Darrow Miller and Friends

Demons Relocated at Airport

A friend, Ric Nesimiuk, who has been involved for many years with DNA training in Asia, recently brought this story to my attention. It’s from the Bangkok Post, October 9, 2009 and is titled Demons to be Relocated At Airport.

Twelve ‘demon statues’ at Suvarnabhumi airport believed to have brought bad luck to shopkeepers will be moved at a cost of one million baht. The guardian spirit statues will be shifted from the inner zone of the passenger terminal to the check-in area to ‘improve morale’ of people working at the airport… the decision to relocate the figures from the inner part of the passenger terminal had partly resulted from complaints from staff working in the inner zone which has many shops [who] are blaming the statues for the problems they have faced at the airport, which was seized late last year by demonstrators and supporters of the People’s Alliance for Democracy.

In case you’re wondering, one million baht is just over $30,000 U.S. Ideas have consequences indeed.

According to Rick:

Buddhists live in constant fear of evil spirits.  They go to great lengths to appease them… millions of Buddhists in SE Asia need to be freed from this fear and believe in a God who loves them unconditionally. 

What struck me about this story is the setting; one of the most modern airports in the world. We often associate animism with rural, underdeveloped communities in the global south. We’ve recently been explosed to animistic culture in Haiti. But animism exists worldwide, and is actually advancing in Europe and the United States. Pascal is attributed with saying “there is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God.”  The secularism of the West cannot satisfy the innate human longing for God. But rather than returning to her Biblical roots, many in the West are opting for animism. Perhaps this helps explain the overwhelming success of Avatar.

– Scott Allen

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About 
Scott Allen serves as president of the DNA secretariat office. After serving with Food for the Hungry for 19 years in both the United States and Japan, working in the areas of human resources, staff training and program management, he teamed up with Darrow Miller and Bob Moffitt to launch the DNA in 2008. Scott is the author of Beyond the Sacred-Secular Divide: A Call to Wholistic Life and Ministry and co-author of several books including, As the Family Goes, So Goes the Nation: Principles and Practices for Building Healthy Families. His most recent book is Why Social Justice is Not Biblical Justice. Scott lives with his wife, Kim, in Bend, OR. They have five children.

1 Comment

  1. Barry

    February 22, 2010 - 4:41 pm

    Regarding the fear of evil spirits, generally buddhists do not fear any kind of spirit. Negative thoughts or emotions of what can be considered evil come from within the mind. Perhaps some are superstitious instead?

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