116
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
116 points (98.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43859 readers
1613 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Metatron has done a video on this ( https://youtu.be/-Mx6TtkgugU?si=7SS7s9JpMupmmpKl ). I don't think he's religious, but he knows his stuff when it comes to classical history. I haven't watched this video in a while, but I think it's more about the demons in the Bible that are close to modern pop culture demons (horns, big bat wings, etc), rather than the sorts of demons that actually possess people.
If you're asking what Christians think demonic possession is like today, it's far more subtle than it is in the Bible. The goal of any demon is to lead people away from God, so openly showing themselves to a secular culture that believes they're fake is unhelpful. All of the stories I've heard of demonic activity have been where three demons imitate actual medical conditions like asthma, migranes, or epilepsy. The way to tell between purely medical conditions and demonic activity is with prayer and God helping you discern what it is. The only tell apart from this would be doctors doing everything they can and the problem only getting worse.
If you want to know more about demons, I recommend the Screwtape letters by C.S. Lewis.
Hmm...so the main targets of possessions would be the Faithful, whereas skeptics and those who don't follow the Teachings of Christ would be...safe, i guess is the word? They wouldn't be singled out, for sure.
I imagined they were subtle regardless of it being today or back in the days of Jesus since being bombastic or OTT would likely unnerve people and draw them back towards God...or, well, I know I'd go back to mass if a demon started raving to me like Pazuzu does in The Exorcist lol
Thanks for the rec, I'll check him out later
Screwtape letters is excellent, but hardly an authoritative resource on demons. Nor was it intended to be.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/-Mx6TtkgugU?si=7SS7s9JpMupmmpKl
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.