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Deliverance is a highly controversial practice, including among Christians. Exorcism is generally understood to be the practice of casting a demon spirit out of the body or soul of someone possessed by it. A born-again Christian can't be possessed by a demon. However, there are hosts of Christians who are only such in name. It's important to judge the fruit and then we can tell what spirit is at work.

There are a huge number of people who think that only because they show up at a church service on Sunday, this makes them Christians. These people are not born-again, they don't live in obedience to the Holy Spirit and many of them have hosts of open doors in their lives - in their physical bodies or in the realm of the soul.

It is therefore not a strange thing for someone who claims to be a Christian to actually have "contracted" an unclean spirit and to host such spirit in their body or soul. This doesn't make them possessed.

When the person repents and breaks their ties with the demon spirit, the spirit can be cast out in the name of Jesus. This is not weird, spooky or scary. It's a spiritual practice we refer to as deliverance.

However, there are some groups who approach deliverance as a "exorcism" issue. They use crosses, holy water and all kinds of paraphernalia to supposedly cast a demon spirit. Such people are ignorant of what the Gospels and the New Testament Scriptures teach on deliverance. Such "exorcism" attempts may indeed hurt people.

We don't know if this is what happened in the case reported here or not. We don't know if these were some truly ignorant church people or if this lady was simply trying to get some money through a lawsuit. Not enough information.

What's important to establish is that even if these were some ignorant church people and they did some harmful things, this is not a reason good enough to 'outlaw' deliverance. If these people actually hurt someone and this was proved, then they can be held accountable. But you can't outlaw a religious practice because someone abused it.

By the same token we need to outlaw automobiles, because some people drink and drive and end up killing other people. Many such examples can be given.

The court rightly decided that it's not the business of the State to interfere with religious practices and decide what's right and what's wrong. I am not in any way defending strange or harmful actions of ignorant religious fanatics! I'm only stating that when (and there will be) such people so crazy things, this is not a reason or us to discount deliverance as wrong or outlaw it altogether.

Again, read the whole story here.