The Antichrist and Dehumanization

Most church people avoid the references in the Book of Revelation and elsewhere in the Bible to the Antichrist. In 1971, however, William Peter Blatty wrote The Exorcist, based on the last known Catholic-sanctioned exorcism (1949) in the United States, and awakened multitudes to a new awareness of the demonic in our world.  In 1973 the novel became an Academy-award winning film which sent many into hysterics. Both Blatty’s novel and film inspired a legion of imitations that have profited from our culture’s “bizarre obsession with possession.”  What does this have to do with the Antichrist?  The biblical Antichrist designates the power of “death” or “evil” incarnate in an institution, principality, power, or, sometimes, in a person associated with and possessed by demonic power (Rev. 19:17-20).  Demon-possession in the time of Jesus was accepted as the rationale for all manner of things that dehumanized an individual, from the Roman Empire to an individual’s  mental instability.  The Antichrist, then, means antihuman (as in anti-God).  

It is said that more Americans believe in the Devil than evolution or global warming.  While I do not believe in the Devil (the red man-figure with a forked-tail as Dante pictured) and I am not suggesting that the Antichrist is a  “Person,” (after all, how can an anti-human force be a person?) I do believe the biblical view of the fall.  In that fall, all relationships are splintered and broken and the power of “death” with all its demonic wiles (the biblical Antichrist) is present and operative.  Death by its very definition is dehumanization.  The biblical symbol of the Antichrist means anti-human and therefore anti-God.

“Dehumanization is the psychological process of demonizing the enemy (another human being), making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment.”  Dehumanization says that another is not worthy of moral consideration.  Jews in Nazi Germany were dehumanized (carried off in cattle cars).  African-Americans were dehumanized in the days of slavery and still are!  I’ve been dehumanized in the Department of Motor Vehicles (“the scowl on the cranky DMV worker’s face makes me feel like I am nothing to them.”)  

Once individuals or groups are stigmatized as “failures” or “rapists” or “criminals,” or morally or mentally inferior, and not fully human, the persecution of these individuals and groups becomes psychologically acceptable.  The demonic power of the biblical Antichrist becomes real and is unleashed.  The influence of the Antichrist makes those who stigmatize and degrade others  become less than human themselves—and the fallenness and brokenness of this world goes on and on.