This reflection explores a challenging passage from Matthew 12, where Jesus speaks about demons, possession, and the spiritual state of humanity. It examines the implications of Jesus’ teaching on holiness, sin, and the nature of evil, as well as the troubling doctrines of everlasting punishment and divine justice. The aim is to provoke deeper thought about the realities of spiritual possession, the nature of good and evil, and the ethical questions raised by traditional Christian teachings.
We read in Matthew 12 that Jesus taught that when a demon leaves a man, it searches for a new home. If it can’t find one, it comes back to the man. When it finds the man’s house — meaning his life — tidied up, it gets seven others worse than itself, and they all possess the man, so he ends up worse than he was at the start.
Some say the "tidied up" stands for the man having himself prepared for demons to make their home in him. Others say it means that the man is purified and holy.
The man would be unlikely to want the demons back, so the tidying means getting rid of all that makes you unholy. When you are tidied, you are holy.
The man would be in the same position and state as somebody who was never possessed. So why him and not somebody else?
The metaphor of tidiness implies that the man is now good. If the man were evil, the metaphor of untidiness would be appropriate.
Jesus then meant that a holy person can become possessed.
Jesus is insinuating these things:
The demon can come back to a person and take them over, even bringing its friends. So the only reason it couldn’t possess anybody else was because they were too full of demons — there was no room for another.
It tells us that the demons are desperate to live in bodies so possession should be a constant danger.
And if people
sin so much and demons are so keen then most people are possessed - or will be.
It tells us that since we all sin, sin will let demons in far easier than a
demon will get back into a man who was saved from it and who became a decent
man.
Jesus added that the generation he belonged to was evil and would have the same fate as the man who got rid of demons but then got them back, with more parasite demons for company (Matthew 12:45). Jesus made the demons seem to be the power that rules the world. This could only attract people to consort with them for material favors.
Jesus dangerously implied that the Devil cannot have a kingdom without possessing people. This is a terrifying idea. If we are demon-possessed, how can we know what is real or true? How can we know that Jesus was the good prophet he said he was?
The Bible speaks of the devil as being the real god of this world and who specializes in making people blind to the truth — which is Christianity (2 Corinthians 4:4). In other words, he is not divine, but the world is treating him as its God. When Satan is so powerful and is the god of the world and can’t have a kingdom without possessing people, most possessions are discreet. The possessed don’t feel possessed. But Satan controls their feelings so they feel free. He controls their thinking and they think they are free. Satan surely sees no good in scaring people unnecessarily but manipulates them to make them evil and harden their hearts against God.
Jesus treated the scribes and Pharisees — despite their respectability and seeming goodness — as the biggest emissaries of Satan, not possessed people, prostitutes, or tax collectors. This was because the scribes and Pharisees specialized in the most dangerous evil of all: evil that looks good and is disguised as good.
To me, a man who thinks everybody else is possessed must feel possessed himself!
Jesus supported God’s Jewish Law despite its cruelties. God gave parents the legal right to have their lazy drunkard sons killed by stoning (Deuteronomy 21). How can we trust a man like that?
Jesus inserted the assumption of everlasting punishment into his theology. It implies that the damned should suffer for their sins forever, though it would do no harm if they did not suffer that long. Jesus obviously hoped that sinners who die will rot in Hell forever. That is the conclusion we are forced to for he did not say he KNEW for sure, that he seen Hell. And asking us to assume its existence is inappropriate. We need hard evidence for such a serious claim.
Additionally Jesus it would seem that taught that anybody who dies in a state of estrangement from God will continue it forever. This was a very serious slander, for nobody could be bad enough to go forever to a place where there is no joy and no love. Anybody who says that they could be is kidding themselves.
You need infinite proof to say that anybody deserves suffering that lasts forever or infinitely. And when there is no evidence whatsoever for free will that is free enough to choose such an unspeakable fate of everlasting despair, the doctrine is plainly reprehensible.
We cannot prove by experience or logic that we really have free will at all. Animals and drunks are not free and feel free. To say this power whose abuse lands you in Hell forever is to say something really malicious. You could feel free and still be programmed by the environment.
Even if we have free will, we cannot assume it can go as far as to choose that kind of fate.
We need punishment or crime control in this world, and it is a necessary evil to prevent chaos. Thus, he ensured that Christianity would hate sinners and the damned, however vehemently it would pretend it does not.
It is heinous for any Christian to say he believes that a homosexual, adulterer, or heretic should suffer forever in Hell when the evidence is not good enough for that. It tells us only that he would like to see this happen to sinners like that. Yet Jesus himself is at the root of this evil.
We have found that Hell, Satan and possession are all connected together to make a toxic soup.