I intended to set aside time to get some schoolwork done and I came down with what I think must be the flu. Usually what we call influenza is just a heinous cold, for example, there is no such thing as the stomach flu. At least according to Mark Crislips Quackcast podcast, which I listen to religiously.

But enough about that, I was talking about retarded people. What could be better than that? Ironically I almost never use the word retard as an insult for as much of a mouth that I have on me. I guess I just formed too many bonds with retarded people. It may be hard to imagine but I genuinely think of some of these guys as my friends, I really bonded with them.  Especially Spicy Johnny, that guy made me laugh with him, not at him. In his own way he was a genius.

Its also time to deal with the second doctrinal assumption that I held as a charismatic Christian

2.) Demons posses people and cause them to do terrible things.

In Matthew 9:32-34, which can be found in the New Testament of the Christian bible, has a mute man that was possessed by demons and made to speak. There were a lot of mute clients and the Lubbock State School.

In Matthew 17:14-21 Jesus heals a lunatic by driving a demon out of him.  In Matthew 15:21-28, Jesus is both racist and heals a possessed woman.

The thing is that in many of the New Testament descriptions of the demon possessed look a lot like the behaviors one sees at the Lubbock State School.

People also really do believe in this stuff.  Christian shockjock Bob Larson has made an entire career casting demons out of people.  He’s  fabulous.

Well no matter what side of the God debate you are on, I can acknowledge good showmanship when I see it. Larson is awesome.

And the descriptions you get from people like Larson follow a specific formula. You are supposed to hear a deepening of the voice, the people are supposed to display superhuman strength, and they are supposed to display high resistance to pain.

At times you would see a 150 lbs. client scratch their own skin off, scream at you like a thousand lions lived inside of them, and then throw a piece of furniture through a window.

God I loved that job!

If you are a bible believing Christian, who attends a church where Bob Larson is not considered a charlatan, what are you supposed to think?

Luckily for me , I think this is when the nonbeliever that sits before you today began to be born.

I get e-mails from people thinking that if they could just convince me that evolution did not happen that I would believe again. Its fucking ridiculous. If people only knew what other things I’ve done and seen they would realize that for me, at least, evolution has nothing to do with my disbelief.

I knew these guys, and no matter how violently they behaved, I knew they were not demon possessed.

I didn’t know what Occam’s Razor was at the time, but what was more likely? The kid was acting like this because he was possessed by demons , or the kid was acting like this because they were sold into prostution by their own families, as it was written in their files.

Was the kid acting like this because he was possessed by demons, or was he acting like this because his meds had recently been changed?

I didn’t stop believing in God for years after this, but it sure did throw a wrench in my beliefs.

But my hostility to the assumption that they were not possessed by demons was not shared by my co-workers, at least not two of them.

Two African American ladies, who were friends of mine, believed the name it and claim it stuff taught by African American televangelists like T.D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar, could not simply ignore what for them was simply modern day behaviors that mirrored what is simply described in the scripture.

As any charismatic will happily remind you, the bible tells us that modern day Christians are supposed to be miracle production machines. Since the gifts of the spirit promised by Jesus are supposed to be in the here and now. Of course many other Christians explain these scriptures away by saying that the publication and distribution of the bible has made modern miracles obsolete.

I never did feel much temptation to worship an impotent God,  I needed my God to be alive and well today, and doing things that I could see. I guess that didn’t jive with the modern day meek and mild concepts of faith.

I’ve come to understand religious faith a hundred-fold more since I’ve rejected it than I did on the days that it was my bread and butter.

At least my own religious faith, I can only speculate as to what others experience.

But I would always watch these ladies pray for the guys after an outburst.  Sincere and beautiful prayers.

I can only wonder what the guys must have thought as they laid hands on them. They probably appreciated the human contact. Many of them probably agreed that they were possessed by demons, adding to their day to day angst.

But it was the beginning of the end of faith for me. Next post I will deal with praying for healing from diseases. I may have realized that demons were not in my clients, but I believed in miraculous healing for a long time to come, probably because my own brother is disabled.

So I prayed my lungs out on this one, and at the state school I did this often.