Demons in School

It happened in the far away east African country of Kenya, a place I’ve visited and ministered in many times.  According to a Nairobi newspaper report, two teenage girls were sent home from school because they said that they had demons and were devil worshippers. School officials insisted they see a doctor but the girls refused and were sent home. A school official said they were only suffering from a “mysterious disease,” but the principal of the school wasn’t buying that explanation.  Dinah Ketter, the principal, said, “What these two girls are suffering from is not a medical but a spiritual problem.” Just imagine an administrator in an American school saying that.  There’s more. The school’s PTA chairman Josephat Serem said the girls should be given a second chance as they have been “delivered.” In our country, A.C.L.U. lawyers would be rushing to file suit and the National Educational Association would be calling for the immediate firing of the principal.

As I have often noted, beyond the shores of America, in places like Africa, South America, and Asia, the idea of demons and the spirit world isn’t looked at as skeptically as it is here. The rationalistic West has denied both the reality of God and demons and we have been left with a moral vacuum. As a culture we feel no longer accountable to a transcendent deity and we can’t figure out the cause of the unspeakable violence that plagues our schools, like 12-year-old, Jose Reyes, who last week in Sparks, Nevada shot a teacher and a 14-year-old boy. To suggest that the devil had anything to do with it would bring whoops of laughter from the liberal media and bemused stares from even members of the clergy.  But how else do you explain this violent act from a young many who worked in his family’s restaurant, played the trumpet, and rooted for the San Francisco 49ers?  I don’t know what really went on in that Kenya school, but I suspect the truth wasn’t far from what the girls claimed – they were involved in some kind of Satanism and got demons. Could similar scenarios be happening in America? Of course, but don’t say so too loudly or the thought police may pay you a visit.