Why Do Demons Exist?

By James Donahue

During my years as a student of Christianity and the Bible, I had problems with some of the odd conflicts I found in the scriptures. For example, if God and Satan were such mortal opposites, how could they get into a situation where they were virtually betting over Job's faithfulness under times of great stress and trouble. And how could a loving God allow the devil to carry out his evil assaults on poor old Job and put him to the test?

Then there is the problem of God's commandments that his faithful "shall not" be involved in socrery, divination, witchcraft or enchantment.

We are told in Leviticus 19:31 to "give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits. Do not seek after them, to be defiled by them." For if we dare to call on demonic powers God warns "I will set My face against that person and cut him off from his people."

Monkeying around with demonic energies was such a serious matter, God warned in Leviticus 20:27 that "a man or a woman who is a medium, or who has a familiar spirit, shall surely be put to death." And after that, such immoral souls "shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death."

We can find warnings like this throughout the Bible. The book warns that all forms of sorcery, magic or the invokation of demons is severely foridden. We just don't do that stuff.

What appears to be good for the goose doesn't seem to apply to the gander on this farmyard, however. Not only did God play games with the devil, but he felt free to call upon demonic forces to generate trouble for people who failed to do His will. For example, when King Saul strayed from God, the old man send "an evil spirit" to torment Saul and make him act like an animal.

And in the Book of Judges we read where God used a demon to turn the Sechemites against Abimelech.

We must suppose that if God is the Creator of all things in Heaven and on Earth, then he probably had license to use the objects of his creation to carry out a variety of duties, especially when dealing with the ways of mankind. After all, we are a fickle bunch, having been given the gift of free will. He probably thought it unwise to encourage humans to get in league with the dark forces of his creation.

And this leads to the question....why did God bother to create demons and other dark energies in the first place? As an omnipitent God, He must have known from the start that he was creating a pack of trouble.

The answer to this is somewhat theological. Go achieve perfection, everything in God's creation had to have balance. Therefore, all things that were "good" and filled with light needed to be offset by an equal number of things that were "bad," or leaning toward the darkness.

Thus in His dealings with men, God might be compared to a man in a tire shop who is going about the task of mounting a new tire on a wheel. In order for this wheel to spin smoothly and without blemish, it needs to have balance. This is why the tire is placed on a device that weighs the wheel and allows the mechanic to mark places where lead weights need to be attached. If he does his job correctly, the wheel will be perfectly balanced.

Those demons are but some of God's tools of his trade. Perhaps they are for Him to use....and no one else.