tales of the demonic

A few months ago, as Kendra was evaluating her options for returning to school, we began working with an admissions person from a university which shall go unnamed.  According to that person, one particular form necessary for completing an admission folder.  Form completed and returned.  Four times.  And after several frustrating phone calls, being pitched from person to person, a resolution comes.

That, my friends, is a tale of how the demonic works in our world.

Bureaucratic structures love to dehumanize us.

One of the demonic forces in modern life is how we are increasingly interacting with each other through bureaucratic systems.  When I find myself yelling at the person in front of me it is very likely that I'm not really mad at this particular person.  Rather, I'm yelling at an agent of the system.  An agent who, after work is over, will go home to his or her family for dinner.  And maybe he will stop off at a liquor store to get a drink to take the edge off.  It was a bad day after all.  Particularly that guy who was yelling and rude because he had to complete and scan a form to return ...

Everyday we are in a battle to hold on to our humanity within a system that is dehumanizing us.  Can we crack through the bureaucratic fog to see the flesh and blood people standing in front of us?  The waiter.  The manager.  The return clerk.  The bank teller.  The secretary.  The umpire/referee.  The police officer.  The bag boy.  The financial aid officer.  The tax agent.  The coach.  The school principal.  The church staff member.  The guy on the other end of the phone call.

On and on it goes.  If we are not careful, if we are not vigilant, if we are not prayerful modern life will dehumanize us.  It is a demonic force that must be resisted.  We must struggle to live humanely in the midst of the Fall.

To live humanely in the midst of the Fall.  Because our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the powers in the heavenly realms.  Against those forces of dehumanization that run the show but can never be localized in time or space.  I can't have a heart to heart with the admissions department.  I'll only be able to interact with it through its bureaucratic channels and agents.  In the meantime, the power behind it all sits unmoved and untouched while I yell at the guy on the phone.

A few years ago, I concluded a Holy Week Bible study on Good Friday with these words:

There was this kid who came from a poor family.  He had no good options in life so he signed up for the military.  After a few years he was deployed to a conflict infested, god-forsaken desert outpost.  It was the worst tour of duty he could have been assigned.  It was going to be hot and dangerous.  Everyday he had to live with a hostile populace who hated his presence and the very sight of his uniform.  Plus, the place was swarming with insurgents and terrorists.

Anyhow, one morning the solider goes to work and finds that he's been assigned that day to a detail that is supposed to oversee the execution of three convicted insurgents.  The solider shakes his head.  He didn't sign up for this.  His life just totally sucks.  "They don't pay me enough," he thinks, "for the crap I have to do."

He doesn't know he's going to be executing the Son of God that day.  He's just going to work, punching the time clock, keeping his head down.  He's just trying to stay alive, get through the day, and send some money back home to Rome.

And this is why, I think, Jesus prays, "Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Few of us ever do.