If and to what extent do you think Schizophrenia is related to demonology?

[Gavin]

There a lots of recources on the web about Schizophrenia. Basically it is a brain disease in which the victim has difficulty determining what is real. It is a lot more complex than that, of course.

Many believers see that this disorder is caused by demons. Where do you stand?

[Gavin]

I am really curious about this so please treat is seriously.

[Piebald]

While I suppose that Demons can be the cause of just about any disorder or problem in a person's life (including various mental disorders), I think brain chemistry is the root of most of it. That isn't to say that a demon couldn't disrupt a person's brain and cause various ailments, but I don't think the ailments themselves are nescessarily caused by Satan's infernal army.

I am kind of agnostic on the role of demons in human life today. How would we identify a demoniac?

[Rubia Warren]

I don't really know enough to say for sure, though it seems to me like demons very well could be the cause- I just don't know. I haven't checked it all out enough.

[Sozo]

There is no such thing as Schizophrenia, it is a fabricated lie from the medical community.

However, the symptoms referred to as "Schizophrenia" may or may not have anything to do with demons.

No one ever listens to this, but I have explained it several times, and so I will again.

Confusion, delusion, fear, depression, and double-mindedness are all the result of self-introspection. The more someone becomes introspective, the more insane he becomes, because he thinks that he can produce the same things that can only come from God. The answers are not from within us, but are in Christ, and Christ alone. This is the #1 deception that plagues the Church today, and these problems will never be resolved until the Church stops putting their confidence in worldly philosophies and false wisdom.

And I am veraciously serious!

[yxboom]

Sozo all of that may very well be true but Jesus did rebuke demonic actions and did heal people as an offensive towards the demonic. How far do you take that when say for instance the young child in Mark 9 who had many symptoms of one deranged. Surely you would not accuse such as this child as being the result of self-introspection, would you?

[Piebald]

There is no such thing as Schizophrenia, it is a fabricated lie from the medical community.

I don't know if that's true at all. My uncle is schizophrenic, and unless he is medicated, he hears voices (among other things).

What makes you think that it is a lie?

[Rubia Warren]

[yxboom]

Substantial I say so myself La Rubia.

Sozo, I am not disagreeing that your position has validity it is the extent that you have taken it which is the reason for my asking.

[Woman]

This is quite the most jaw-dropping astoundingly shocking question posed on this site which I have seen!

If this represents modern Christian thinking then we are all in deep trouble.

*Twilight Zone music in the background...do do do do , do do do do...*

Shall we step back into the middle ages? Bring out the leeches to bleed those with TB! Put a knife under the mattress of a suffering patient to "cut the pain!"

Let's admit once and for all that epilepsy is really a mental illness caused by demons and has NOTHING to do with the brain. We know that AIDS is God's answer to homosexuality so it's obvious that schizos are possessed by invisible devils.

PEOPLE!!!

Has it occurred to you that the REASON mental illness was even more likely than other disease to be ascribed to demons is simply because it is more frightening, less understood??

Oh no, let's believe that we just need a bigger, better faith healing here. Sure, anti-convulsant drugs can cure epilepsy but schizophrenia is so terrifying...(those voices and all) that only a miracle can cure it!

There were severe limitations in the knowledge and practice of medicine in medieval times. Little was known about the structure and function of the human body; nothing was known about mental illness, bacteria and viruses nor about the transmission of disease; the need for good nutrition and cleanliness were not yet acknowledged. Influences of the church, religious beliefs and traditional folk medicine all combined to limit the amount of medical knowledge available in the medieval period.

So it was that, throughout antiquity, during the early history of the Church, throughout the Middle Ages, and indeed down to a comparatively recent period, testimony to miraculous interpositions which would now be laughed at by a schoolboy was accepted by the leaders of thought. St. Augustine was certainly one of the strongest minds in the early Church, and yet we find him mentioning, with much seriousness, a story that sundry innkeepers of his time put a drug into cheese which metamorphosed travellers into domestic animals, and asserting that the peacock is so favoured by the Almighty that its flesh will not decay, and that he has tested it and knows this to be a fact.

With such a disposition regarding the wildest stories, it is not surprising that the assertion of St. Gregory of Nazianzen, during the second century, as to the cures wrought by the martyrs Cosmo and Damian, was echoed from all parts of Europe until every hamlet had its miracle-working saint or relic.


The literature of these miracles is simply endless. To take our own ancestors alone, no one can read the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, or Abbot Samson's Miracles of St. Edmund, or the accounts given by Eadmer and Osbern of the miracles of St. Dunstan, or the long lists of those wrought by Thomas a Becket, or by any other in the army of English saints, without seeing the perfect naturalness of this growth. This evolution of miracle in all parts of Europe came out of a vast preceding series of beliefs, extending not merely through the early Church but far back into paganism. Just as formerly patients were cured in the temples of Æ sculapius, so they were cured in the Middle Ages, and so they are cured now at the shrines of saints and on the stages of TV Evangelists. Just as the ancient miracles were solemnly attested by votive tablets, giving names, dates, and details, and these tablets hung before the images of the gods, so the medieval miracles were attested by similar tablets hung before the images of the saints; and so they are attested to-day by similar tablets hung before the images of Our Lady of La Salette or of Lourdes. Just as faith in such miracles persisted, in spite of the small percentage of cures at those ancient places of healing, so faith persists to-day. As a rule, the miracles of the sacred books were taken as models, and each of those given by the sacred chroniclers was repeated during the early ages of the Church and through the medieval period with endless variations of circumstance, but still with curious fidelity to the original type.

It's bad enough that physical disease is still being "cured" with mumbo jumbo, but now we have new-age Christians asserting AGAIN that DEMONS cause schizophrenia. Yeah, that's why medication can often rid patients of the voices of those "devils."

Yes indeedy, let’s assume that demons cause mental illness and seek a cure from your local prayer group, priest, shaman, witch Dr. or Benny Hinn!

[Sozo]

Today @ 05:20 PM post located here
yxboom:

Sozo all of that may very well be true but Jesus did rebuke demonic actions and did heal people as an offensive towards the demonic. How far do you take that when say for instance the young child in Mark 9 who had many symptoms of one deranged. Surely you would not accuse such as this child as being the result of self-introspection, would you?

Thank you for reading my previous post.

I should have been more clear. Apart from demonic activity (whether possession or oppression), all the symptoms I described are clearly as I proclaimed. The child in Mark 9 appears to have been the victim of a demon.

Hamster...

Please understand my heart here, I am not trying to be critical of those who are hurting, but we have got to decide whether or not the bible speaks to these things, or if we are on our own and dependent on the wisdom of a very fallible scientific community.

Society has a very good way of defining things and making believers out of us. Humor me for a minute and suppose that perhaps God is the source of truth and not man. Doesn't it make you wonder how all these "mental disorders" escaped God's knowledge & wisdom for 6000 years? And so once He discovered what plagued man, He choose to give wisdom to psychologists (a profession that He failed to give wisdom to for 6000 years) to solve matters of the heart & mind? Of course this would negate all the scriptures that claim that God alone is the source and provision for these problems.

The bible is full of evidence that God is the answer for the things that concern the mind & heart. There is however no evidence that there are other options. God is sufficient, and we have become a people who have been greatly deceived into trusting science in areas that are wholly worthy of God's provision.

"The steadfast of mind Thou wilt keep in perfect peace, Because he trusts in Thee"

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

"To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled."

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

"Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord"

"The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, And saves those who are crushed in spirit."

"From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock [that] is higher than I."

"For the enemy hath persecuted my soul; he hath smitten my life down to the ground; he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead. Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands. I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah. Hear me speedily, O Lord: my spirit faileth: hide not thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee. Deliver me, O Lord, from mine enemies: I flee unto thee to hide me."

"He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds"

"Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad"

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life"

I have an obligation before God to save those who are headed for destruction. And anything other than God himself for the issue we are discussing is a road to death!

Just because the medical community defines something, does not make it so, they can be wrong, and they are wrong here.

[Woman]

bump!

[Rubia Warren]

I gotta give Sozo a tripley double dog thumbs up. Good post!

[Freak]

Schizoprenia can be caused or utilized by demons, but not necessarily. Prayer and medicine may both be used as each is helpful.

[Sozo]

Today @ 08:55 PM post located here
Freak:

Prayer and medicine may both be used as each is helpful.

Where in the entire bible is there one shred of evidence that medicine is helpful in relation to the heart & mind that suffers from confusion, delusion, fear, anxiety, depression, or lack of peace?

Don't give me passages that relate to physical wounds, the bible distinguishes the difference and so should you.