More than twenty years ago I found myself the pastor of a church that had been controlled from its founding by a deep evil. While there were a number of simple Christians among its members, as an institution it was utterly devoted to lies and vanity, and actively hostile to the gospel of Jesus Christ. The evil centered in its clerk, an apparently harmless little old lady. She had been responsible for the quick deposition of every one of its pastors, none of whom (I later discovered) had been able to tolerate her attacks, her attempt to control, for more than two years. When I arrived the church had been decimated yet another time by the acrimonious departure of yet another pastor. I was told that I was the last one: if I could not save the church in two years, it must close.
Naturally, its real troubles were carefully hidden from me at my coming, and I hadn’t the experience to ferret them out. I was allowed to believe previous pastors had left because they had moved on to better salaries than this church could pay, which certainly looked like a reasonable explanation at the time. The clerk herself met me at my first visit, and very hospitably introduced me to the church and its town. Three years later I presided over the meeting that both rejected her control and closed the doors. I had fought her and her demons to a draw. It was the best I could do.
The experience was horrible, literally beyond words. I had, before this time, only experienced evil in its effects, and not in a combat situation where I was the direct object of its exertions, under attack from one of its masters, an anti-saint (an old woman, forsooth!) with apparently supernatural powers in support of the Lie. I came away knowing what Bunyan was speaking of when his pilgrim met Apollyon. In surviving it I was given lessons and resolve I could not otherwise have gained, but was also given scars which I will carry to my grave.
One of deepest wounds was the impression that I was doing this without help, especially the help of understanding, even from Christian friends. When I tried to tell them what I was going through, the reaction was at first genuine sympathy—I was clearly having some real difficulties, and would be prayed for. But then whenever, encouraged by this, I began to search for levels of empathy that would actually answer to the pain, I began to see in their faces the obvious signs of dissociation, and hear in their voices unmistakable inflections of the suspicion that whatever in all of this was beyond their own experience of evil was connected in some way to my own weakness and inadequacies: “He thinks he’s the only one who’s had troubles with bad people.” “If he was tougher, or had more faith, he wouldn’t be carrying on like this.”
A friend in the pastorate gave it to me directly: This is not uncommon. A more experienced man (he clearly implied himself) would know how to handle it. He, moreover, knew the old lady quite well, since she was a family friend, and didn’t think she was nearly as bad or as dangerous as I did. She moved to his far larger and more prosperous church after mine closed. It took her about a year to split the congregation and throw him out. He was, after all, a “fundamentalist,” interested only in Jesus, and wholly out of sympathy with the church’s true reason for existence.
Whether my friend experienced her as satanic, or simply a successful opponent in the struggle for influence I never learned, but one of the things I did learn in all this was that the fellowship of people who have actually been involved in what amount to being exorcisms—direct conflict with evil—appears to be rather small because God, for the protection of his people, keeps it this way. The relation of these people with each other goes beyond empathy because empathy, at least empathy as assurance that one “knows what it is like,” is of only limited help in such situations. Only co-belligerency—willingness to enter the battle one’s self, is what is required.
In the days since my own initiation I have seen in the faces of several friends the literally unspeakable horror of encounters such as I had—they, even when they are men of words, cannot find words to describe it. I do give them empathy, for I know they are not slightly crazy, or hypersensitive, or going through the struggles with depression that are the normal lot of intelligent, sensitive people. There are special marks on the face and voice that are left by the terror, the fear, the shame, and the revulsion, of first-hand engagement with evil, and those who have done it themselves recognize the signs.
I am writing this, however, so others will know that such things exist, resolve not to mistake the cries of tortured men for those of lunatics, and give whatever aid and comfort they can to those who have been called upon to give share the sufferings of Christ in this way.
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