Exercising Demons
We all have them. And we’d all like to get rid of them. I know what most of mine are. I suspect I know a few of yours.
Just so we’re clear, my use of the word “demons” is symbolic and metaphorical. I don’t mean literal malevolent spiritual forces.
Years ago I was part of a young and vibrant church. The pastor had an experience that caused him to switch horses in the middle of the stream. We were not the kind of church that talked about, much less dealt with, demonic forces. We were more of a “love your neighbor and here’s a neat song with an electric guitar and drums” kind of church. But the pastor got a lightning bolt of some sort and started taking us down a path where we were going to be getting in the ring with these forces of darkness. Well, he was really the guy that was going to be in the ring. We were more like Mickey to Rocky: His team in the corner. We had a few meetings on what we should expect with this new direction, and he told us that when he casts demons out of people, that they will actually cough up the demon, which will look like phlegm.
I looked around the room, hoping to catch someone’s eye with a nonverbal, “You believing this shit?” look, but I was apparently alone in my incredulity. Unrelated, but I was asked to leave that fellowship shortly after. OK, it was directly related. But that suited me either way. That was one jenga block in a tower of experiences that has brought me to where I reside today regarding spiritual things: The kingdom of Heaven belongs to the child. If the topic or concept is beyond the understanding of a child I no longer have use for it. Denominations? You can have it. In fact, I’m completely disengaged from doctrinal differences, worship styles, phlegm demons, schisms, traditions, and the exhausting list of things each group has determined that will or won’t get you into heaven.
So I’m not talking about actual phlegm spirits here. For centuries, people have used the term “demons” to be symbolic for a person’s inner conflicts. Maybe a person’s weaknesses. If you ever heard a person described as someone who “has a lot of demons” then you automatically know their life hasn’t been exactly linear or crisp. If you “have a lot of demons” then you’re an unlikely candidate for president or a supreme court justice. Unless you’re Brett Kavanaugh.
When it comes to our symbolic demons, it seems we have three options:
We can feed them. We can just accept that they are a part of our lives and try to crate them for part of the day; try to keep them on a leash but let them out to play from time to time also. We can find others who have the same demons and make friends with them. In doing this our demons don’t have quite the stench as if we were around others without our struggle. We try to keep some duct tape over the mouth of our conjoined twin, but when challenged about their presence, we can simply say, “That’s just who I am.”
Do you remember the folklore story about a guy named Edward Mordrake? Mordrake is a figure from medical times, although the details of his life and condition are the subject of some controversy and uncertainty. Mordrake is said to have lived in the 19th century, and he is often described as having a rare and unusual medical condition known as "Diprosopus," which is a congenital disorder where a person is born with two faces on one head. One face is typically functional, forward facing as faces typically are, while the other is non-functional and may be a mere duplication or partial duplication. Mordrake is perhaps best known for the claim that his second face (which was on the back of his head) was malevolent, whispering to him at night and driving him to madness. His second face was reported to make a variety of expressions. If you haven’t heard of Mordrake, my apologies for the upcoming nightmares. While you might not have seen that coming, he surely did.
So some people treat their demons as just another, less desirable, part of their whole. The Hyde to our more presentable Jekyll.
Our second option concerning our demons is to exercise them. I bet when you read the title of the blog post you thought I misspelled “Exorcising” didn’t you?
People that exercise demons will admit (usually only to themselves) that they have demons, and that they are bad, and that they need to be dealt with. They don’t make friends with their demon. They don’t accept their demon. But what they do to get rid of their demon is what has been called a “half measure.” That phrase comes from chapter 5 in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. There you’ll read, “Half measures availed us nothing.” While I have some deep, fundamental differences with that book, I’m absolutely in love with that quote. Think about the math of that statement: The bill due is $10. I put in $5. Now the bill due is $10. Wait, what? Shouldn’t the bill be $5 now?? It should, but that’s not how this works with human behavior. A half measure will produce zero progress. Put in half the effort and you will move forward not even an inch. That’s my kind of math. They are just exercising their demons. Running them around in a room in an aerobic frenzy that, arguably, does not move the needle at all.
We exercise demons in several ways. We throw money at them (Kavanaugh), we blame other people for them (Kanye), we deny we did what we did (Trump, Shaggy), and sometimes we just put lipstick on a pig and call it good (I’ll own that one).
A good example of a half measure would be when a person is dealing with alcohol use disorder (I don’t use the word “alcoholic” because I can’t find a medial definition for that term) decides, after several consequences, to with from hard liquor to beer. It’s like putting a band aid on a compound fracture. Or basically any home renovation done by someone who intends to flip a house. There’s the recognition of the problem, but mostly an attempt to hide the problem from public view.
Our third option is to exorcise our demons. While the word “demon” is symbolic, “exorcise” can be taken literally here. It comes from the Greek word, “Exorkizein” which means to “bind by oath.” So, to exorcise our demons means to earnestly and solemnly command the disturbance that is causing us harm to leave our company. Not in part, but the whole. Fully. It is a serious, weighty task that cannot be taken lightly. We are adjured, bound by an oath, to remove that which causes us and others harm.
We do this by digging all the way down to the root, not just trimming the top of the weed. Cutting through the tumor until we get a clean margin. And we do this by removing all of the oxygen from this force that promised freedom but has proven to imprison us. There are deep and lasting and generational consequences if we fail to keep this oath.
I can look back through the pages of my life book and point to chapters where I have done all three. I’m not the kind of person that is warded off by the warning label; I’ll read the label and test if it’s right. There are so many examples I could give here, but my struggle with obesity comes to mind immediately. Maybe because my first practice was literally feeding this demon. Both literally and socially. At over 300 lbs, I was the smallest guy in my friend group. That’s just who we were. And the larger group we were a part of, the church, never talked about obesity out in the open. Our leader was obese.
Then I started exercising my demon. Literally again. I dealt with the weight, but not the root. And so back and forth over the years I would get in the ring with this demon and play fight. Pillow fight my way to temporary victory. Only for the root to break through the soil again.
But over the last few years I kept digging until I hit rock, and you know what I found? I found that the reason I soothe with food is because I was not soothed (that one was easy). But what really “unsoothed” me was I had never made peace with who I was (not so easy). So my peace came from the acceptance of others. The natural consequence of this was that my peace would ebb and flow based on the whimsy of those in my orbit. Gordon Ramsey does not recommend that recipe and neither do I.
That’s my warning label. You can trust it, or you can try it out.
