Laugh at the devil and he will flee from you...
“How can we make clear the victory of Christ? In this way: when speaking of sin, demons, darkness, by not speaking of them in too tragic a manner—like the German theologians, all so serious! The further north you go in Germany, the more they are concerned with the realm of darkness. And if you move to the Scandinavian countries, all is darkness: God against Satan, and vice versa! ... It is not wise to be too serious.”
—Karl Barth’s Table Talk, ed. John D. Godsey (Edinburgh: 1963), pp. 16-17.
I am particularly frustrated at the moment by Christians who find a demon behind every bush - and in every book or exercise of the imagination! The 'Christian' opposition to the fantasy genre holus-bolus is a grave mistake and an attenuation of both Christ's victory over the evil one and the God who delights in his creative creation - a creation that itself brings forth new things (e.g. Gen 1.11: not all of creation is ex nihilo...). Reading Lewis doesn't lead to the occult!
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13 comments:
Yes: forget about merely demythologising the Bible -- some Christians need to have their whole world demythologised!
*read in an olde English accent*
This sounds like the devils post to me!
I can see that you have been taken over Byron...
But where do YOU encounter such Christians? surely not at MTC? We are far too worldly for that kind of thing...
Speak of the devil: "Lost Message", I just happened to click on your Blogger Profile, and guess what? Your profile had been viewed 666 times!
Clearly even the Blogger programme has more sense of humour than some demon-anxious Christians!
But where do YOU encounter such Christians?
Oh, you know, as I've been going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it. I do have a life beyond MTC you know...
I too am bothered by the demonizing of everything. It is a culture of fear that is part of the popular Western Christian experience. My mentor summed it up aptly with, "most folks are more afraid of the devils ability to decieve than God's ability to lead." We have been running fantasy role-playing groups as an outreach in our church for a few years now, boy did the crap hit the fan when a local Pentecostal church found out. The experience left me with little patience for such idiocy.
Ben,
eerrmmmm...you got me there!
Exposed for who I really am!
MWHAAAA!
Simon
But I feel safe knowing that there is a demon under every bed!
Don't take that away from me.
pleeeeeasssse.
:)
Well, when y'all get tired of talking about demons, there is still something that bugs me: Why is it that Jesus didn't encounter any demons in Jerusalem, but that was where his greatest oposition was???
The fact that it's not recorded in so many words doesn't mean he didn't...
While I don't get the "there's a demon everywhere" thing, many things, like the fantasy you mentioned, seem to be inspired by Satan or whatever. What ticks me off the most is how much emphasis there is on Satan's rulership of the earth (with the usual prooftexts of "prince of power of the air", "god of this world"), when John clearly tells us that "NOW is the ruler of this world cast out."
Of course, I have trouble reconciling both of the ideas of Satan's power on earth from the NT, but I tend to be more optimistic anyway.
as an aside...
Shakespeare once wrote:
"oh while you live, speak the truth and shame the Devil." (Henry IV)
I thought it was apropos to a discussion of "laughing at the devil."
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