People in Glass Houses Read online

  I had been a nerd Christian for so long. I was a nerd to the letter of the law, confidently looking forward to an adulthood of nerdy Christianity. So why me? Why now?

  I spent hours and nights trying to count down all my sins.

  Why? Why! Why was Satan attacking me like this? I went to church as much as I could. I went more than ever.

  Why couldn’t I be like the Christian girls at school? They were Anglicans, most of them. No tongues, no miracles, no hot sweaty nights, no prayers for revival. Just nice quiet girls who were good at English, who didn’t know the urgency of evangelism or, if they did, weren’t fussed by it. Why didn’t Satan plague them?

  Was it my rebellious spirit? Why did I want to taste and smell and know?

  I prayed. I begged God and I envied the apostle Paul, for Paul was only tormented three times, and then he was taken to the third heaven and given a special message. When would it stop?

  The thorn in his side went. Mine was twisting and fermenting.

  I had faith. I knew that the men of the Old and New Testaments had been put to much worse tests than this—from Abraham nearly sacrificing his son right up to John being exiled to the Greek isle of Patmos where Revelation was written. Crucified upside down, we were told.

  I believed that God would stand by his Word. We’d been taught he has to. God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. So I waited. I read my bible, prayed, fasted, and I believed in the power of God to get me out of this place. There had to be a way.

  I committed everything I did to the Lord. I never went over the speed limit. Any slight lapse in character and I prayed for hours. I gave as much as I could, and devoted myself to study. Getting into uni was the key. Once I was a lawyer, then people would know who Jesus was and I would have proof of him for myself.

  And since boys didn’t like me at school, or at church, I didn’t have all that much temptation to fight off. Which gave me more time to work. I pitied my friends who cried themselves through wasted study nights about boys who did or didn’t call. I had a destiny and a future.

  Not believing is something I never wanted to do. I had told Jewels to stop me if I ever backslid. I prayed to God to keep me straight. I did everything I could think of, and I was the most sinless, boring (if smart-mouthed and irritating) kid you knew. My life was as close to without sin as I could possibly make it and I was going as close to insane as I had ever feared.

  The HSC was, in 1989, largely a case of memory. Going over material was no problem for me. I went over the bible and my textbooks again and again and again.

  I was going to leave no stone unturned in either of my quests. I was also a nerd among the kids at Hills with my constant questions. I couldn’t explain to them what I was going through. The best the pastors could offer me was to smile, and suggest bible college. The other kids went out places. I found staying home and going to Hills was safest. Going anywhere else took away from study time and in reality would only introduce more opportunity for sin, which I was full of from my plagued head anyway. If I was serious about committing to God, I knew I had to do my part. If you don’t, we had been cautioned, God can’t do his part. That’s how the Word of Faith formula works.

  Not believing is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. It was the reason I believed I should never have children. Why would I wish this no-win situation on an innocent being? Living a regular life, but staring at eternity every time you closed your eyes? I was too scared of going straight to hell, so I never made any suicide attempt. But, like Freddie Mercury said, I sometimes wished I’d never been born at all.

  Of course, at the time, none of this mental instability or depression seemed important, comparatively. Missionaries suffer constantly, are brutally tortured for their faith and a number die every day, that figure depending on who’s preaching. Who was I to question like this? You think men of the bible didn’t doubt? Fix yourself up and move on.

  Then Madonna arrived in the middle of 1989. I had been nearly three years without buying albums, listening to the radio or having anything to do with secular music. It had been an interesting time with quite a puritanical mindset, and it had been relaxing not to have pop beats going round and round in my head, but I still longed for my Bruce. I had missed 1987’s Tunnel of Love completely.

  Just before final exams, I crumbled. I bought the ‘Cherish’ single. I listened to it over and over. Even the Anglican girls at school were listening to Madonna. I couldn’t hold out any more. By the time I was sitting for Economics I had nothing else in my brain. It was like after any broken diet—the floodgates crashed in. I had purged all those years. Now it was time to binge. No turning back.

  The syrupy lyrics of Madonna had a honeying effect on my brain; that harmless, familiar, reliable beat and those happy lyrics soothed me like my dummy and blanket had when I was two. In 1989, there was no mindless Christian pop. If you wanted repetitive meaningless music, you had to seek it out there in the world.

  Thus, armed with two years of godly hard work and commitment, and a joyful return to 4/4 music, exams went swimmingly. Even my insatiable dissatisfaction was exhausted. I had done all I could do, surely, God. Surely my plans would succeed.

  Chapter 6

  SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

  How you have fallen from heaven, O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to the grave to the depths of the pit.

  —Isaiah 14:12–14

  You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

  —James 2:19

  I am running away from the school hall. I had gone out to get some air but I find myself running onto the ovals, somewhere, anywhere, away. I am crying but I don’t know why. It is too much to encounter, too much to process. I am running away from something that I know will never ever go away and towards nothing but somewhere else.

  The problem was that it was the closest example of Pentecostal reality I have ever had. There were no stage bands. No blond people. There was an old preacher, Derek Prince, but he was more of a bible teacher. He was speaking about the realities of demons, and with his simple, quiet English accent he had required the small gathering of a hundred or so people to denounce the devil by speaking a verse from a Psalm. ‘I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord.’

  The congregation, made up of mainly elderly ladies and gentlemen, obediently repeated the verse in unison. They had not spoken it twice before I heard a howling in the back of the room, like wind in a tunnel.

  ‘Do not be worried,’ assured the teacher, Brother Derek. ‘That’s just the spirit of death leaving.’

  I see elderly women fall back on their chairs, writhe on the floor and foam at the mouth. I watch as people line up on the school assembly stage and their legs grow out to be even where one had been longer than the other. I look around at these respectable people. There was no room for showmanship. No lights, no drums. Just grandmothers spasming on the floor. I can find no reasonable explanation.

  So I go outside for a while just to think and then I am crying and running and crying and running. My dad says he remembers the impact that day had on me. He thinks maybe that’s what put me off going to church. The problem is it’s one of the only things that still disturb me. In all my exploration of Christianity, I had never seen anything more real.

  *

  Growing up, we knew that demons were everywhere. Jesus Christ, of course, had been a proficient exorcist, efficient and swift. In the eighties, demons were behind every tree. The excesses of the times drew moralistic evangelists to their ostentatio
us displays, like public hangings, each preacher lining up to be the executioner. Nowadays, the American Baptists haven’t let us down—www.godhatesfags.com—but the prettiest churches don’t talk about demons. They prefer the word ‘spirit’, because it sounds more like they’re life coaches than missionaries.

  For those who didn’t grow up around exorcisms, the story runs roughly like this. God made Lucifer, the most beautiful and high up angel of them all. Then Lucifer decided he wanted to be God. So God threw him out of heaven and he became Satan, forever to be punished for his grandiosity.

  This begets the age-old question of why God why did you make Lucifer if you knew what he was going to do? Hillsong will tell you that God can’t do anything wrong by you. All bad things come from the ‘Enemy’. God is good, Jesus is fun.

  This is a slight problem if you’re a fundamentalist Christian and you believe the whole bible, not just the cool bits. In Psalms 78:49, God judged Israel ‘by sending evil angels among them’. In Judges 9:23, ‘God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem’. In 1 Kings 22:22, God sent a ‘lying spirit’ in the mouth of the false prophets to send Ahab to his death. The Lord himself made Pharaoh’s heart hard and Satan personally entered the heart of Judas at showtime. Then of course there was King Saul, tormented by an evil spirit sent from the Lord. No one’s safe.

  At the time of his attempted coup, however, Lucifer managed to get a third of the regular angels onside and they were cast out with him into hell.

  The rebellion didn’t stop there. There were some who had come down from heaven, quite early on in Genesis, and mated with the prettiest girls, explaining why we have giants in the world. Lucifer had already been dealt with, though, when history began with Adam and Eve. Lucifer, now known as Satan, first appears in the bible with them.

  According to fundamentalists, angels are men. There are no babies playing harps on clouds. They are plain-clothes men, who turn up inconspicuously to help you or surround you invisibly and protect you. Unlike their former colleagues the demons, they neither oppress you (live around you) or possess you (live inside you) or even control you (make you do what you don’t want to). They’re just passive good guys, like Tom Hanks. Or, if you grow up in a Jewish South African fundamentalist Christian home, they’re God’s servants, created to do our bidding.

  Demons, on the other hand, who used to be angels, seem to have a lot more power and certainly get ten times the attention from the pulpit. These days they tend to be referred to as ‘spiritual attack’, but that’s just a nice way of saying demons. Back in the Iron Maiden eighties they were Satan’s servants.

  Satan is only one being and can only be in one place at one time. He prowls the earth, the bible says, looking to kill, steal and destroy. He doesn’t turn up in person very often, though. He usually sends his demons to do his work.

  My home church Hills didn’t do much public demon casting out, but the stories abounded. Some kids from youth group would go into the city to hand out sandwiches to homeless people and come back with stories of places they had been, where vases flew around rooms. ‘You could just feel the demons,’ they would say.

  Some of the streetkids started coming to church, although they seemed to return to the world after not too long. One girl told me that she had had seven demons cast out of her when she got saved. ‘I know this stuff is real,’ she told me, ‘I used to be heavily into the occult. I could knock you over from the other side of the room by looking at you.’ That was enough to scare me. This was a girl who was from out there in the world.

  We never did exorcisms at Hills, except by accident, at the end of an emotional service. Demon activity usually happened at some secondary event. At a youth rally, a drug addict might have demons come out. Maybe in a prayer group, or at counselling. No one doubted it.

  Demons don’t have fixed names any more than their counterpart angels do. They don’t have a set job description except to get souls to hell. And any way they can do it, they will. Which is why you have to be so careful.

  In the eighties, the spirit of rock’n’roll was ripping the nation apart, or that’s how we understood it. Although my own clash with this specific spirit (who I believe looks like Steve Tyler from Aerosmith) occurred somewhat independently of the program,

  Pat Mesiti was at that time travelling around the country and going on television making bonfires of albums. It was a spiritual battle he was fighting. He played records backwards, and we heard proof that playing Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ this way revealed the words ‘it’s fun to smoke marijuana’.

  Pat has since renounced this misbehaviour. He thinks he was being silly. All of this hoo-ha was before Hills became Hillsong, and the demons of the beat were found to be profitable. Demons that make you rich and famous get to stay, in Jesus’s name.

  Now, getting possessed doesn’t just happen to you, and for Pentecostals, who are baptised in the Holy Spirit, you would think it impossible. Yet I never heard any of the girls at school talk about any exorcisms they had seen up the road at St Matt’s. Pentecostals love demon wrestling.

  Of course, just like everything else, it’s your fault you’ve got demons. If you’re not saved, then you belong to Satan anyway, so he’s allowed to do what he wants with you. You live in your own filth by your choice, so don’t come crying to me when life doesn’t come up roses. The wages of sin is death. You’re lucky to be reading this if you’re unsaved. You people have demons like dandruff.

  For saved people, it’s different. They have been forgiven and made new. Jesus won over Satan on the cross and demons have to leave you alone. However, they will try. Who can blame them? They appear to work on some sort of commission as well, since I was told they hang out at hospitals, cemeteries and heavy metal concerts. It’s best to stay home.

  There are two ways they can get you: either you’ve brought it on yourself, or it’s an inherited problem.

  Deliberate sin can bring in demons because rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft. So to disobey your husband or to rob God of his tithe is to step outside your spiritual protection. We can’t help you if you’re going to choose the road to hell.

  Involvement in the occult will guarantee you demons since that’s practically begging them to come over. What, you may ask, is the occult? Anything with foreign gods, not just Satan. Christians, I have always known, should have nothing to do with ouija boards, tarot cards, astronomy, astrology, palm reading, rebirthing, tea-leaf reading, mediums, psychics, runes, naturopathy, acupuncture, iridology or incense. And there are many, many more. As an aside, taking drugs will instantly open your mind as a demon playground, though only illegal drugs will do this. Valium’s fine.

  If someone in your family did any of these things, it may be that you are suffering because of this heritage. It is important to renounce any of the above involvements, as well as Freemasonry, Scientology, yoga, meditation, hypnotherapy and anything else you can think of. The general rule is to go back three generations, to be safe, and renounce everything those people did.

  How do you know if someone has demons, or if you yourself might have picked a couple up? Simple. Demons will either oppress you externally or possess you internally. The demon will cause the object of its attack to be unable to stop a certain behaviour. The violent offender, the incurable drug addict, the chain smoker, the adulterer: they may be dealing with the spirits of violence, drugs, nico tine and lust, respectively. Demons don’t have names, but they will find you at your weak spot and work on you there. Scared yet? I was.

  The person with demons will do their utmost to stop their behaviour. They will pray, fast, read their bible. They will be honest with those close to them. They will attend programs and counselling and still find themselves doing the same thing over. There seems to be nothing they can do to change. That’s because it’s a spiritual battle, a bondage that needs to be broken.

  Luckily, Jesus gave all his charges the authority to cast out demons, so anyone can do it. Home exorcisms are not a
problem. Satan has been defeated and his demons have to go. Once you have identified that someone has a demon, you too can get it out.

  Demons should be commanded to leave in the name of Jesus, because they tremble at that name. They don’t always go quietly. I’m told that the demons that come out of Maori people in New Zealand can take days to leave. Curiously, I’m told the same thing about African-American people too. In fact, anyone who also comes from a non-Christian country is bound to have demons. Africans practise voodoo, Hindus worship many gods, and the list goes on. If you’re going to come here to our nice clean white church, we don’t want your foreign gods coming with you.

  Souvenirs can also bring you demons, while we’re on the subject. If you’ve been to one of these godless nations and brought home some totem or carving that worships one of their gods, you’re in big trouble too. It may just sit nicely on the dresser, but Derek Prince’s wife Ruth got a set of severe migraines that wouldn’t go away until she got rid of a headscarf she’d been wearing from one of these evil places. You have to be vigilant.

  With the world at war, and the horrific stories we hear on the news every day, you might think there’d be a list of demons so long now it would be hard to name them all. This does not seem to be the case.

  The most popular demon for the last ten years or so is the demon of homosexuality. It is a difficult one to expel.

  Tell the demon in a very firm voice to leave. Say, I command you, you spirit of homosexuality, to leave in the name of Jesus. After that, wait.

  The response that is most hoped for is a violent one. After all, it’s a big deal and demons are nasty. They may yell back at you in another language or voice. Don’t be deterred. Coughing, choking, writhing, heavy breathing, spinning around the room, you name it, it’s proof the demon’s gone, once the person settles down again.