I was reading a movie review this morning and ran across the word: zeitgeist. I had no idea what it meant, so I looked it up and found something interesting. Learning a new word is good thing, but this was a really interesting word.

zeitgeist (n) - the spirit of the time; the spirit characteristic of an age or generation.

So it led me to ponder this question, when considering youth ministry/culture…

What would you say is the zeitgeist of this generation?

[WoD Challenge: work this word in to casual conversation today and tell us how you used it in the comments area.]

There’s something so essential about good rock music. It scrapes the weight off your soul like a cheese grater. Tuesday was one of those heavy days, so I left the office late in the afternoon with the Foo Fighters. I have their new album. It’s amazing.

I had to get out. I needed to go hiking. With my iPod in hand I left. The music blared and the sun broke. I felt alive. I hiked a while down a trail till I came upon an old railroad bridge that ran over the Stillaguamish River. I make my way to the middle of the bridge and sat down, watching the river race by. As I sat there I noticed something in the water. There was one a first. Then another. Then tons of them. Salmon were running and upstream, right under me. I watched them for a while, making their way upstream.

Jumping and struggling with such a passion to get nowhere in a hurry. What lay ahead? Spawning and death. I wondered why they were in such a rush. It reminded me of our lives. We’re in such a hurry to die. We don’t think of it like that, but that’s what we’re doing. Always staying busy. Always on that upstream push.

I sat and meditated for a while, praying and praising God. I just let the peace of creation soak in all around me.

As I hiked back to my car one things occurred to me. I swim upstream too much.

It’s amazing how we believe in things of the Bible, but don’t believe them in the context of our lives. I believe that we are afraid to admit (especially in church circles) the existence of demons. We are comfortable talking generally about “spiritual warfare” and “the enemy”, but if we were called to truly explain what we were talking about - we’d freeze, stutter and talk around the topic.

So this brings me to a few questions to ask yourself: 1) Do you believe that demons (and the devil) exist and 2) What role do you think they play in our world today.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist.” - The Usual Suspects

I think as Christians we are comfortable talking about spiritual matters from the context of story [from the Bible], but don’t see how the story fits into our lives today. “Did Jesus cast out demons? Yes, and that’s a nice story that doesn’t apply to me today.” We fear being tossed into the category of being called Charismatic or Pentecostal and then we’d have to handle snakes while speaking in tongues.

Now, I don’t have a complete theological argument to make here, I only know what I can speak of from experience. Let me tell you a story (which makes me uncomfortable to talk about because I fear talking about these issues) about a student we had on our snow retreat.

Jimmy (name changed) has had a deep history of drug abuse and when he arrived for our retreat something was off - way off. I’ve known this kid for over 6 months and seen him high on occasion, but this was different. On the ride up, I sat next to him and found him carrying on a one sided conversation. He wasn’t babbling to himself, it was almost as if I was just hearing one side of a conversation (and he was hearing the other). The thought of demons ran through my mind, but I quickly buried it. So I prayed for him and decided to keep my eye open.

More of this kind of thing went on all weekend. One of our volunteers decided to engage him specifically on who he was talking to (after we had the uncomfortable taboo conversation amongst each other). Johnny said that there were called “the 5″ and they hurt him, but also loved him. He said they hated Jesus and that He was bad.” I’ve been around kid on all sorts of drugs, and I’ll tell you this was definitely different. Way different. He didn’t want us to pray for him because he said it would hurt him.

I can’t deny what I and others experienced [and I have other stories]. But I will tell you this, we were all uncomfortable talking about it. And that fear really effected the boldness of our actions. We’ve continued to pray for him since that weekend, but I’ll tell you, we were dealing with something I can’t explain. Are demons real? I believe so. Do oppressions or possessions happen. I think so. I know that it says in Ephesians that we do not fight “against flesh and blood, but against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

So if we could just start to recognize that there is a devil out there and he does have demons opposing us - how would that effect the way we cling to Jesus for life. It would certainly change our prayers. It would change our world view.

Any ideas on this? Or should I just start handling snakes?

[For a good article on the flip side of my argument go here.]