“It’s not just disgusting, it’s demonic”   

I notice words like evil, demonic, satanic, vile, sinister, dark, diabolical and depraved, along with phrases like ‘hell is empty because all the devils are here,’ are being openly mentioned of late. But what other words and phrases could better describe the pressure nowadays to normalize pedophilia, or better define the perverted purveyors of child porn, child trafficking, child exploitation, child suicide, child abuse, and sexualizing children as early as kindergarten?  

Compare that to a Nelson Mandela quote, that “Our children are our greatest treasure. Those who abuse them tear at the fabric of our society and weaken our nation” (22 November 1997). He also said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children” (at the launch of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund on May 8, 1995). And of course, Jesus’ statement about children in Matthew 19:14, “for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” 

Originally I had the title above as: “Is demon possession back in vogue?” – because people are doing really weird and awful things involving children without an ounce of conscious concern about how weird and awful they are being. It’s as if they’re no longer in control of their brains. Which is frighteningly similar to those with evil spirits in Jesus’ day, like the man “possessed by an evil spirit” in Mark 1:23, who started screaming in verse 24, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” 

“Us” shows the man had no control over what the evil spirits were saying through him. So I have to wonder when a famous high end clothing company produces an ad with an obvious sexual exploitation of children to sell its goods, but when slammed for it claims it had no idea it was happening, then maybe it’s true, they didn’t know what was being done through them either. Maybe the person who described their action as “not just disgusting, it’s demonic” in the title above was spot on.  

And what does one say about another well known clothing retailer’s commercial that featured a woman’s thoughts before her medically assisted death? Who on earth came up with that idea? Did they even know what they were doing? And did they knowingly or unknowingly include a floating blue whale in the commercial, that’s also attached to suicide, the ‘Blue Whale Challenge’ being an online game that can actually get young people to kill themselves? Was it deliberate, or did they have no clue what they were doing? Either way, it seems they had no conscious governor on their actions, as if they too had no control over their brains either.    

What a promise it is in such a world, then, that ”those who are born of God he keeps safe, so the evil one does not touch them,” 1 John 5:18.