WHAT IS SPIRITUAL WARFARE?
What’s it about?
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL WARFARE?
'Spiritual warfare' is the struggle to have
life in this material world reflect as much as possible God's loving
governance. It is a 'war' because there are forces working vigorously to thwart
God's work. God is in charge, but there is an enemy that is in full-scale
revolt, and they have great influence all around. As with the unseen
God, the forces behind the revolt are unseen, non-physical, and supernatural.
They lust after power in the world of visible, material beings. Just because
the battle is unseen doesn't mean it isn't going on. It is. In every corner of
our earthly existence. In
deciding to follow Christ, the believer accepts the ruler ship of Christ in
his/her life (that's what's meant when Jesus is called ‘Lord’ His authority and
rule). This New You
yields the throne of the self to Jesus, but the Old You doesn't like it one
bit.
The struggle against the Devil and all his
empty promises is at its heart a 'second Person' matter, a work of Christ
Himself. The Holy Spirit leads us in our part of the struggle.
The Scriptures speak of spiritual warfare in
several places, but most directly by Paul in Ephesians 6, where he speaks of the full armor of God. Most
pointed is verse 12: "For we wrestle not against flesh and
blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the
darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places".
The Devil has already lost. But the Devil is
trying to take as many with him as he can, apparently just to hurt God. And
however much the Devil succeeds in doing this, God hurts -- like a parent does
over losing a child. This sort of spite is very much in keeping with the
Devil's character. Satan is a leech; he is so lacking in life that the only
life he has left is what he can suck out of the living.
WAR TALK
War's a horrible thing, and we follow the
Prince of Peace. But Scriptural imagery uses warfare language, and thus it
would be very wrong to reject it. Just as important, those who are going
through the worst of the struggle sooner or later find themselves leaning on
war-like terms. They're going through more than a mere 'struggle' they're going
through a kind of hell. War imagery captures this with a precision and
emotional connection no other imagery has yet come close to. And war language,
while it may make too much of any one 'battle', is the only language which
successfully catches the epic proportion of what is going on in the
supernatural realm.
With that said, Christ's followers are called
on to use a very different set of weapons: we are to be instruments
of peace. Paul refers to the shoes of the gospel of peace; the belt
of truth; and the sword of the Spirit -- the word of God (Ephesians 6:10-18). These are hardly A-bombs or bullets or
bayonets. Such weapons are not only very destructive to the evils of the
Devil's work, but are also the blocks upon which a lasting shalom is built. In
ancient
TACTICS
It's not only good faith, but often a good
tactic to take action in the opposite way from evil. Where there's anger, act
to bring calm and things may calm down. Where there is greed, start giving - it
might become infectious. Where large egos rule, be a servant of all, and the
contrast will speak for you. Where there is backbiting and gossip, say things
to build people up, and it may suck the poison out. Where there is disunity,
seek a way to bring people together, and you may find surprising allies. Do
these things deliberately, in a way that exposes the evil for what it is. You
may not be safely able to name the evil, but your actions and attitudes can
reveal the truth when words can't.
WHAT IF I CAN'T LOVE ENOUGH?
The most important truth about spiritual
warfare is that it is first and foremost a work of love. Not love for the
struggle, or the love of "saving souls" or of victory. It's a work of
love for God's Kingdom, and love for the people Jesus was crucified over --
which is each and every one. Some people have an easier time with loving. Their
emotional makeup and life circumstances make it easier for them to make their
love effective. It's much easier to love if you've been loved. Many people have
a much harder time of loving. They're burdened with a heavy load of taunting,
fear, oppression, or mental disease. Or worse, they haven't experienced love
from anyone and so have no idea what it really is or what it does or how to
give it.
The hard truth, though, is that none has enough love on their own to
do spiritual warfare. In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says to ask and it will be given.
So ask God to enable you to love with God's love. The Spirit's more than happy
to give you this. But like everything else God gives, it's made to be real. It
will take stubborn, regular prayer, taking risks, and maybe some hard lessons
and changes in outlook, for the love to start flowing out of you. If the love
isn't there, it's like going into battle unarmed and unprepared, straight into
the line of fire.
SPIRITUAL WELFARE
One can only start 'spiritual warfare' from
the point of view of 'spiritual welfare'. In both senses of the word 'welfare'.
- 'Welfare'
in terms of one's spiritual good. Satan looks for weakness, and exploits
places in our life where we allow ourselves to be a sham. The art of turning
oneself over to God and partaking in God's friendship is at the
heart of all the Christian forms of spiritual discipline. When one does
that, there's much less room for Satan's torments. We also can fight Satan
by praying for the 'spiritual welfare' of others (a form of 'intercessory
prayer', which itself flows from love).
- 'Welfare'
also in the sense of the
WHAT IS
SATAN?
So, what kind of a Satan do the Scriptures
tell us about? The devil is shown as having will, ability, and much
supernatural power, even if the power
comes mostly from his skill at lies and deceit. Satan has identity
(a sense of 'I') and a purpose
(or anti-purpose). Satan is at once an instigator and a
reactionary, the one who starts fights and the one whose reason for being (at
least so far as he's concerned) is to frustrate and obstruct God's Kingdom in
every way. The Devil is
more than a match for any person standing on his or her own, or for that matter
any group of human beings. We're no match for Satan on our own because we are
out of working order with the only One who has the power to best Satan. Christ,
by coming into the created world, calls Satan's bluffs and flushes him out from
where he is.
The Devil is not an anti-god. The Devil is
more like a sham god, a face without a person behind it, all apparitions and no
substance. Satan can tempt, but can never fully be. Satan, like the archangel he once was, can't make us do anything. Martin
Luther likened Satan to a snarling dog that is chained in place, who can only
do you real harm if you're foolish enough to come too close. All Satan can do
is use cunning tricks to play off our weaknesses and circumstances, to lead us
to choose to do things which suck the life, hope, and energy out of ourselves
and others -- especially others who did nothing to harm us. And each time we
do, we lose a bit of the person behind our own face.
Satan has servants, too. These 'demons' or
'bad angels' do the day-to-day whisperings, the temptations within each moment
of daily life. Give them an inch and they will try to take a mile.
If all this Satan talk puts you off, or if
you think that Satan is just a construct or a symbol that people created to
show how humans tend toward evil, you have another think coming;
• there
really is a force or entity from beyond us and from outside of us , calling
each and all of us to evil, trying to
get evil thoughts to turn into deeds, and meshing together or coordinating
those deeds into an evil mess;
- When
it's said that all of us are 'fallen', it means that some aspect of us is
working to the same ends as this force/entity.
•
If you don't believe at least this much about evil, you're not dealing
with evil for what it really is.
The spiritual
gifts, most especially discernment and wisdom, are there in part to prevent
Satan's efforts to put people in bondage. Satan's into this bondage stuff.
Satan can use whips, chains, domination and submission, but usually doesn't.
More often, Satan uses twisted ideas, manipulations, half-truths, the lure of
sex and victory and wealth and power, fear, vengeance, self-images of shame,
and the burning anger of being wronged. Satan uses the show, drained of
substance; the excitement, drained of reasons to celebrate. Satan deals marked
cards from stacked decks, hands us loaded dice, and then urges us to gamble.
Such things are Satan's idea of spiritual discipline, or more accurately, dis-spiritual
un-discipline. And just as spiritual disciplines help to open us up more to the Holy
Spirit, indulging in an evil way of life opens us up to an inner anarchy which
(like all anarchies) eventually turns in on itself to crave authoritarian rule
from the one who most wants that kind of absolute power.
The main ways of fending off the Devil are to
live as a follower of Christ and to love your neighbors as yourself. In doing
that, you give the Devil less room to play with. An act of spiritual warfare
can be as simple as:
- telling
the truth instead of lying;
- treating
people with respect instead of cussing them out;
- ordering
vegetable juice instead of a daiquiri;
- not
going on a spending spree to keep your lifestyle more upper-class than
your neighbor's,
- Not
flipping a finger at the guy who just cut you off in traffic, or maybe
even to give a smile.
- gentle
words for your mate
- a
helping hand to an elderly woman in a store;
- An
act of kindness done just to be kind.
You could choose to do something else, and
that idea would not usually be from the Devil. But that idea would still have
to be chosen against when there is a more Christ like response to be chosen
for. Living as a Christian is not a neutral thing; it presses on to a higher
calling. Thus spiritual warfare could be something like choosing not to abort
that child, or choosing not to throw that punch or draw that knife, or choosing
to stop trying to be a hip hop star so you can have time to work with troubled
teens, or choosing not to work overtime because your family needs your presence
more than your money. Even things that
you are allowed to do, things you are morally justified in doing, things that
would make your life a lot easier, things that create opportunities -- even
those things are to be turned away, if there is a more Godly choice to make.
The classic case is when a church or ministry receives the proceeds of known drug
sales or prostitution. They would not be wrong in thinking there's a lot of
good that can be done with the money. But Satan still wins if they knowingly
accept it or have a strong suspicion where the money came from. When you accept
the benefits of wrongdoing, you become part of the problem; it changes you and
your role in the system. The warfare is fought in you and among the parts of
society that are around you, every day.
WHAT KIND
OF TRUTH SETS US FREE?
It's common for people to say that "the truth
will set you free". But mere factual knowledge, standing on its own, can't
do anything to the Devil. The more we know, the more places that Satan can grip
in order to twist our minds. And even if somehow you were able to know how to
stop Satan from twisting your knowledge, Satan could still get at you through
your body, with accident or tempting sensations or illness. And even if you
were able (as Job was) to defy Satan as he works against your body, Old'
Scratch could still scratch away at you through your relationships. And so on.
There are just too many ways to get at us.
There is a truth that sets us free. One truth
that gives strength to all the other truths. Jesus, the Christ. And, since the
key truth is a person not a thing, our freedom is found in our relationship
with that person. In a relationship, you bring all aspects of yourself into play:
thoughts, knowledge, feelings,
experiences, memories,
deeds, tastes, time. If everything about you is involved somehow with Christ,
it doesn't matter what angle of approach Satan uses, Christ will already be
there. Even the Devil's worst wickedness can be turned into good by God. The
Christ who wins the spiritual battles is the same Christ who won the war. What
could be more secure than that?