“The Devil Made Me Do It”: Religion and Psychology

‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers’

(Ephesians 6:12)

What we used to ascribe to supernatural spirits, we now ascribe to diseases of the mind. The possessed, in this modern perspective, is a patient, and instead of holy water and prayer, there’s pharmaceuticals and therapy. If there is a difference between the two (the possessed and the mentally ill), it is not in the symptoms (which are just given different names), but in the treatment, which focuses exclusively on either the spiritual or the physiological at the expense of the other.

Since we live in a world in which the physiological view predominates, a case must be made for reintroducing the spiritual. The form in which this case is usually made takes Baudelaire’s oft-cited statement as its starting point:

The devil’s greatest trick is convincing you he doesn’t exist

Denying the devil (and spirituality as a whole), leaves you susceptible to demonic influence. The problem with this is: if you don’t believe in the devil, then his increasing influence is just as imaginary.