The Demon-Possessed

"Bill" was a large man, tall with a great gut and dark, deeply shadowed, burning eyes. I had looked away instinctively as he stood in our copy room and stopped me for conversation. He was copying sheets of math problems, by the hundreds it seemed. The secretary told him he could, he explained. Your sermon was great, he said. I watched it over and over on video. He clearly had - he could quote whole lines. All with a stare that looked like I was his last meal.

People reassured me about him without being asked. He was harmless, they said. I heard that he had grown up in the church, that he was schizophrenic. Medicated. He was too anxious to sit through worship in the sanctuary and watched it on TV from the parlor with the moms and fussy babies. Some of the mothers cruelly dubbed this room "Bellevue" because of him and our other "misfits". There was John, who giggled nervously, interrupted conversation and killed half the coffee by continuously refilling a giant thermos, and Alan, a sweet young man with Downs Syndrome. John and Alan looked hurt by the rejection sometimes, and left for periods of time. Bill just stared the mothers down, and told them to keep their kids quiet.

Word was getting around that he had a crush on me. He was telling anyone who would listen. Bill tended to develop crushes on women in the church, pursuing them, watching for signs. If you didn't nip it in the bud, people said, it would intensify. I asked him to come in and told him in the presence of the senior minister that he had better cut it out. He left with great insult, complained about having had to take two buses for a special trip in here. And the romance stopped.

He next chose another woman on our staff. Either she was kinder than I was to him, or his ardor for her was stronger, because he courted her with all his being. He copied interesting articles for her from the newspaper. He left bags of day-old bread from the free food pantry in front of her office door. He telephoned her at home. He sent her letters calling her his soul mate, and the only one who understood him. She was afraid to come to work.

People who spoke to him, telling him to stop, simply didn't understand, the letters said. When she showed them to a psychologist in the congregation, he became alarmed for her. So she got a court order, banning him from church, her place of employment. All of us who had been swept up in the fear and the wondering what to do, exhaled for a moment.

A few days after he received the order, his father telephoned me. I was acting as senior minister for six months of sabbatical, and Bill's father clearly saw me as deciding between the staff member and his son. You've got to let him come back, he pleaded with me. He has no place else to go. I thought this was a church. I thought you cared about people. I felt horrible. I did not try to lift the ban.

A year later, the staff member quit her job. Someone had told Bill. He sought an audience with the senior minister, who had returned, and he agreed Bill could come back. He tells a few people that it was she who loved him. No one believes him, but he has not bothered anyone since.

Some feel that people possessed by demons in the gospels were mentally ill. What would Jesus have done with Bill? Would I do it? Would you?