The Exorcist's Bestiary

There was a moment in college when I felt like I was going crazy. I had recently gone through a bad breakup, which left me feeling like no one would ever want me again. A sudden voice appeared in that season to help cement that feeling through a mix of religiousness and shame.

“Hey Jamin, what’s the worst thing you could possibly think right now?” the voice would ask in my thoughts, as my brain automatically answered the question without my consent. “Wow! I can’t believe you could even think of such a thing! How depraved are you?” the voice accused.

The invasive thoughts had a goal in mind: to perpetually make me feel like a horrible person, which caused me to shield others from me.

This tactic was wildly successful until one of my professors dismantled it during a lecture. They were sharing a story of a time a thought to hurt a stranger popped into their head out of nowhere. They were caught off guard by the invasive thought, refused to claim it as their own thought, and told Satan to shut up.

Despite being a supernaturalist, I had somehow never thought of attributing these horrible thoughts to demons. This was in part because Shame wanted me to own the thoughts in order to keep the illusion going that I was a horrible person. From that day forward, I started speaking back to the thoughts: “That’s not my thought, and I’m not going to receive it.” The plot was exposed, and the tactic started to fizzle out pretty quickly until it was no more.

I’ve come across this same demonic strategy in others while leading them through inner healing. We’ve seen the invasive thoughts decrease as we’ve walked through the deliverance process, leaving fewer and fewer voices the opportunity to speak.

This can be a complicated topic at times. There are many good psychological and medical avenues people can take to deal with invasive thoughts and deliverance should walk alongside good therapy and psychological care. There are also good spiritual reasons to be aware of the thoughts that pop into your head, as we are instructed to take all thoughts captive for Jesus. Indeed, Jesus cares deeply about what’s going on in people’s minds, and his teaching recognizes that sin forms in the mind and heart before it ever becomes action.

But I have found in my own life that it is sometimes wise to recognize invasive thoughts as someone else’s thoughts, so you can let them go before they mess with your identity. This isn’t about denying responsibility—rather, some of us have to do this analysis quickly because the longer we analyze the thoughts, the more time the voices have to ruminate on them with us. For some of us, we must stop the thought at the door quickly, say, “That’s not me,” and move along. And we can always remain prayerful that the Holy Spirit will convict us in time if there’s something in us that we need to pay attention to that we’ve attributed away to someone else.

Most Christians have no problem believing that an inspired thought might pop into their head from the Holy Spirit from time to time. Now we must use wisdom to recognize that demonic thoughts can pop into our minds in the same way. We must discern our spirit from God’s Spirit and from demonic spirits. This is the world of spiritual warfare.