On Pentecost Sunday, I want to talk about the devil. Well, just a little. And I want to ask you a basic question, inspired by The Screwtape Letters. It’s a simple question. If you were a demon, and you wanted fewer people to worship God, what would be the more effective strategy: leaving the unbeliever to their own devices, paying them no attention as they drift into worldly pleasures and selfish living? Or possessing someone, giving them superhuman strength and the ability to levitate, only to rally that family and local churches to exorcize that man of his new demon?

 In other words, if we all live in a world of scarce resources – including the demons! – and you want the most bang for your proverbial buck, does it make sense to draw a lot of attention to yourself in the most brazen way possible or normalize the rebellion that you seek to foment?

 Well, the answer is pretty obvious, right? While we may be drawn to the spectacular, unusual events that surround a true demonic possession, the demons themselves very rarely choose that option. Whether by their nudging or by our own sinful free will, a possession is not necessary or even wise to have maximal impact. Far better to let man think he is wiser than God because he got a B+ in Philosophy 101; to let man become obsessed with distracting entertainments like sports; to let the „busyness“ of life make Spiritual seeking a low priority; to believe that being a “good person” is sufficient for salvation. Yes, if that is where man chooses to go without hardly lifting a finger on the devil’s part, that is the most efficient use of his persuasion skills.

Yet, apart from The Screwtape Letters, that ingenious strategy is rarely appreciated. No, the only strategy that is of interest to us are the mostly ridiculous Hollywood depictions of demonic possession. I mean, hey, sure, make The Exorcist… a great film that actually is thoughtful and theological. But we ignore the normal way the demons draw us from God, leading us socially into a moral abyss and focus instead on the tiny percentage of times the demons reveal themselves and go to war with a family and their neighborhood priest.

 Well, I guess we are just susceptible to that kind of thing. The extreme trumps the normal almost every time. The out-of-the-ordinary beats the ordinary all day. And what is true in the demonic space is true in the angelic as well. We are attracted to the unusual or the extreme. So the work of the Holy Spirit to encourage us in corporate worship, to draw us to confess Christ as Lord, to bear the fruits and gifts of the Spirit in our lives are seen as unimpressive in an age of tongue-speaking, faith healing, and future-predicting.

True, in the Bible, we do see extraordinary acts by the Holy Spirit. We see it on Pentecost most of all, when the Spirit literally inspires those from all over the world to be able to understand those speaking in a foreign tongue. And we see that speaking in tongues continues into Acts and there are many incredible miracles performed by the apostles.  

For hundreds of years, there were few, if any, such expressions of the Holy Spirit. But the Spirit was alive and well and working in ordinary ways to spread the reach of Christ’s Church. Surely the Spirit is the author of Peter, Paul, and John’s letters. Surely the Spirit was working at the early Councils when false teachings about Christ were denied. Surely the Spirit was working in the Reformers like Wycliffe and Hus and Luther who pointed out the errors in the church and translated the scripture into familiar languages.

But it really wasn’t until the 20^th century in America that the work of the Spirit was limited to extraordinary events, a kind of mirror image to seeing the devil only working in the same radical way. I won’t dwell on the Charismatic Movement, nor do I want to deny every extraordinary claim of the miraculous in the Spirit’s name. But much that has come from the Charismatic Movement has been a terrible detriment. It has portrayed the Spirit as one who is obligated to heal the sick and who sews chaos. The reality, I believe, is that the Spiritual gifts of healing, prophecy, and tongues were intended for a time to demonstrate the power of God to a world that had no completed New Testament and little knowledge of Jesus.

 But there comes a time when we must rely on the normal workings of the Spirit and be content with those fruits and gifts. If we can demand that God prove himself with miracles, then we are no better than a rank-and-file idolator. We would be putting God to the test. And we are neglecting all of the good things that the Spirit does in our lives and in our world.

Just a few weeks ago, I spoke to someone who had a dear friend in the hospital essentially dead. Life support was keeping her heart beating but she was brain dead and it was clearly time for her to die in peace. But the husband wouldn’t allow it. After months in the ICU, he continued to believe in a miracle. The miracle is that, one day, his wife will be risen from the dead because her heart of stone was miraculously converted to a heart of flesh when she came to trust in Jesus. Hoping she will come back to life is a product of decades of false teachings about what the Spirit’s role in salvation actually is. It isn’t to keep us alive forever. It’s to save us from eternal death and separation from God!

So, if there were a movement of the Spirit today, what would it look like? If not a constant repeat of the first Pentecost… if not the chaotic scenes that often emanate from charismatic churches today… then what? Let me just offer a few things that might change.

As men and women, full of the Spirit pursue that which is pleasing to God, that leaven is distributed everywhere. Our military and government leaders would be more interested in peace than war. Our media, full of men and women for whom truth is a supreme value, would pursue truth and speak truth to power. The academy would pursue, as it once did, explicitly Christian values across the board. Not just theology and philosophy without any shame of God’s existence, the Lordship of Christ, and the goodness of the Church… but beauty in Christian art and music, the nobility of Christian service in medicine and law, and equal standards for excellence among students and faculty.

Churches would be more full, that’s for sure. And our Bibles would not just be books that collect dust, but texts that we read and seek to understand, even as it is hard reading to be sure. Socially, we would look past race and sex and wealth and value each other as God values us, as human beings made in his image. Corporations wouldn’t just exist to make stockholders a few extra cents on the dollar, but to truly serve their customers by making helpful, wholesome products that solve problems. Families would be together more and wholesomeness would be celebrated. And the fruits of the Spirit would be far more common: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

I realize I’m portraying a kind of utopia and it probably sounds too good to be true. It isn’t. This is simply what revival would look like. And that is why I oppose revival or the movement of the Spirit being portrayed only as ecstatic experiences or miracles that may very well be fraudulent. Because in creating this image of the work of the Spirit, the actual work of the Spirit is lost. The way the Spirit of God draws us to confess Christ, the way our lives are conformed to the good, the way we build civilization in the name of Christ.

I am hopeful, in a weird kind of way, that the increasing weirdness, darkness, and hopelessness offered by our entertainment and media and music and academy are showing the inverse of a Spirit-filled world. I am hopeful that hearts are moving towards God for the first time or back towards God after taking Him for granted. For while it may not always be ecstatic when the Spirit comes among us, it will always be good. Amen.