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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