Holy Spirit Exorcism…?
It was a fairly normal day at work when I (Sage) received a call at about 2 pm. The gentleman on the line was very kind and asked if he could speak with a professor regarding a theological question. This is very common here and many people call wanting to speak to our professors about something related to theology. I asked him what kind of question he was calling regarding so that I could better direct his call. I did not realize the can of worms I was opening but was then handed a very challenging situation from the Lord.
The gist of his call was that he desperately wanted to find a ritual to formally exit Christianity. He grew up Christian since he was 5 and then in his early 20’s got very involved in a faith healing movement. Ultimately, his conception of God and theology destroyed him and brought him to the place he is at now, 1 week away from his 50th birthday. He was desperate to “exorcize the Holy Spirit”.
“If the Holy Spirit indwelt me upon belief and baptism brought me into the Church, I want that sign removed from me. Throw dirt on my head, anything. I just must have the mark of Christianity removed from me. I am apostate. I want nothing to do with Yahweh Elohim Theos. Please, for my emotional health, I want this torment from the Holy Spirit to stop. I am my own God, only accountable to me. If this means I burn and suffer in hell for eternity, I don’t care. I just want to be free of Jesus and live my life and smoke my bong. I believe in the spirit of truth and I know that Jesus is not that spirit. I have concluded that all of life is artificial intelligence and want to start my own robot religion. I can assure you mam’ that I have tasted and seen that the Lord is not good. The cup looks nice but is full of poison. I have experienced too much in life to ever believe that the Christian God is good. Why on earth would I find an iron age book relevant at all in the digital age”.
All of these things are direct quotes from a 35 minute conversation (mostly just me listening). He was also the kindest and most gracious caller I have ever had! I was astounded by a strange humility amidst his brokenness and desperation. He was crying out for help. But the help I had was the opposite of what he wanted. Throughout the 35 minutes I was begging the Lord to help me. What on earth can I say? I am not nearly equipped for this kind of twisted thinking and believing. Being given only a few minutes, I knew for sure that I couldn’t come close to speaking to the complexity of pain and confusion he found himself in. He knew all the Christian language and heck, he even went to some sort of bible college! Yet, he was taught a theology of total healing and constant miracles. When those didn’t happen in his life, he had determined that the Christian God was not who he thought and went seeking elsewhere. God hadn’t saved him from his earthly suffering so he turned away. At a point he was even training to be an elder in his denomination. He stopped because he realized how angry he was and that he wanted to come to the world with a flaming sword in light of him not getting relief from his suffering.
The flesh and the devil sought every way to destroy him in destructive beliefs feeding the disordered desires in his sin tainted heart. And when he sought help at his church, he was ignored and brushed off so he called us desperate for help. I listened. And kept listening. I let him talk until he felt he had said enough. Multiple times he made comments about himself saying he was “psycho” and asking for anyone who would be willing to talk to him- professor or student. I interjected during one of his self-talk comments about being psycho saying “to be candid, I don’t think you're psycho, I think you have experienced a really hard life and are having trouble processing all of it”.
He thanked me and affirmed my intuition. It allowed me to then be able to share a little bit of my story and the pain and suffering we have experienced over the past two years. No parent should ever have to say goodbye to their child in death. Yet, in a sin filled world, broken by the fall and the curse, death is an earthly reality. Yet I shared with him, my theology is very different than his regarding suffering. God didn’t deliver me from the pain, I didn’t expect him to! I expected him to be with me in my promised suffering. And I expect that there is coming a day in new creation where there will no longer be suffering. But in this life, I expect to suffer deeply. But the nourishment of the soul is that one day all suffering will end and paradise in eternity with Christ awaits.
I can’t explain the ‘problem of evil’ in a philosophical way but I can tell you the solution to it: it is in the cross of Jesus Christ. The God-Man took on all of the sin and suffering of humankind and bore it through death and into resurrection and glorification. And that is my hope. Future resurrection and glorification with Christ, not constant happiness or comfort on this side of eternity.
He didn’t let me speak for long but he listened. And I prayed deeply for his heart to soften and if truly the Holy Spirit is ‘tormenting him’ then He would bring conviction of sin and lead him into the TRUTH of Christ. Maybe there was a mental health problem, maybe a demonic one but It has weighed heavy on my heart since then. Each time it presses, I pray and ask God for mercy for this man. For I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good.
This conversion came as a shock and yet the Lord has used it to deeply encourage me. Oh Father I want to understand your gospel to help lead people to your truth. This man’s story through all kinds of Christianity has reminded me that though I struggle often in feeling that we need to just hurry up into ministry, slowing down is the best thing I can do. It is in this season that I am slowing down to really chew on theology like the doctrine of sin, christology, soteriology, and eschatology. I am thinking and praying deeply about the Christian life as I look at the church throughout the centuries. The Lord is giving me a much more robust doctrine of sin that is humbling my heart and revealing the twisted sinfulness that remains.
But I praise God for sending Christ to set me free from the slavery to sin! It still seeks to destroy me but I know one who is greater than all my sin. Not only does he overcome sin but he also forgives me as I continue to fall and stumble forward. The Christian life is not at all what I thought, it is so much more beautiful. The grace of Jesus is becoming bigger in my minds eye as I seeing it more and more for what it is. I am learning and tasting the sweetness of Christ and am all the more encouraged and spurred on to continue in theological study, knowing that this treasure of Jesus, this gospel of the Kingdom of God is one I have to share with the world.