Growing up, the preachers would tell us about exorcisms in West Africa. Exorcisms happened more often in West Africa because of the higher level of communion between the West African people and the spirit world. The witch doctors. The veil was thinner there, they said. That scared me a lot.
“Why don’t we have demons in America?” I asked Dad.
“We do.” He’d say. “They look different here because our culture has already forgotten God. They don’t have to work as hard to get us to fall.”
“But what if you tried to let a demon in?” I said. “Would it work?”
“Don’t ever play with a Ouija board and you won’t have that problem” He replied. “Life has enough gateways to hell as it is.”
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them
I find it hard to talk about love. When most people write or talk about romantic love it makes me want to crawl into the ground and curl into a ball and die. Almost all the talk of love I encounter, in written or spoken word, feels shallow and embarrassing. Flowery handwringing and histrionics, which do nothing to persuade me. The weepier they get the more resistant I feel. My lingering thought is always that human, romantic love is nothing in comparison to faith, to godly love, and all attempts to elevate romantic love or be elevated by it are akin to the golden calf: a false god for people who have forgotten the real one, or never known Him to begin with. In my heart of hearts I believe that lovers have submitted to something small. They numb themselves from angels and demons, busying themselves with love, catching a glimpse of the greater Love without pursuing it.
That is probably is too harsh a statement, and not something I totally believe. The Bible makes a lot of room for romantic love and marriage and sex and many other things that I could say belong to the earth. There are ways that God reveals himself in love. There are ways to glorify God in love. I am not so prudish and legalistic to think that romantic love must pay a dutiful tax to religion for legitimacy. I just feel that people skip ahead and forget the higher things, the things that add dimensions to the richness they’ve discovered. If someone cannot submit to God first, how can they remove demons? If someone cannot submit to God first, how can they understand love?
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
It took me 30 years to watch The Exorcist and 30 years and 6 months to watch Exorcist III. I don’t like spiritual horror. Or body horror. They’re both too real. The only type of horror I like is psychological.
I told a writer friend of mine to watch Exorcist III - it’s rather a literary movie, very restrained for the genre, lots of elderly men running around with their crises of faith - but he said he doesn’t watch possession movies because to be exorcised is feminine.
I said to be exorcised is not feminine. It is the demon who submits to God, not you. Is that right? I spoke too quickly. You should submit to God too. Everyone has to submit to God at one point or another, in this life or the next. Maybe all faith is a bit feminine then, if femininity means submission1. It is feminine to be possessed, it is feminine to be exorcised, and it is feminine to have faith, under that understanding. To ask for forgiveness is to submit to God. To forget God is to submit to evil. In every case, even under enlightened rationalism, even under agnostic shielding, your spirit yields to a greater power. We are never free from femininity; we are never free from submission. Our only willful choice is to whom we will submit.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it
I am comfortable with the idea of submission. I do not think it is degrading to submit, just as faith in God feels natural and wholesome, just as the relationship between Christ and the church models marriage for man. But I chafe under the thumb of the Pauline doctrines. Paul’s emphasis on feminine submission in marriage troubles me, mostly because I find it hard to do. The modern condition has not spared me. I think the same numb that keeps me from demons (and sometimes from God) separates me from man. I think I find it hard to yield to anyone at all. To be perfectly honest, most of the men I meet are like the priests in the Exorcist movies: full of doubt.
Don’t come at me for this. Suspend some judgement. Accept that I believe in heaven there is no gender, accept that I believe in equal spirits, that I believe women have suffered under twisted visions of patriarchal headship, that Christ loved women and that all women deserve dignity and respect.
This is a beautiful piece, and it feels so different from your other work, in a sort of humble, sweet way. I just attended an event where a woman spoke on submission and Shakespeare. I think it was a bit of a kink for her, but it reminded me of a dear friend who told me her thoughts on submission. Although she is secular and has no religious ties, she has taught me some of the most Christian lessons and said that good submission is a gift. It's something that a woman gives to a man because she respects and trusts and loves him, and it is the same for us with God. It is not obligatory as much as voluntarily. So yes, I think exorcism is essentially feminine. But that's the point. Women show men how it is we're all to be with God.
Just found your Substack and LOVED “Pants.” I’m also reconsidering and studying much of the “Christian” teaching I’ve received. I wanted to share with you that I think male translators and teachers have shaped our reading of Paul so much that we are not really reading Paul so much as a caracature of him. Solid hermeneutics reveal something very different. Biblical scholar Lucy Peppiatt (& others, but she’s my fav) have given me an enormous amount of insight and relief. Go read her stuff! Also Richard & Catherine Kroeger. Looking forward to reading more of you.