“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.” (Luke 11:24-26 NIV)
We all need self-improvement. We should all strive to improve in all areas of life as much as we can. This is growth. If we are not growing spiritually, mentally, emotionally, psychologically and physically (improved health, not weight), we are dying. If we are not moving forward, we are slipping back. This is a basic principle of life. The desire for self-improvement is a positive thing. Anyone with a desire to improve in any area of life will soon discover that a quick trip to a good bookstore will provide more information than can be assimilated in a lifetime! We do not suffer from a lack of information.
However, man centered (godless) self-improvement can be a trap. At the heart of every problem we face in life, there are spiritual issues that cannot be ignored. We are created as spiritual beings in the image of God, and any attempt to live a life divorced from communion with God will ultimately fail.
This is the heart of what Jesus is getting at in this passage of Scripture. Many people in our so called “modern” world will discredit the idea of demonic (impure, or in some translations “unclean”) spirits. On a side note, think for a moment about the absurdity of the concept of “modern”. I discuss this some in another of my writings called “Paradoxic Paradigm” if you care to check that out. What does “modern” mean to any society that exists at any point in history? It means, whatever is happening during that present time frame. To the people that lived in 1850, if they compared themselves to people that lived in 1750, they considered themselves “modern”, so modern is a meaningless idea because modern is always relative to whatever is happening during the time that is happening.
Truth is eternal. No real truth is negated by the idea that “modern” notions discredit it. Our paradigms of reality change from generation to generation, so, it there is such a thing as truth, which I contend that there is, it is not subject to the interpretations of any given generation. “Modern” does not equal “true”.
Having said that, if Jesus acknowledges the reality of impure, or demonic spirits, I will not dispute the idea, since Jesus IS the Truth. The Scripture does acknowledge the reality of Angels and Demons but does not provide a lot of explanation regarding either, so I accept the reality of both, even if I do not fully understand the origins or how they interact with humans. But obviously they do.
So, I think that a lot of what is currently attributed to mental illness, personality disorder, or whatever jargon you choose to use to describe weird human behavior, may, in fact be demonic in origin.
“When an impure spirit comes out of a person”… When a person gets some troubling area of their life straightened out, (drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual perversity, violence, self-inflicted abuse, whatever), by their own self-initiated action, or with the help of others, WITHOUT addressing the God element of the equation, the problem will eventually return, and return with a vengeance. “Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”
Danny's Stump 