To your point about phones. Jonathan Pageau has drawn the comparison between the iPhone and the Genie and the Lamp. It’s a tool that shines light and when you rub it with your hand it grants you your wishes. The problem in the story of the genie of the lamp is that you must be careful what you wish for, and that the genie/jinn has a mind of his own.
It’s a good comparison. The mobile ‘phone is also a ring of Gyges of a sort, or maybe better still the Ring of Power: we can cloak ourselves with the invisibility of an online avatar, but the fiery eye is always monitoring us.
The symbolism of the lamp is also a symbol of how tech/artifice is by definition somewhat unnatural. We live during the day when we can see. We sleep in the dark at night. The lamp let’s you change night and darkness, it lets you take a piece of day and bring it into the night by it’s power.
Thank you Fr. Thomas. Seventeen years ago I accepted a job as an RN in a men’s state prison. I was unaware at the time that I would be the psych nurse in charge on the weekends. We had five suicide watch beds. Every fifteen minutes the guys were monitored. We often gave them IM Haldol to bring them out of psychosis after three days. It usually worked on most but some of the inmates never responded to treatment. It was said they had Anti Social Personality Disorder. I often thought deeper spiritual and awful things were going on. Demonic perhaps.
Thank you, Olive, for sharing what I imagine was a disheartening and even harrowing phase of your life. Sometimes, modern science, psychology included, takes some time to catch up with the wisdom of the ancients it professes to disdain. Scientists discover, suddenly, that the cosmos sings, something they might have learnt from Psalm 19 or the Platonists' "music of the spheres" millennia ago. They find that the universe did, indeed, begin from nothing, in a burst of light, which Genesis 1 would have told them had they the ears to listen. And now they suspect that what they had once thought extra-terrestrial activity may in fact be that of other-dimensional, non-physical beings. Well, we have known about those for a very long time.
The hubris with which modernity has thrown off revelation is gradually being unveiled. Let us hope the veil falls soon enough to avoid more harm to the people whose pain it conceals.
this perspective is so important. thanks for sharing your point of view. i think every parish should have someone equipped to do deliverance ministry, what do you think about deliverance ministries?
Thank you, Stephen! In the Church of England, every diocese has an exorcist and deliverance ministry team. When I was serving there, I only needed to call them a couple of times. The advice I received as a parish priest in a case of a suspected spiritual disturbance was first, to hear the confession of the afflicted; second, to bless their house; and third, to celebrate mass in situ. If these three things did not solve the issue, I was to call in the specialists (as, in one case, I did). Since then, that advice has served me well. The Japanese Anglican Church seems to have no such provision.
How well—by which I mean convincingly—you write about such a difficult subject for us moderns to discuss!
To your point about phones. Jonathan Pageau has drawn the comparison between the iPhone and the Genie and the Lamp. It’s a tool that shines light and when you rub it with your hand it grants you your wishes. The problem in the story of the genie of the lamp is that you must be careful what you wish for, and that the genie/jinn has a mind of his own.
It’s a good comparison. The mobile ‘phone is also a ring of Gyges of a sort, or maybe better still the Ring of Power: we can cloak ourselves with the invisibility of an online avatar, but the fiery eye is always monitoring us.
The symbolism of the lamp is also a symbol of how tech/artifice is by definition somewhat unnatural. We live during the day when we can see. We sleep in the dark at night. The lamp let’s you change night and darkness, it lets you take a piece of day and bring it into the night by it’s power.
Great! True, and beautifully said! And very very timely! Fr. Franco Sottocornola
Thank you Fr. Thomas. Seventeen years ago I accepted a job as an RN in a men’s state prison. I was unaware at the time that I would be the psych nurse in charge on the weekends. We had five suicide watch beds. Every fifteen minutes the guys were monitored. We often gave them IM Haldol to bring them out of psychosis after three days. It usually worked on most but some of the inmates never responded to treatment. It was said they had Anti Social Personality Disorder. I often thought deeper spiritual and awful things were going on. Demonic perhaps.
Thank you, Olive, for sharing what I imagine was a disheartening and even harrowing phase of your life. Sometimes, modern science, psychology included, takes some time to catch up with the wisdom of the ancients it professes to disdain. Scientists discover, suddenly, that the cosmos sings, something they might have learnt from Psalm 19 or the Platonists' "music of the spheres" millennia ago. They find that the universe did, indeed, begin from nothing, in a burst of light, which Genesis 1 would have told them had they the ears to listen. And now they suspect that what they had once thought extra-terrestrial activity may in fact be that of other-dimensional, non-physical beings. Well, we have known about those for a very long time.
The hubris with which modernity has thrown off revelation is gradually being unveiled. Let us hope the veil falls soon enough to avoid more harm to the people whose pain it conceals.
Yes, well said.
FYI typo: Romans 7:15, not 17:15.
Thank you. Duly corrected on the website.
As a priest, you must have Deluxe Romans which comes with an extra chapter.
The Apocryphal Romans.
this perspective is so important. thanks for sharing your point of view. i think every parish should have someone equipped to do deliverance ministry, what do you think about deliverance ministries?
Thank you, Stephen! In the Church of England, every diocese has an exorcist and deliverance ministry team. When I was serving there, I only needed to call them a couple of times. The advice I received as a parish priest in a case of a suspected spiritual disturbance was first, to hear the confession of the afflicted; second, to bless their house; and third, to celebrate mass in situ. If these three things did not solve the issue, I was to call in the specialists (as, in one case, I did). Since then, that advice has served me well. The Japanese Anglican Church seems to have no such provision.