A Tired Old Man's Ramblings About the Devil

My apologies to those of you who are reading my post as part of the synchroblog that Phil invited me to contribute to. I left for Wolcott, NY at 12:30 this morning, broke trail through new snow for about 25 miles and fought a different kind of war against crazy, impatient motorists who seemed oblivious to the fact that we were driving on sheer ice. Indeed, it did eventually become a spiritual war of sorts as well, as my faith and obedience were tested for 522 miles. I wish I had a little more of a brain left to do this, but here goes...

I have come to the conclusion that the theology of spiritual warfare, like so much of modern Christian thought, has largely fallen victim to Hellenism, where the spiritual is forbidden to intersect with the profane; a place where God is rendered off bounds from having a place in every day life, thus limiting our association with Him to a couple of hours on a Sunday morning, and even then inside of an edifice of an institution which bears little in common with God's loving, merciful, compassionate, redemptive purposes for mankind.

Of course, such a view declares the devil off bounds from profaning the 'temple' as well. His place is outside of the church, in the lives and places where angels (well, at least some Christians) fear to tread. If that's true then someone better tell the devil when they see him that he's not allowed inside the church, because he's been leaving his mark all over every church I've been in for as long as I've been a believer. Therein lies the problem. Men are forever laying the blame anywhere they can as long as they don't have to accept any responsibility for it themselves. Since we have separated the sacred from the secular, Christians often think they are free to go on witch hunts, doing battle against everything and everyone who doesn't agree with them, even if that includes other Christians. Believe me when I say that if we are going to bring the battle against the forces of wickedness to human flesh and bone, there are plenty of battle fields within the Church to do spiritual warfare without looking elsewhere.

I must believe in the devil, and I must believe that the principalities and powers of darkness are at work to steal, kill and destroy, because Jesus Himself deemed it necessary to grant us authority over them so that we wouldn't have to remain deceived by their lies, slaves to their vices, nor victims of their spiritual and/or physical attacks. If I am a follower of Jesus, then I must believe that I will not only encounter the evil supernatural realm, but that I am both able and obligated to wage war against it.

But, as Paul says in Ephesians 6, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers and powers of darkness in the heavenly realms (my paraphrase)." I've encountered the demonic realm many times and I've seen what it can do. I lost one of my life-long best friends at 3am on a Halloween morning, a victim of a suicide curse placed on him by his satanist neighbors. And that's but a tip of the iceberg. I paid a horrible price for my involvement in spiritual warfare even though God used me to help others find freedom from demonic oppression. There's not enough time to go into it here, but there is no doubt in my mind that the struggle is real. But, when we start demonizing people created in God's image just because they don't believe the way we do or act the way we do, we best be thinking about taking the plank out of our own eye before we try removing the splinter from someone else's. If you want to see a real spiritual war going on, you don't have to look beyond organized religion. It's like something out of star wars going on there. Still, God goes on loving all of us, no matter how messed up we are, no matter how deceived, no matter how wrong, or how judgmental, or whatever--He loves us and nothing can separate us from his love.

I'm tired Phil, bro. Can I go to bed now?