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Okay, let me kick this one off.

Assuming many regulars here will agree with Will that this is abusive, do you think it would still be abusive if he was over 18? (And is it more or less abusive than Michael Jackson?)

Don't let my first line count me out!

Although I believe in the dark side of the supernatural, and in certain places and times there have been genuine manifestations of the demonic that need to be dealt with. I would agree that many of these exorcisms are abusive. I've watched a few documentaries on the Nigerian/Ugandan "Witch Children" which was absolutely horrific. I've found footage of grown men blatantly threaten aid workers and children in their care with death at sunset if they did not leave their village.

Check it out, I think it was a C4 documentary from Dispatches last October.

Horrifying stuff

Could someone do a quick description as I can't see the video?

No wish to view or comment on this specific case....

But regarding the "serious conversation about religious abuse"....



Q. How well did Christ assess and deal with this boy in Mark 9?


The Healing of a Boy with an Evil Spirit

14When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. 15As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him.
16"What are you arguing with them about?" he asked.

17A man in the crowd answered, "Teacher, I brought you my son, who is possessed by a spirit that has robbed him of speech. 18Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. I asked your disciples to drive out the spirit, but they could not."

19"O unbelieving generation," Jesus replied, "how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me."

20So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.

21Jesus asked the boy's father, "How long has he been like this?"

"From childhood," he answered. 22"It has often thrown him into fire or water to kill him. But if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us."

23" 'If you can'?" said Jesus. "Everything is possible for him who believes."

24Immediately the boy's father exclaimed, "I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!"

25When Jesus saw that a crowd was running to the scene, he rebuked the evil[a] spirit. "You deaf and mute spirit," he said, "I command you, come out of him and never enter him again."

26The spirit shrieked, convulsed him violently and came out. The boy looked so much like a corpse that many said, "He's dead." 27But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him to his feet, and he stood up.

28After Jesus had gone indoors, his disciples asked him privately, "Why couldn't we drive it out?"

29He replied, "This kind can come out only by prayer.[b]"

30They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, 31because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise." 32But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it.

//////////////////////


Q. In Luke 11 what connection, if any, does Christ make between demonic possession and unwholeness in a person?


Luke 11
24 When an evil[h] spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, I will return to the person I came from. 25 So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept and in order. 26 Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.





Q. How accurate a representation of traditional Christianity did CS Lewis make regarding devils?

"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."
- C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

PS Is it also time to have a serious conversation about the ´óÏó´«Ã½ giving an open platform to artists who admit to having sex with numbers of children in the developing world?

The description in Mark is actually one of the most accurate and specific descriptions of what we would now call a Generalised Tonic-Clonic Seizure that survives from the ancient world. There is absolutely no doubt that the writer of Mark was familiar with the phenomenon of a GTCS.

It has NOTHING whatsoever to do with "demonic possession". Even in the account itself, Jesus did nothing that altered the natural history of this purely neurological phenomenon. There was no casting out. No exorcism. No healing. Things just carried on as normal, and we never hear of this poor boy again.

So, not only was there no demon, the gospel writer is actually without excuse; 400 years previously the Hippocratic document "The Sacred Disease" had determined that epilepsy was a NATURAL, not a "divine" phenomenon, was linked to the brain, and was in many cases hereditary. Some of the specifics were wrong, but that's to be expected. 400 years later, superstitious people in the Greek sphere of influence were still attributing this to made-up "demons". That is something of a tragedy.

As for this particular case, like OT, I haven't seen the video yet, but this is what you get when ignorant people are allowed to labour under their malignant superstitions, and civilised society lets them get away with it because "religious beliefs must be respected". That is rubbish. PEOPLE must be respected; BELIEFS must be held up to the light of Reason, and where they are shown to be nonsense, should be ditched.

Seems to me to be one step away from trepanation for the removal of "evil spirits" and "demons". That they view homosexuality as a disease is reprehensible, and I imagine the psychological trauma of experiencing an exorcism first hand must be pretty horrific.

Barbarians every last one of them.

So where is the follow-up? Did it work? If it didn't, will they have to do it again? Will they resort to stronger measures? Should they call in the big guns on this one, the Catholic Church? Now there's a religion that knows demons if ever their was one. BTW, will there be any prosecutions for child abuse? How does this rank compared to the parents who recently fought court ordered chemotherapy for their son suffering from a cancerous tumor? This seems far more inconsequential. Not necessarily without trauma but...

Observing the ritual, I see no reason to hope that the demon has been driven out. Perhaps those Pentacostalists should watch the movie "The Exorcist" several times and take some advanced courses. In the real world of exorcism, that looked to me like amateur night. I've got a suggestion. How about taking the kid to a pron movie, a strip club, and then a whore house. Those women might have more luck. It's probably what a psychotherapist would do and charge a lot more for. If that doesn't work then...there may be no hope at all. They'll all just have to learn to live with it.

I, Myself, am a Pentacostal Christian and I believe in this.
We do not agree with the term exorcism but with deliverance. I have experienced deliverance myself and do not think it was cruel. It was upsetting to go through but after the demon was cast out I felt better and the spirit of guilt was well and truely cast out.
This boy in the video didnt have this happening to him without consent. For this to be done the boy would have needed to have been prayed for first untill he fell to the floor. If or when he had fallen the pastor would of known about a demon being in control. He would of had to give consent for this to go ahead and also to admit there was an evil spirt in control. In the post it said it was a 9 minute section of a 20 minute video... In the last few minutes of the video it would have shown the final stages of deliverance. When he was throwing himself around the floor this was the demon being recognised and him fighting the spirit... The final stages would have shown him being released from the demon in his own way of dealing with deliverance. Most popular way is by screaming and then a sudden relaxation. The boy would not have been hurt by any member of his church as they were trying to help him.

Did anyone see Channel 4's live exorcism a few years back?

I don't think the producers got exactly what they wanted...

This superstitious claptrap has been roundly debunked, and it is time for people to move on.

L-Etchells

I also have experience of the Pentecostal/Charismatic church world and have heard a number of 'explanations' of 'supernatural' events. To be honest, none of them stack up.

Here's the trouble, I'm not denying your own experience and the positive influence it has had on your life, but the sequence of events you describe in paragraph 2 has no biblical basis at all. Rather what you write reads as an observational account of such, or other 'supernatural' events... and the danger in all of this is that it leads to a self-fufilling prophecy mode of thinking and doing. People learn to expect certain behaviours... and... end up behaving the way they think they should.

Sorry.

Good man, Peter, a bit of critical thinking at last! I'm proud of you :-)

-H

I haven't seen the video myself but was wondering if the 16yr claimed to already be a christian before the exorcism/deliverance?
The reason I ask is that many years ago I heard a woman giving her testimony in which she claimed that subsequent to her conversion, she had to be delivered from demon possession.Although I couldn't doubt her sincerity, it didn't seem to me to match up to scripture's teaching on salvation! A bit like Doreen Irvine's book 'From witchcraft to Christ'.
Surely if 'the Gospel is the POWER of God unto salvation',Rom 1:16 then preaching the Gospel is the NT way to deal with situations like that? Just asking.
Also why was the whole thing filmed in the first place?

Helio

You don't know the half of it!

Did you know that another 'sign' of demon possession is pacing around at the back of the hall to punch in time cos you're peeved off at all the shenanigans going on during 'worship'? You'll be pleased to know that I didn't respond to the offer of 'prayer'.

Or that the 'presence of God' can be controlled by the the worship leader changing key? He warned me before hand by winking from the stage, and 'C' became 'G' or something and everyone went wild!

And don't you think it's odd that God can tell a 'healer' that 'someone' has a sore back, but doesn't ever get round to letting on what their name is? I mean, wouldn't it just be easier if God whispered, "Mr or Mrs (whatever) come on down!

Oh, I'm full of stories.


:-)

If you were interviewing a cohort of applicants for a reasonably important job.... say teacher or pilot, and he/she revealed they believed, or had personally experienced, the healing powers of exorcism/deliverence. Would you consider them mentally unfit to fill this position?

Oh dear, for some reason George W Bush has just popped into my head. : )

I find it quite worrying that there were so many people there to witness this 'exorcism', this coupled with the fact that the video was posted on the church's website makes me wonder if it was done more out of the people wanting to be seen doing this - as in 'Look at me, I'm an exorcist!' I am not saying that they didn't have good intentions, a lot of people do but good intentions aren't everything.

I am wondering as well if he did actually agree to this being done of his own free will or was there some kind of coercion involved.

The Lord moves in mysterious ways, and it would appear that having flaming nutters make absolute twits out of themselves writhing to non-existent "possession" by non-existent pixies is one of the more mysterious. Maybe God *wants* people to be atheists, and having these wallies heap more disrepute on the religious mode of thought is one of them, homeopathy being one of the others. These people don't need the man from Galilee - they need the men in the white coats with a big net.

There's a spirit of homeopathy?

Flip, that's another one for the list!