Site icon Kairos – By Brian Niemeier

The Devil Believes in You

Recently I’ve received a number of questions pertaining to spiritual warfare, particularly the mechanisms of demonic activity. New readers find this blog all the time, so it’s important to give refreshers on the basics from time to time.

Sun Tzu 101 dictates that you can’t beat an enemy you don’t know. Therefore, the first step of spiritual warfare is knowing …

Demonic activity is real.
I could quote Baudelaire on the devil convincing the world that he doesn’t exist, but that would be an exaggeration. Belief in in the spiritual–including evil spirits–permeates human history up to the present day, and every culture has a tradition of spiritual warfare.

“But I Don’t believe in the spiritual!” Yes, you do.
All that’s really meant by “spiritual” is “non-material”. There is no such thing as a coherent and internally consistent materialism. That’s because pure materialism, followed to its logical conclusion, rules out the existence of reason–the spiritual faculty required to know about anything, including materialism. Materialist philosophies are therefore self-negating.

Deniers of spiritual realities may attempt to argue that reason, love, humor, etc. are epiphenomena of physical processes. But such arguments address the source of spiritual faculties; not their existence (in fact, their existence is presumed).

Whether or not brain chemistry causes thought is certainly an argument we can have, but unless you can show us a “thought particle” with measurable physical properties, we must conclude to the existence of a non-material dimension of reality that we all experience constantly.

Even if you don’t believe in the Devil, the Devil believes in you–specifically your value to God–to work day and night to destroy you.

If spiritual beings exist, they can have a moral dimension.
In classical philosophy and Christian moral theology, goodness is fullness of being. The goodness of a thing can be measured by how completely it fills out the ideal of what it’s supposed to be. Evil has no independent substance. Instead, evil is a defect or lacking with a parasitic relationship to the good.

For example, illness is the absence of health, ignorance is a lack of knowledge, vice is an imbalance of virtue.

Whether a given being is physical or spiritual doesn’t affect its moral character. If a spiritual being has defects that degrade its existence from the fullness of what it’s meant to be, it can rightly be said to exhibit some degree of evil. Thus, we’re faced with the reality of evil spirits.

You may not be interested in demons, but demons are interested in you.

How can evil spirits affect the material world?
Several attributes of demons follow directly from their non-material nature.

Areas of demonic activity
There are two types of demonic activity: ordinary and extraordinary.

Ordinary demonic activity is temptation, whereby an evil spirit is the direct cause of, or a contributing factor to, the temptation to sin.

Extraordinary demonic activity may occur in various ways. Some refer to these phenomena as “stages”, but they’re more properly called “areas”, since they don’t necessarily follow an orderly progression.

The areas of extraordinary demonic activity are:

Do Woke Cultists display signs of demonic influence in any of these areas?
As I said before, most Leftists don’t appear to show signs of demonic possession (disclaimer: I’m a lay theologian; not a consecrated and trained exorcist, so I could very well be wrong).
However, certain aspects of Death Cult thought and behavior point to another type of extraordinary demonic activity: diabolical obsession.
According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the Chief Exorcist of Rome, people suffering from demonic oppression may show these characteristics:

In this area, we are referring to an “out of character” sudden attacks of obsessive thoughts. These can be of an ongoing and even absurd nature. There is an added inability to be freed from these thoughts which range from desperation to suicide.

Although there are mental illnesses such as an obsessive compulsive disorder, if this is a persistent and harmful obsession, it would not be a bad idea to either have clergy or fellow believers pray over the person in the name of the Lord for healing and liberation from the obsession.

One of the most puzzling attributes of the Death Cult is the striking dichotomy between their destructive, malevolent forms of political expression and their relative normality in other areas of their lives. Who doesn’t have a friend or relative who conducts himself as a sane, rational, and emotionally well-balanced citizen at all times–except for when he’s engaged in politics?

Many Cultists even perform regular acts of objective moral good, such as loving and caring for their friends and families, volunteering, and charitable giving. Yet without batting an eye, they can immediately turn to defending infanticide and advocating for bigotry against straight, white, Christian males. How to explain this Jekyll-Hyde dynamic?
Looking at the description of demonic obsession, it’s not difficult to map these symptoms to typical Cultist behavior. Their ongoing preoccupation with critical and intersectional theory, their seemingly involuntary spouting of absurdities, and tragically, their penchant for self-destruction, would indicate that they are demonically obsessed rather than suffering from full-blown possession.
An explosion of demonic activity
Dioceses around the world are reporting an alarming rise in demonic activity. Even worse, there aren’t nearly enough exorcists to answer every cry for help.
Fr. Amorth cited the decline in faith as a leading cause of this diabolical epidemic. Human beings are creatures made to worship God. When people abandon faith in Him, they must fill the void with something else, and Satan is eager to oblige.
By definition, Death Cultists fit the profile of people who’ve rejected God. They profess blind faith in the unlimited malleability of human nature and the false dogma of progress. If such errors aren’t directly demonically inspired, they’re certainly diabolical in practice.
What can be done?
However dire one’s circumstances, there is always hope of healing through the power of Jesus Christ. Good is fullness of being, and illness–including spiritual affliction–is a privation of the good. Since God is by definition the Supreme Being, the One whose nature is To Be, no disorder is beyond His ability to heal.
Since the current social crisis more likely involves external demonic obsession than internal possession, mass exorcisms aren’t required to address the problem. Just as physicians can mediate divine healing through their skill, ordinary people can mediate deliverance from evil through prayer and fasting on behalf of our afflicted brethren.

And most of all, we should pray for the strengthening of our faith in the one source of all truth, beauty, and good.P.S. Not giving money to people who hate you is as much for your own good as theirs. You wouldn’t want to reward others for doing evil, right?

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