In his preface to The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis remarks, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.”
I started thinking about Lewis and that quote while listening to a podcast on Wednesday that mentioned a woman who had been arrested for human trafficking at the southern border and whose reaction appeared to be right out of The Exorcist. In fact, many people are chalking up her behavior to demonic possession, and if you watch the video below you can see why.
I showed the video to a medical professional who had dealt with mental illness and drug abuse, and he suggested that the behavior could be attributed to bath salts. According to the DEA, symptoms of the use of bath salt use include “psychological effects such as confusion, acute psychosis, agitation, combativeness, aggressive, violent, and self-destructive behavior.” The woman in the video certainly displays some of those tendencies, and when I lived in Texas, it was not uncommon to see users violently erupt even to the point of climbing onto the hoods of moving cars and trying to open the doors.
The reaction in the video could well be the result of drug use or mental illness. She could be faking it, or for that matter, she may even be possessed. I’m not saying demon possession doesn’t sometimes manifest itself in a head-spinning, pea-soup-spitting, profanity-laced tirade. I am not a demonologist or an exorcist, so that is a bit above my pay grade.
But the demons in Lewis’s book never resort to special effects to waylay their victims, or as they are called in the story, “patients.” The demons instead ensnare their patients through their normal everyday needs, wants, desires, and frustrations. As the elder demon, Screwtape, says to his nephew and charge, “It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” The work of demons is often subtler than the symptoms that plagued poor Regan MacNeil.
Related: What Is Evil?
For an explicitly overt example of demons at work, look no further than this piece by PJ Media’s Kevin Downey Jr. about two black women shooting a white man in the face over a $3 burger in Milwaukee. Who mutilates another human being over a burger? Perhaps someone who grew up in a system designed to break up families and foster dependence on government largesse. And someone who has been administered a healthy dose of hatred toward another race along with the notion that life does not matter and is expendable. Add in a political system that has rejected the idea of law and order for some nebulous, undefinable Platonic form of justice, and the demons have done their work.
Another example is our ersatz leaders opening our southern borders to all manner of crime, including the plague of fentanyl, in the name of compassion and a not-so-subtle move to improve their voter base. But, of course, we should all be more concerned about the so-called “dangers” amassed at Canada’s southern borders while ignoring those at our own. In fact, the danger is apparently so great that the Ottawa police felt the need to shove a 78-year-old great-grandfather against his minivan and arrest him for honking his horn in support of the truckers. Yes, I am sure the great nation of Canada needs to be protected from the vicious wrath of a 78-year-old man. Canucks everywhere doubtless slept better knowing that such a dangerous man had been apprehended. Well done, everyone.
And, of course, there is the way that a certain infectious illness has been parlayed into a power grab and profit-making scheme by those who savor such things as money and authority, even a small amount of power at the lower levels such as schools or municipalities. Or consider the business owners in Queens, who are begging police for help after record-setting levels of theft. Recently, 1,236 cases have been reported in the area — for 2022 alone. That story, of course, has been repeated across the country. While the business owners find themselves in dire straits, the idea of refusing to prosecute this behavior has given the criminals license to debase themselves and choose the option of acting on impulse. In the name of reform, even the criminals have allowed themselves to be debased and dehumanized, acting on instinct.
You can find a plethora of examples of the work of demons in your daily doom scroll. And yes, Satan can use pornography, booze, drugs, heavy metal, Ouija boards, and even outright demon possession to steal souls if he wants. But as the Rolling Stones accurately observed, he is a “man of wealth and taste.” Why should he be so crass when, like Lewis’s aforementioned cards, words and lofty ideals such as justice, equity and pride can be co-opted to do the trick?
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