This might be just a lot of me rambling about what I thought about the Björklund reading.
There are a lot of deeply religious people throughout the world, but right now I'm focusing specifically on the United States. Thanks to social media, we are able to (unfortunately?) keep up on a lot of what those deeply religious people have to say about society and life as a whole. They use the Bible to justify their beliefs, they use demons and Satan to explain why the world isn't the way they want it to be. My question is, why do so many Americans give demons so much credibility?
The Björklund reading concludes by saying, "The child-killing demons can be seen in the context of a scapegoat. They shouldered the blame for miscarriage or death of a child, relieving the members of the community of guilt" (44). "Demons" were a very convenient way to explain why something really awful happened, and it then provided comfort to people knowing that a) there is an explanation, and b) it wasn't any person's fault. It was completely out of their hands. I feel like we as a society in the United States have far moved past the idea that we need to blame anything that goes wrong on Satan or on demons. Especially because of the knowledge we now have: demons in ancient times weren't really thought of as evil, and belief in evil demons was really just used as a scapegoat or explanation.
I just can't understand the widespread Christian belief I see in America that really distorts what history in the Global South or in ancient Europe had to say about demons. I hope we'll explore more in this class about how this history became so warped.
Great questions Claire! What exactly do you think is warped? Modern people in the U.S. attributing things to demons? Using demons to scapegoat others? One of the things about the Bjorklund article is that shows how demons have been used to explain things like infant death. It is centuries old.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to hear what others have to say!
I think the Björklund article is still very relevant. I think a lot of very religious people, specifically hardcore Christians, want to believe so badly that the world is good. They want to believe that God is all-powerful and all-good. Despite this belief that He is all-powerful in the playing out of our lives, He would never be responsible for the loss of a child, destructive weather phenomena, etc. I think that Christians still really need something to blame these bad parts of life on. They don't/can't attribute it to God if he is good, so they have to believe in an alternate power(s) like Satan and demons. Satan and demons are given so much credibility in the eyes of extremely religious people because they have to be. In order for them to justify and prove that their God is good, there has to be a power working against Him that is considered bad. If there weren't, God would be all-powerful, but definitely not good. I think people today give demons and Satan so much credibility so they themselves feel better about devoting themselves to a higher being that they don't actually know is good. Idk if any of that made sense or had anything to do with the original post's question but...
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