American culture has a longstanding interest in the occult, stretching from the Salem Witch Trials in the late seventeenth century to the remake of The Amityville Horror today. A crucial difference between then and now is that the Puritans feared witches and demons because they thought they were real. We, on the other hand derive entertainment from them because precisely we think they don’t really exist. (There’s just nothing like a good scare now and then!) I’m not sure whether being entertained by depictions of evil is an improvement over prosecuting witches, but I am sure that American interest in … Continue reading Salvation as the Ultimate Sanity (Mark 5:1-20)