In the early '70's one of the most popular TV shows was "The Flip Wilson Show" and one of the most-used laugh lines was: "The devil made me do it." Usually the line was spoken by Flip Wilson himself, playing one of the show's characters, as a way to deflect blame for what he (or she-- sometimes Flip played a character called Geraldine Jones) had done. It was funny, at least in part, because blaming the devil was so passe, something that people didn't do because they didn't believe in the devil-- at least a devil who would "make me do it." The line was so silly-- who would say that-- and so people would laugh at it. If anything, I think these days we are even less likely to believe in "the devil made me do it." Do we even believe in the devil, Satan, say what you will, at all? The prevailing wisdom is that notions of the devil-- a guy (it seems always to be a male figure) who is red, with little horns and a long tail and a cute, mischeveous grin (which makes believing in him even sillier)-- are obsolete, and only people who are poorly-educated or simple-minded believe in him. That's too bad, I think, because Jesus and His followers certainly believed that there is a devil-- a spirit of evil opposed to God and God's Kingdom-- who acts in the world. The terminology Mark uses today (Mk 3: 7-12) of "unclean spirits" who fell down before Jesus because they knew who He was is found 21 times in the New Testament. Jesus regularly casts out devils, as do His disciples (and others, by the way, who are casting out devils even though they are not followers of Jesus (see Luke 9: 49-50)). That devils-- "unclean spirits"-- are real was never in doubt in those days. As recently as the days of C. S. Lewis-- in 1942-- the idea that there are demons was not regarding as retrograde or simplistic (see, eg. "The Screwtape Letters"). I think somehow that has changed. Somehow we as a society we have come to conclude that there really aren't "evil spirits" or "unclean spirits"-- we say that set of terms was a primitive way of talking about people with a mental illness-- and so we don't need to worry about them. OK-- I'm not advocating all kinds of magic rituals to save us from evil spirits-- salt around the edges of the house and such. Any evil spirit that is so weak as to be warded off by salt shouldn't concern us too much. But, if we conclude that we act in a world that is free from a spirit of evil, that the playing field is level and we don't need any help from God because there are no forces opposing our efforts to be holy, we make a huge mistake. We Christians are working to establish the Kingdom of God in a place currently under the control of the forces of the opposition-- call it the devil, Satan, evil, what you will. That's why Jesus would regularly cast devils out, and why the "unclean spirits" would fall down before Him because they knew who He was. He was the one who had come to turn things around, to cast out demons, to make things as they should have been. That will ultimately be the case, and it is our job-- in this time before Jesus comes again-- to move things in that direction. Don't buy the post-enlightenement view that the devil does not exist, that there are no "unclean spirits." The most-profound hope of those spirits is that you deny their existence. Take a look at "The Screwtape Letters" in you don't believe me. Or believe what Jesus does in the Gospels. How could He cast out something that wasn't there?