Turns out the only real requirement to cast out devils is a reluctance to say bad stuff about Jesus
One day while Jesus was walking from Galilee to Capernaum his apostles spent hours arguing about something. When they got indoors Jesus asked his bros what they had been discussing. Nobody answered because they were embarrassed. You see, they were arguing about which apostle held the highest rank.
Because Jesus was super magic (or because he overheard) he knew what was up and in true cryptic fashion said, “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all.” Then because Jesus had ADD he jumped topics. He grabbed a little kid and said, “Whosoever shall receive one of such children in my name, receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.”
I figure this all means that a king serves his people and Jesus’ boss is a little kid. I know most people think Jesus was trying to say that if you are nice to little kids you are really being nice to God. Let me clarify the quote a little: receive children and you receive me, but not really me, really you have just received my boss. If you take out the nonsense about “you receive me, just kidding,” you are left with “be nice to kids because they sent me to Earth.”
All this nonsense about serving and being nice to kids was driving the Apostle John crazy because he had something huge to get into the open. He said, “Jesus. We saw some guy the other day that was using your name to cast out devils, but he wasn’t one of your followers. We’d never even seen him before. This was obviously total bullcrap so he told him to knock it off.”
Ok, start paying attention now. This is the big teaching moment for today.
Jesus said, “Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.” That’s right, Jesus told his religious leaders to not harass people who use the word “Jesus” and do good stuff, even if they aren’t actually Christians. The reason behind Jesus’ thinking is great too. Nobody could ever use the word “Jesus” when they perform an exorcism AND say mean things about Christ.
Moral: anyone can perform miracles if they use the name of Christ, even if they aren’t a Christian. Good thing too. If exorcism wasn’t so easy we would probably need mental institutions (insane asylums) or some other way to lock up people who don’t exhibit “normal” behavior.
Ref: Mark 9:33-40
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