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I’ve got a new theological/world view term: abstract animism.I use this to describe people in the spiritual warfare movement, usually some version of Charismatic or derivative thereof, who believe that every abstract problem has a type of spirit behind it.If there is a lot of murder in a city, they say there is a spirit of murder, and you can circle the city and cast out all the spirits of murder. Then you could cast out the spirit of fornication, the spirit of Jezebel, and a bunch of other spirits, too. Supposedly, the city will be better after that.Of course, if you cast a spirit out of a man and he’s empty later, the spirit can come back with 7 reinforcements who are worse that it is. So I am not sure why this form of so-called ‘spiritual warfare’ of casting all the demons out of a city would be a good thing in the long run. I had a WOFer friend who thought all illness was caused by demons. He kept talking about illness and demons so much, I asked him if someone lost a foot in an accident in a factory, could he be cured by casting out the spirit of one-footedness. He said no, but he believed a demon knocked over whatever caused the man’s foot to be chopped off. He eventually backed away from some of his more extreme views over time. Jesus healed people who had spirits. Jesus healed a woman who was bent over who had a spirit of infirmity, but it doesn’t say he rebuked the spirit. But He did rebuke a spirit out of a boy who was deaf and dumb. At the end of Matthew 4, Jesus heals a list of ailments, and casts out demons also. To me, this implies that not all illness is caused by a demon.I find that Pentecostals seem less likely to attribute an individual’s problems to demons because they generally do not believe Christians can be demon-possessed. Also, some of the Charismatics use ‘spirit of ____ to refer to spiritual conditions, not always a demon, or the individual’s spirit. Some Charismatics think a ‘religious spirit’ is the individual’s spirit, while others think it is a demon. We also don’t know exactly how demons work. Some people assume sin is caused by demonic temptation in every case. This is just an assumption. James says that every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. He doesn’t say a demon is necessary.The Bible doesn’t tell us if one demon can be over murder for a whole city, or if one murder has one murder demon assigned to him, or if demons rotate jobs and one handles making people want to murder one week but swaps out and handles fornication the next. We don’t know if every murderer needs a demon to tempt him to murder every time he does it. And do young people really need specific demons to tempt them to fornicate? I suspect 22 year old singles fornicate more than 85-year-old singles, and that hormones are a factor, not just demons. I suppose one could argue for a spirit of hormones, but why would it become less active over time? I think you can mess some seeker or new believer up by telling him he’s got a demon when he doesn’t, so I find this sort of thing to be damaging. We also have great and precious promises in the Bible regarding praying to the Father in Jesus’ name in faith. There Bible doesn’t say that whenver you cast out a demon, you shall receive. It does not say rebuke demons over territories and nothing shall be impossible to you. I find it very sad that there are church leaders who will say, Let us pray and spend 4 minutes rebuking demons and principalities, real or imagined, and only one minute talking to God. Maybe Satanists pray to Satan, but Christians talking to the Devil is not praying________________