Jesus once told a story about an “impure spirit” that “comes out of a person” and “goes through arid places seeking rest” but does not find it. The spirit then says to itself, “I will return to the house I left.” It does so and finds the house, which is a person, “unoccupied, swept clean, and put in order.”

At this point, Jesus’s tale sounds very much like a horror story. The spirit “goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”

Having recently celebrated Halloween, Jesus’s story seems timely. Though people once thought of Halloween – the eve of All Hallows – as a religious vigil that preceded All Saints Day, it is now considered a time of darkness, demons, and ghouls. So, Jesus’s story about an impure spirit – we could probably say, “demon” – living inside a human being seems like an apt subject.

If Jesus’s parable is a horror story, it is an unusual one. The horror is not located in demons, which never frightened Jesus, but in the fact that a person – and even a generation of people, as Jesus made clear – can become a place where unclean things live. Humans were designed so that they could be joined to each other and, more importantly, to God. They were not made to be alone. “It is not good,” according to God himself, “for the man” – the human being – “to be alone.”

When humans are alone, neither joined to God nor to people, they can be joined to other things. Some people, including some theologians, think that the existence of unclean spirits and demons is a myth that humanity should have outgrown long ago. They scoff at the idea. But the Bible takes seriously the presence of spiritual beings that are opposed to God. Humanity lives in a war zone.

And we can’t be neutral. That is a major point of Jesus’s story. Neutrality is defeat. We must take a side.

In his story, Jesus says that the impure spirit or demon goes about “seeking rest” but not finding it. That spirits, whether angels or demons, feel the need for rest reveals how little we know about such things. It then decides to return to the house it left – “my house,” in the original language – and finds it clean and orderly but unoccupied.

Jesus seems to be picturing people who have reformed their behavior, maybe even started attending religious services, but whose interior life is vacant. They have no place for God. They are temporarily clean, but empty—like a motel on a lonely stretch of road, flashing a neon vacancy sign for all and sundry.

We must remember that humans were designed to be joined. They are like ions – unequally charged atoms. Ions either have a positive charge – more protons than electrons – or a negative charge, more electrons than protons. When atoms are out of balance like that, they are said to be unstable, and are quick to pick up or to shed electrons.

When people are unstable, which happens when they lack God, they are quick to pick up something in his place. That something may be detrimental. Jesus makes that point in his story: “It goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there.” The original language is something like, “settle down there.”

It is clear that Jesus was not merely talking about individuals because he adds, “That is how it will be with this wicked generation.” It is the fourth time he has spoken of a generation in the space of a few paragraphs. Jesus worked to overturn the powers of darkness and liberate an entire generation, but people – including religious leaders – were welcoming the dark powers’ return by their rejection of God.

That is where the horror lies in this story. When people turn God away, they forfeit their protection from the evils that haunt humanity. That, sadly, is where the current generation finds itself. The vacancy sign is lighted, and evil has taken up residence.