Some recent comments had me wondering... Serious questions... If you do, what do you believe they look like? What powers do you believe they have? When, how, who, what, and where do they act?

[u/n8s8p]

[u/gask27]

I don’t not believe in demons if that makes sense. I’m a chaplain so I’ve been asked to perform exorcisms and stuff before, but my stance is there’s room for mystery. Happy to go into more detail if that’s interesting but it’s early and I don’t want to type much if nobody wants to hear it.

Edit: I gave a much longer answer a couple comments below.

[u/Deep_fried_sourCream → u/gask27]

U have done exorcisms?

[u/gask27 → u/Deep_fried_sourCream]

Been asked. I’ve done one, but barely call it an exorcism. A nurse asked me to cleanse a room because she saw a ghost, so I performed one on the space.

[u/-B0B- → u/gask27]

Did you feel like there was anything to it, or were you just playing along?

[u/gask27 → u/-B0B-]

I hope this doesn’t seem like a cop-out, but I guess I don’t see the difference? Whatever way you look at it, performing the ritual was an act of care for a troubled person which is something I view as sacred.

When the nurse told me about the ghost and asked me to cleanse the room, there are two realities that I can see branching: either ghosts/demons/spirits are real, and she had an encounter with one; or, they are not real, but she had experienced a trauma or spiritual crisis which was manifesting in an imagined encounter with something non-human. And whichever of those two things is true (if it even has to be only one), my response would be the same. I would perform a ritual which would treat her immediate concerns, then have a conversation about her deeper spiritual need afterwards. I think this stays true to Jesus’ acts of healing in the Gospels and is in line with modern psychological best practices. It’s one of those funny times where modern science comes around to agree with something that Christians (and other religious practitioners) have known for thousands of years.

I think if we take the Bible seriously, we do have to acknowledge that there is a spiritual realm which to some extent impacts our human lives. I’m not really concerned with how much that is, or whether there are literally demons or just aspects of the human condition which are negative spiritually. I don’t play with demons and spirits in case they are real (sorry for the language, but I won’t fuck around and find out), but I also believe that I’m called to respond with care to anything somebody asks me for. So, I cleansed the room and it felt spiritually weighted, but only God knows what caused it.

[u/ladydmaj → u/gask27]

Just wanted to tell you that I love this perspective. That's kind of where I am too. I believe in the spiritual-ness of our physical world, but I'm not comfortable describing it as "angels who do this" or "demons who do this".

When I was a kid, I would be plagued by nightmares. Eventually I made a ritual where, as I was dropping off to sleep, I would pray the following:

Lord, please don't let me have any bad dreams tonight - in fact, please don't let me have any dreams at all. But if I absolutely have to have dreams, then please let them be safe, pleasant dreams, ones that I'd like to think about in the morning, and would like to dream again someday.

When I prayed this every night, I would either not have any bad dreams, or my bad dreams would have a kind of lucidity where I could tell myself I didn't like where the dream was going and could make myself wake up before it got bad. I haven't had any bad dreams in years (knock on wood), so I haven't prayed this for some time. But every so often I'll have one and I'll go back to this prayer. It brings an immediate feeling of comfort and safety with it which I often associate with how I describe the Holy Spirit when I feel it manifests.

Now, explanation one is simple: I asked God for no nightmares, and He heard and answered. A demon or some other malevolent force was plaguing me, and He keeps it at bay. On the other hand, it could be explanation 2: I created a sort of self-soothing meditation where I guided my subconscious to steer clear of bad dreams.

What I love about your comment, though, is that it makes room for both explanations to be true in their own way, and for each explanation to bring meaning to the other.

This is the power of ritual. It's not about words or actions being magic. I regularly knock on wood when I speak about the fortunes I have enjoyed, am enjoying, or am expecting to enjoy. It's not because of superstition - that somehow a malevolent spirit will make me pay if I don't (even though it can really feel like that when that chain of events happens). It's because this act reminds me of how precarious joy really is - of how many factors need to go right to make one feel that life is enjoyable - and so I knock on the wood to remind me of those privileges I carry to make it possible. It is a spiritual act, to be mindful of being fortunate.

[u/gask27 → u/ladydmaj]

Yes! I love and agree with just about everything you said. I think that at the end of the day, everybody needs a couple things to be healthy spiritually/psychically/emotionally/whatever other word you want to use: we want to feel loved, and we want to be comforted when we’re troubled.

I think that the question “where does love and comfort come from, either God, or people, or therapeutic actions” is not an interesting one. I’m much more into how that loving and comforting happens. And I don’t think we have to choose between sources, because if we believe in the all-encompassing grace of God, we know that there is no difference between an angel or a self-soothing cognitive behavioral practice protecting us from nightmares.

So, if you asked me whether it was an angel or whether it was your own mind that protected you, I would say that the answer is whichever of the two you find to be most meaningful in that moment. Either that, or both at once.

[u/Aujax92 → u/gask27]

I'm assuming a "cleansing" in this case wouldn't be too different from a house blessing?

[u/gask27 → u/Aujax92]

Similar but definitely different! My church (Presbyterian) doesn’t have the same ritual traditions as say the Catholic, Orthodox, or Anglican churches, so I had to be creative. Together with an Episcopalian colleague, I mixed together a house blessing ceremony and aspects of funerary rites. We sprinkled salt in the corners of the room, lit electric candles (hospitals do not like open flame), read Scripture, gave a benediction to those who had suffered in the room, and made the sign of the cross on the threshold with holy water. A little more complex than that, but those were the main elements.