American Idols and Demons

 Our Bible study, which met every Sunday night in our home, was discussing the confrontations between Jesus and demons - as recorded in the Gospels - and how removed it seemed from our experience. Someone quoted the demon Wormwood from C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters: "Our strategy, for the moment, is to remain concealed." The Lady pointed out that this was not the case in all cultures, that many people in Africa and South Asia seemed to live in a world in which demonic manifestations and miraculous healings are a part of ordinary life. A consensus began to form that demonic evil takes different forms in different cultures.

Then our friend Alyssa said, "I've wondered if in our country it's manifested in our horrible treatment of minorities." This intrigued me, because I had never considered it before. I understood that human beings built unjust systems and structures so that one group could exploit another - what the Bible calls "The World." I had at least a few mental models for how demons could play with the hearts and minds of individual human beings: the Screwtape Letters and the novels of Frank Peretti being merely two examples. I had no mental model for how the spiritual realm could directly interact with political, economic, and social structures that transcend individuals. 

But the Bible does. 

The Hebrew Prophets devoted the majority of their words to condemning two correlated evils: idolatry and injustice. They occasionally addressed personal morality, but most often challenged their nation to stop worshipping false gods and to stop cheating their workers, to remove corruption from their worship and to remove oppression from the poor. Idolatry and injustice are always connected.

In the New Testament, idolatry is always connected with demonic activity - implicitly in the Gospels (e.g. Mark 5) and explicitly in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Paul describes the paradox of an idol:

So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one." (I Corinthians 8:4)

But also:

Do I mean then that food sacrificed to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants with demons. (I Corinthians 10:19-20)

An idol is not real. It is fake, fabricated, artificial, and insubstantial. It is a fanciful lie, a self-evident poser. Those who worship it are deluded.

Yet behind every idol is a non-imaginary, malevolent evil. The delusion is not harmless, it is sinister. We make idols, but idols use us.

Idolatry is the link between demonic power and violent, oppressive injustice. An idol unites greedy, hateful or lustful individuals into a dangerous mob.  An idol is what leads an entire group of people to such a manic state that will lynch a family, burn down the Black district of a city, massacre a tribe, or storm the Capitol in attempt to hang the Vice President. An idol, being "nothing" (as per Paul), requires elaborate props and systems, which are always built on those who are considered undesirable or expendable. An idol, made in the image of warped human nature, reflects our worst impulses back to us in a feedback loop of destruction. Through idols, demons corrupt necessary institutions and build abominations that seem impervious to all attempts at demolition.

Race is an idol. Biologically speaking, race is not real. It is true that individuals originating from similar geographic regions are similar in appearance and in some physical attributes, but genetic variation between racial groups (however they are defined) is minor compared to genetic diversity within those groups. Ethnicity - one's heritage, culture and family background - is real, but the grouping of ethnicities into racial classes is wholly artificial and has changed over time with social attitudes. Race is a social construct - something human beings created to serve evil purposes. 

But racism, also known as White supremacy, is real. The racial caste system in America has not ended, though it is significantly weakened, and even if it ended tomorrow we would be living with its effects for 3 to 4 generations (see Exodus 20:5). Millions of Americans still worship it, while tens of millions comfortably tolerate it. It operates through structures that most White people don't notice, and through overt practices that Black, Indigenous and People of Color live with daily: police brutality, mass incarceration, concentration camps at the southern border, diversion of public resources, poverty on reservations that comprise a fraction of the land rightly belonging to those who live there. 

Racism has always had its visible manifestations, such as the Confederate flag and monuments, but these were socially or geographically marginalized. For many Americans, racism remained an invisible idol, if ever-present. That is, until June 16, 2015, when a quadruple-bankrupt real estate developer turned reality television star launched his Presidential campaign by blaming all of the country's woes on one group of immigrants. By the time he had cemented his personal grip on his political party, midway through his Presidency, he had become something that was missing from American public life since at least Andrew Jackson: a singular, personal embodiment of our American idol.

We are assured that, "those who trust in idols... will be turned back in utter shame" (Isaiah 42:17). The embodied idol of white supremacy will self-destruct, taking many worshippers down with him. This idolatry has infected churches, which must repent of it if they are to have worship acceptable to God (Isaiah 58).

But the demonic nature of racism means that it will live on, weaker and mutated but not eliminated. Like all injustice, it must be fought with laws and actions, yet we must remember that this is a spiritual battle and "the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world" (2 Corinthians 10:4). Governments can restrain evil through policies, but spiritual entities cannot be overcome by political action. 

The only solution is for the Church - the whole body of Christ in America - to repent of this idolatry, pray against it, and take decisive action to tear this idol down.