealed in scores we achieve in psychological tests; that the truest and purest models for our behavior come from “lower animals” and from “natural man”—a mythical invention that has never existed and that we cannot imagine.

  The difficulty is increased by additional factors. There is an ongoing insistence that religion and any form of worship and all ideals based openly on Christian morality should be banished from public, tax-supported institutions—and that this is “objective” and “democratic.” In our mass entertainment—motion pictures, television, novels, theater—there are no hero figures and no concept of right and wrong, of good and evil. We are shown human life as alternating between a bleak despair and a desperate struggle with banal forces against which our only allies are ourselves and our own resources.

  But the Christian viewpoint is still the viewpoint of the majority. It still guarantees that we are, each of us, whole persons, not bundles of separate reactions to be studied in cross sections and pushed to the outer limits of our endurance in a topsy-turvy world.

  The core of the Christian view of individual men and women is that our humanness—our essence and value as separate and whole people—is treasured and protected by the spirit of Jesus. It is, in fact, to reestablish that humanness and its integrity that an exorcist presents himself freely in the name and with the power of Jesus. He makes himself a hostage—as Jesus presented himself as hostage for each one of us—in a battle for one person’s humanness. He will win that battle only by the strength of his faith in Jesus and with the fiber of his individual will attached to Jesus’ salvation.

  In common sense and in the popular mind, a distinction is always made between human being and humanness. We find a universal agreement about the general appearance and the functional capacity that indicate human being. A certain physical form derived from another human being with the same general form. Certain normal functions: eating, sleeping, walking, talking, laughing, thinking, willing, dying. Certain capacities: learning, growing, inventing, planning, sympathizing, and so on. One or more of these may be lacking or in a reduced state. But a certain number of them enable us to describe their possessor as human.

  As is clear from some of the cases reported in this book and from many others known, possessed people can and do, at least for a time, function reasonably efficiently as human beings, in their jobs and in society in general. Actually, the more perfect the possession, the less likely any disturbance in one’s functioning on the level of human being. Jay Beedem, whom Father Mark seemed to uncover as one perfectly possessed, was a model of cool efficiency.

  But between that condition of human being and what, for want of a more accurate name, we call humanness, we always make a distinction.

  In humanness we include qualities that adhere to the inner self and are interconnected with an appreciable outer way of living and doing. These qualities, taken together, confer a commonly recognized aura, a decor, a configuration of winsomeness and worth on the whole person. The quality of humanness reaches a striking degree of fullness in some of us; when it does, it seems to give a shimmering tonal halo to our communication with those around us, and others feel in such a person a temperament that eagerly responds to fragile but intimately precious values.

  Humanness is a grace, not necessarily graceful but never ugly; not necessarily holy—in the religionists’ sense of that word—but never obscene; not necessarily sophisticated by “higher culture,” but always with its own refinement; not necessarily dominant or predominant or dominating, but in itself indomitable. It makes its possessor a connected human being, lovable to some, alive to all others, yet with a personal regnancy; he loves himself but no genuinely vile egotism blinds him to others; he loves others, but no hatred of self makes him a pawn or a plaything for them.

  We always see humanness as a variable quality. Sometimes we think not all have it. Some seem to have little of it. All who possess it, have varying degrees of it, are never constant in it, and from time to time fail in it completely. And, in ourselves, even when we have done “as well as we can” and console ourselves by saying that “under the circumstances we could not have done better,” we are sensible of how much better, how much more perfectible we are, how more perfectly we could have acted.

  For Christianity, the source of humanness in all individuals, past, present, and future, is Jesus of Nazareth. All forms of possession, from the partial to the perfect, are clearly seen as an attack simultaneously on the souce of humanness, Jesus, and on the humanness of an individual man or woman. The process of possession in any individual consists of an erosion of the humanness Jesus confers.

  To explain how possession develops, therefore, one must answer several questions. What is Evil Spirit in relation to Jesus and in relation to us all? What is the humanness of Jesus? How is Jesus the source of humanness for all individuals? How do we explain this in relation to all men and women who lived historically before him and after him? Concretely, how do ordinary men and women attain or miss the humanness of Jesus? And finally, how is this humanness of Jesus eroded—what, in other words, is the process of diabolic possession?

  Some of the greatest minds in our history have asked and pondered these questions. Some of those minds have gone a good deal of the way toward answering them—as far, it is fair to say, as minds in science have gone in answering questions proper to their domain.

  Even though our coverage of these questions concerning Jesus and Lucifer must be brief due to limitations of space, we are not merely indulging in a comforting cliché when we make one observation: the best that latter-day prophets and modern doom sayers seem able to do with these matters is to ignore them and tell us to do the same. They cannot prove them false, but only increase their efforts to persuade us so. And for all their mighty efforts, they cannot repair the damage they do in this way to our humanness.

  Human Spirit and Lucifer

  In the history of Exorcism there is constant reference to evil spirits: to Satan (or Lucifer) as the head or chief of those spirits, and to an entire world of being inhabited by such spirits.

  In the preceding five exorcisms, that world inhabited by evil spirits is most often described as “the Kingdom.” Christianity would be unintelligible if we were to omit or deny belief in that world of evil spirits. In the New Testament and in Christian tradition salvation by Jesus is presented as a victory over an opposing and baleful intelligence belonging to a bodiless being. It is never simply and primitively the subduing of blind material forces. Nor is it merely the setting up of ethical examples and moral rules. And the “Kingdom of God” is always juxtaposed to the “Kingdom of Evil” or of Satan.

  We cannot speak in any ordinary sense of the “history” of these spirits. For their existence did not begin with and is not confined to the space-time continuum in which history’s events must take place. Yet it is clear from tradition that the entire existence and fate of these spirits lies in a very intimate and intricate relationship to the human universe we inhabit.

  Tradition speaks of a primordial sin of rebellion against God by some of the spirits, and led by one particular spirit symbolically named Lucifer (“the Son of the Dawn,” to indicate supreme qualities) or Satan (to indicate a function as chief adversary of God). From the sparse items of information in the Bible, from stray remarks made by Jesus himself during his lifetime, and from continuous traditional Christianity, the general “history” of these spirits and their relationship to Jesus and to our world would seem to be the following.

  God’s decision to create intelligent beings—spirits and humans, free to love him and free to reject him—was intimately linked with his decision to become a human being.

  But in speaking of that decision of God, we have to make a distinction between the way we u
nderstand and talk about it and how God made and implements it.

  Our understanding of and speech about this decision is a step-by-step process. First, creation of spirits. Then, their rebellion. Then, the creation of mankind. Then, mankind’s revolt. Then, the conception and birth of Jesus. Then, the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus and the consequent salvation of mankind. Then, the life of men and women beset by those spirits who revolted. We have to think in this way. But that is our limitation.

  For God there was and is no step-by-step process. He did not, as it were, first decide to create the spirits, then, as an afterthought, to create humans, and then, on further reflection, to become a man. Creation did not proceed like Topsy. It was one decision englobing spirits, humans, and God-made-man. And it was a decision not made at any given point in time but in eternity. God was never without decision.

  This means that his decision was integral in cause and effect from the start. His view of what everybody would do at any given moment was identical with his view of what everybody did, does, and will do until the end of all time and space. That view was complete always. And every detail of the decision was taken integrally and wholly from eternity in view of every possible human action and reaction and result.

  The centerpiece of that decision was God’s own choice to become a man. Just as his own divinity was, to speak in a human fashion, turned in this one definite direction, so all the “pieces” of God’s decision—spirits included—were created and ordained in this direction. God was to enter into an intimate relationship with matter—place, time, objects, humans.

  So also his creatures, the spirits, were made by him and ordained by him to be in an intimate relationship with matter—place, time, objects, humans. The destiny, powers, personal interest of these spirits, their very being, in its deepest instincts and ramifications were and will remain forever intimately focused on this human universe, on all this universe contains, and—above all—on Jesus as the source of that universe’s meaning.

  Christian tradition thus assigns to these spirits the role of intermediaries. They were and are bodiless—like God. They were and are creatures—like humans. In the piecemeal working out of God’s overall decision through time and space, and in the individual minds and hearts of billions of human beings surrounded by material things, the spirits were given functions at which we can only guess. These functions were related to the human universe and to God’s decision to become a member of that universe.

  At this point of our understanding about spirit, we are somewhat helped by side-comments of Jesus. He spoke once or twice rather mysteriously but quite succinctly about the important personage among those created spirits who revolted, Lucifer.

  Rebutting those who harassed him on the streets of Jerusalem and who reviled him as an evil man, Jesus said fiercely: “You belong to your father, Satan. And you are eager to gratify the appetites which are your father’s. He, from the beginning, was a murderer. And, as for truth, he has never taken his stand on it. When he utters falsehood, he is only doing what is natural to him. He is all false. And it was he who gave birth to falsehood [emphasis mine].”

  On the lips of a Jew of that period, the term “murderer” did not have the legalistic meaning we have attached to it. The word had more the connotation of our “blasphemy” or “desecration.”

  The second aspect of Lucifer’s rebellion, Jesus adds, was one of falsehood. Again, on the lips of Jesus, this word referred not so much to lying by words, to fibbing, as to what we call “pretense,” “deception,” “false claims.”

  The emphasis of Jesus is quite clear. Lucifer was and is the originator of all blasphemy and deception in the universe of spirit which God had created—to the point that all those who practice deception and who commit the ultimate blasphemy are merely reproducing Lucifer’s appetites for falsehood and blasphemy. In some mysterious way they share in and augment Lucifer’s falsehood and blasphemy. “You belong to your father, Satan.”

  Jesus adds a few more details. “From the beginning” seems to indicate that the rebellion was instantaneous with the creation of Lucifer’s intelligence. There never was a fraction of his existence when Lucifer opted for God. Furthermore, Lucifer is “all false.” It is “natural” for him to deceive and blaspheme. These are stark and simply effective terms used by Jesus to describe total evil. Not merely a totally evil being, but a being who is the source of all evil in the world of mankind.

  From these few details we can only guess at the nature of Lucifer’s rebellion in which he was joined by unnumbered other spirits. It involved blasphemy and deception. It concerned Jesus as God and as the savior of mankind; and it concerned men and women as participants in the fullness of Jesus’ humanness.

  Did Lucifer falsely claim to be higher, more noble than the man Jesus? And, in doing so, did he blaspheme by claiming that he, Lucifer, a bodiless spirit, the supremest angel, should be regarded as higher than Jesus, who, like all humans, was part spirit, part matter? He, an angel, worship a mewling baby at Bethlehem and a bleeding half-animal groaning in death throes on Calvary?

  Or did Lucifer revolt because he and the other angels were destined to help elevate human beings beyond the merely material and human, beyond even the status of the angels, right to the status of sharing God’s life?

  Or did Lucifer reject God’s decision integrally? That is to say: did he reject God’s decision to ordain and relate everything—God’s own being and the spirits God created—to a human universe? And, if so, was this because Lucifer rejected the prime trait of that decision, a universe of beings—humans—who would need compassion, and mercy and help and sustainment? The spirits were to be servants of that compassion and instruments of that help to an unmerited glory for those creatures.

  Or did Lucifer, with angelic intelligence, foresee a destiny of human beings yet hidden from our human eyes—that after eons of development, when outer space is colonized in billions of galaxies, mankind will progress and evolve in spirit to a status we now know nothing of, and in which men and women will enjoy a freedom from matter but still be able to enjoy the beauty of this material world?

  Jealousy? Ambition? Pride? Scorn? We can only surmise.

  Whatever Lucifer did, he blasphemed against God’s unique divinity, and he made false claims. Punishment was immediate. Jesus, in an overt reference to his personal memories of this revolt, spoke of that one quick, terrible moment of degradation and punishment of Lucifer and of those spirits who followed his lead. Jesus said: “I saw Lucifer falling like lightning from heaven.” Again, in the style of Jesus, we have a stark evocation of the sudden flash of Lucifer’s brilliant intelligence in the clean skies of creation’s dawn; then the moment-long glare of Lucifer’s claimed glory; and, finally, the immediate humiliation of utter defeat and rejection by God, as Lucifer plummeted from the clarity and brightness of love and changeless beauty down past the rim of happiness into the pit of eternal exile from all good and all holiness.

  In this revolt and punishment, the natural orientation of Lucifer and of those spirits who were part of his rebellion remained. They were by their very essence in intimate relation with the human universe. They were powerless to free themselves of it. Their powers of will and intelligence remained. Only now, those wills and intelligences were twisted by revolt and their unchangeable state as the condemned ones. Their love for God, for Jesus, and therefore for mankind became hate. Their need to move in a human universe and to be in relationship with matter remained; but it now became a need to disrupt, to soil, to destroy, to make ugly, to deform.

  Their knowledge of truth became solely the means for an exercise in distorting the truth. Their reverence became mockery and contempt. Their lovely desires became gross threats. All their light became a confusing darkness. And their primordial destiny to be the helpers of Jesus became a living and baleful hate of him, of his love, of his salvation, and of those who belong to him.

  They were, in other words, conditioned through and through by the diab
olic “twist,” that peculiar upside-down, disjointed, askew existence, covered in deception and falsity, which we always detect in the morally evil person, in the war-filled world of a Michael Strong, and in the frightful topsy-turvy world of every possessed human being.

  The nearest we can come to gauging the degree of Lucifer’s ugliness is in the overtones of the totally insane who laugh all day uproariously at their own dreadful aberrations—their spasmic violence, their treasured filth, their self-mutilation. We pity them as out of control, as beside themselves, as unconscious of their tragedy. But in them and in every grin of our own Schadenfreude we can detect an echo of Lucifer’s very own accents, his signature, that uproarious burst of reasonless laughter mocking his own self-delusive and deliberately chosen state of absolute hate.

  “Good” and “evil” as applied only to human beings, therefore, must bring us into direct, daily, practical relationship with the influence of Jesus and the influence of Lucifer. Furthermore, “good” and “evil” as applied only to human beings must bring us into direct recognition of our own individual wills. For whatever the invitations offered by Jesus, whatever the blandishments offered by Lucifer, we each make our choices, even as Jesus, even as Lucifer. We choose.

  Much of what we know from our direct experience with evil spirits dovetails with what we would expect, based upon what we know or can glean of their origin.

  The most notable and, for many modern minds, contradictory aspect of such spirits is that each spirit seems to be a personal and intelligent being, but that it has no physical existence. It is bodiless. This is a constant and primary datum of Christian belief about such spirits and is borne out by evidence from exorcisms.

  In modern psychology the terms “personality” and “person” have been tied to psychophysical consciousness. “Personality” is taken to be a complex of psychophysical acts—emoting, willing, desiring, thinking, imagining, remembering—and the exterior actions that are motivated or colored by such “internal” acts. All of them can be quantified. A “person” is somebody with a more or less consistent and definable complex of such acts and actions.