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Discerning the spirits

By Peter Sellick - posted Thursday, 12 August 2021


In the first letter of John, we find the verse:"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world." The early Church is instructed not to make moral judgments, or examine values, or darkly list "isms." It is instructed to discern the spirits. Talk of such spirits doesn't evoke the existence of the supernatural as does the Scottish prayer:

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

Rather "Spirit" here refers to the real mental constructions that take over our lives, those insubstantial animals that hold us to ransom and have a life of their own. That the writer of John's letter is not referring to the supernatural is confirmed by his mention of false prophets who are the disseminators of false mental constructions, otherwise called in the New Testament "unclean spirits". We are all familiar with such spirits that we have inherited from our families of origin, from traumatic events, tragic loss and of meaningless and from the surrounding culture. Indeed, a whole tribe of psychologists is engaged in sorting them out, naming them and putting them in their place. A modern attempt at exorcism, if you will. The spirits that live with us may also be ideological, more the result of the activity of false prophets. These spirits are unclean because they have a distorted view of human life and the world. They are more the subject of preachers, political scientists and philosophers than psychologists.

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These different spirits, both personal and public are hard to shake, and it feels like we are possessed. It is as though we have a demon! Leaders of nations can be possessed. How else can we explain the power of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Plot? These demons exist as ideologies that are blind to human life and push millions to extinction. The medieval picture of the world seems true in our time long after we have ceased to believe in the supernatural; the world is inhabited by a multitude of demons.

Jesus is found, in the New Testament, casting out demons. A common response to these stories is to dismiss them as relics of a superstitious past because they betray an ignorance of the origins of mental illness described in modern psychology and psychiatry. But it could be that these stories of exorcism are metaphors for the kind of possession discussed above. They indicate that the unclean spirits that derange the mind are liable to be cast out by another spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, otherwise referred to as the Holy Spirit.

The Church talks of the Holy Spirit in order to distinguish it from all the spirits of the world that are many or "Legion". The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God that is identical to the Spirit of Jesus, and it may be identified by the fruits it produces. According to Paul in Galatians these are:

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

By contrast, the spirits of the world (flesh in Paul's terms) are:

fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.

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There arises from this conception of the works of spirit a moral discernment that does not rely on proof texts or what is or not "natural" or an attempt to continue a tradition that has long been irrelevant. It is rather theological. By "theological" I mean the way the Church conceives of the presence of God in the man Jesus. Karl Barth was famous for his insistence that ethics for Christians can only be theological ethics, an ethics that cannot be separable from our understanding of the presence of God.

Ethics are not so much a question of distinguishing right from wrong, good from evil, but a matter of discerning the spirits that lie in the hearts of men and women. Such discernment is pastoral rather than accusatory or judgmental. When a person is judged as being selfish or venal, only the symptoms are addressed. The cure can only be to try harder not to be selfish or venal. But when, as good pastors attempt to do, we uncover why the person is as he is, when we discern the spirits that have become lodged in the heart, then a cure may be sought. We can then talk about the cure of souls and we find ourselves thinking about the exorcisms performed by Jesus.

The discernment of spirits is the task of dogmatic theology, the science of the presence of God as Holy Spirit. Every theologian is an exorcist. This is, as the word "discernment" suggests, an attempt to divide out the spirits of the world/flesh from the one divine Spirit of God. This work is unafraid to name false prophets as heretical. A relevant example, in this context, is Pelagius who was declared a heretic because he stated that free will and intention were adequate for the cure of souls.

Discernment of the spirits is a more powerful and deeper exercise than mere moralism. When our armed forces abroad are found to kill the innocent, when corporations are exposed as fraudulent, when our parliamentarians are found to be vicious there is talk of changing the culture. But spirit precedes culture, and nothing will happen in the cause of justice unless we ask the most important question; "What spirit is here?" Only this question will reach the root of the matter because spirit resides in the hearts of men and women, and it is here that change must occur.

Moralising is akin to stone throwing and name calling and only evokes defence and dissembling. Pelagius was wrong, we cannot reform ourselves with good intentions or with legislation or by changing our language or insisting on rights or banning certain kinds of speech. Identity politics will become a burden on our existence. In other words, the new Puritanism evoked by the thought police will end badly. The discernment of the spirit reveals the foundation of our lives. In the terms of the New Testament, it is only when the unclean spirits are cast out and replaced by the Holy Spirit can change occur and we find ourselves in our right minds. I know that seems simplistic and glib and I acknowledge that there are many complexities and false starts. One works the whole of one's life to be free.

The process of secularisation has left a vacuum that attracts the spirits of the world so much so that mammon and the will to power are once again the lords of the earth. We now trust in the elemental spirits of nature; competition, the market, nationalism, merit, excess, and the ability for each of us to invent our own lives. Our societies are fragile, because we are possessed by a plethora of spirits each pulling us in different directions. Democracy is failing because the electorate sees through the will to power of our politicians. There is no health in us.

The best political systems in the world can be corrupted from within when the spirit of disinterested public service is displaced by venality and the pursuit of personal power. When retired politicians cash in on the extensive contacts that were made while in office it is clear that something is not right. For example, both David Cameron and Julie Bishop were embarrassingly involved in the failed Greensill Capital. Did they harbour the spirit of venality only after the end of their political careers or where they like that all along?

Unclean spirits lurk in the most unlikely places, in parliaments and corporations and nations and, most alarmingly, in the Church. But they require a host, an individual from which to wreak their havoc. Likewise, the cure is individual and requires self-knowledge, confession and the indwelling to the Holy Spirit. Our knowledge of demons is clear, they may be chased out, but the space they leave in the soul will quickly be occupied by other demons and the person will be in a worse state than before. The idea that we are free to be ourselves is wrong. When we search for our "true selves" what do we find? We find a whole menagerie of spirits each demanding obeisance. It is only when we are inhabited by the Spirit of Truth that we begin to have a self that will equipped to begin the journey.

The Gospel of John, the most theologically developed of the gospels, describes how the Spirit comes to dwell in us.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. (John 14:15-20)

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About the Author

Peter Sellick an Anglican deacon working in Perth with a background in the biological sciences.

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