Demons as the Default

On hearing a sermon this morning... The gospel was the account of Jesus casting the demon out of a possessed boy. The boy had been casting himself into the fire, frothing at the mouth. "Well," said the preacher, "There is the possibility this was a sickness which was attributed to the demonic of that day." In other words demons were the default. This is the 'novel' idea that the NT primitive mind was locked into seeing demons in what is no more than a little bacterial inflamation, or a mischievious virus. Can one assume then the Great Physician Himself was fooled by the archaic assumptions of his own times? Does it never occur to us that, God forbid!, we might perhaps be deceived by the materialist and biological assumptions of disease in our own day? Maybe we discount demons too easily. The way the world continues maybe the ancients were quite correct in attributing so much to the demonic. The more many cast ourselves into the fire and froth at the mouth and call it normal and get us to call it normal--- perhaps this can only be explained if one accepts the demonic as a distinct possibility? As I read and see the latest cultural trends I must conclude that perhaps we moderns have it backwards. Perhaps demons are more often the correct answer and we must be not so much cured of a disease but exorcised of a demon.