29 September 2024
Mark 9:38-50
38 John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name,[a] and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.” 39 But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. 40 Whoever is not against us is for us. 41 For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
42 “If any of you cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. 43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. 45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, 48 where their worm never dies and the fire is never quenched.
49 “For everyone will be salted with fire. 50 Salt is good, but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”
Before getting started, let’s acknowledge that just about all of us aren’t sure what to make of demon possession and exorcism. When the Bible refers to demons, is it speaking about a real external malevolent spiritual agent, or is it merely an antiquated way of speaking about what we would now understand in terms of mental illness arising from within? In our secular age, where science is understood to reveal the highest truths, we are all but incapable of thinking outside of material causality. Because science can only address the material, we have come to believe that’s all there is. The scientist have replaced the priests, the laboratories replaced cathedrals. And Christians have thus often felt that faithfulness to the Bible required a rejection of science, a retreat into anti-intellectualism, which not only creates a stumbling block to faith but which leads to a vicious cycle in which both Christians and non-Christians conclude that science and religion are fundamentally opposed. This is a devastating mistake.
At the risk of losing you from the start, allow me to note that exactly because science, properly speaking, is simply a method of objective, third-person observation it is thus incapable of addressing the undeniable subjective, first-person reality of human consciousness. You are sitting there right now, aware of what is happening, thinking thoughts, making observations, remembering random stuff, and none of this is accessible to anyone else even as it is what makes you you. While no one should doubt that mind is indissolubly related to our physical brains, everyone should doubt that consciousness is reducible to material causation, as if all your dreams and desires, regrets and disappointments can be located in various synapses. The immaterial reality of the human mind is an irreducible mystery - one no sane person can deny - and it’s a mystery that opens up for us a window on the very nature of God in whose image we’re made. All of which is to say that, posing for ourselves the question of whether the casting out of a demon refers to an immaterial, spiritual reality or a material, empirical reality misapprehends what it means to be human. We are embodied spiritual creatures.
Even if you find all that unconvincing or incomprehensible, we can still all agree that casting out a demon, whatever that means, would be a good thing. And yet, here come the disciples led, by John, with a problem: someone who doesn’t follow Jesus was casting out demons in the name of Jesus. Rather than rejoicing that people had been delivered from their oppression, John reports that they tried to stop this unauthorized exorcist, presumably because they thought this is what Jesus would’ve wanted them to do. But not only did Jesus say not to stop him, he told John, “Whoever is not against us is for us”.
Anyone who actively seeks to deliver others from bondage aims in the same direction as Jesus himself. He seems unconcerned about gathering more intel as to who this guy is, or even trying to get him to become a true disciple. He’s content to let this guy do what he’s doing.
Our sympathies, however, certainly lie with the disciples. Where did this guy learn about performing exorcisms in Jesus’ name? Did he go to school? Was he properly trained? Did he get a license? Where are his credentials? And what is his theology of demons? To what church does he belong? Does he engage in sensitive pastoral case to those from whom he’s cast out demons? And why doesn’t he follow Jesus like the rest of us?
These are the kinds of questions we would ask, but Jesus - at least in this instance - isn’t interested in the answers. The disciples entirely understandable impulse is to draw distinctions between what is sanctioned and unsanctioned, to institutionalize authority and legitimacy. Presumably this arises partly, as we we’ve seen, from the desire to elevate their own importance, but surely also it arises from legitimate concern. It’s not hard to imagine how this could go wrong.
We need professionals, right? Who wants an amateur surgeon? But as a professor of mine often quipped, nowadays we worry that a poorly trained doctor can harm our health, but we don’t worry that a poorly trained minister might damage our salvation. Now any sufficiently charismatic person can claim to be a pastor, and I won’t even try to hide my prejudice against people who haven’t studied theology at a reputable university.
The danger Jesus identifies is our penchant for placing ourselves at the center and establishing ourselves as the standard and the arbiter of what is good. It’s easy to look at others and see that this or that action or message is problematic, to envision potential worst-case scenarios, to effectively declare that if folks aren’t doing it the way we’re doing it then they’re doing it wrong, that they should just stop. Christian history abounds with divisions created by those who thought, probably sincerely, that they were standing against something that God also opposed, even as Jesus declares, “Whoever is not against us is for us”. How often have churches regarded one another as dubious and defective? And how frequently have we looked upon the world and seen only causes to oppose rather than occasions to rejoice?
None of this, of course, is to say all is well and there’s no cause for concern and nothing worth opposing. There most certainly is. But Jesus here takes a remarkably generous view which opens our eyes to the reality that even those who don’t follow Jesus, like this unlicensed exorcist, might be right sometimes - might, at times, even be more aligned with Christ’s cause than the disciples. His response invites us to reflect upon the possibility that much of what we think we ought to oppose is, in fact, just fine and maybe even cause for rejoicing - and to consider that there are indeed things worth opposing that we haven’t even identified. If you’re inclined toward generosity you see a lot to be grateful for. Jesus doesn’t ask us to be the police.
To return to where we began, I think it’s obviously the case that there is no good reasons for Christians to oppose science because science is simply a tool for discovering truth about the natural world. As a matter of fact, it was Christians who invented modern science in large part because they understood the pursuit of knowledge as inherently worshipful, the truth of creation a participation in the Truth of God the Creator.
What we should oppose, however, is scientism, the belief - and it is an article of blind faith - that the only truths are those which can be observed by science, that all apparent immaterial realties are reducible to material causation. This inevitably produces an impoverished conception of the human fundamentally incompatible with Christian faith.
To touch ever so briefly on the rest of the passage, when Jesus speaks of the stumbling blocks in our path, with good reason we take him to be speaking about the realm of personal morality. If you’re addicted to pornography, for instance, then you might want to consider that it would be to your benefit to gouge your eyes out. This is probably(!?) hyperbole, but the point is that, where we are spiritually unhealthy, we should take proactive, potentially drastic measures to remove the source of our un-health. It’s worth paying a high price to remove that stumbling block.
The most dangerous stumbling blocks are those which we cannot see, and - worst of all - we might not even realize we’re falling. While science, as a discipline, is not against us and is thus for us, there is no more pervasive obstacle to spiritual health, and really, to human flourishing, than the blind acceptance of materialism. We’re so deep in it that we can’t even perceive its affect upon us. But I suggest that we take drastic measures to remove this stumbling block - coming to church is a good start - to do the difficult and possibly painful work of abandoning old habits of thought and adopting new ones, and thus regain the eyes to see that the invisible realities are the most real of all.
Commentaires