The following scripture passage has
been very much on my mind recently:
Put
on the whole armor of God,that you may be able to stand against the wiles of
the devil. For we are not contending
against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this
present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.
Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the
evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your
loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and
having shod your feet with the equipment of the gospel of peace; besides all
these, taking the shield of faith, with which you can quench all the flaming
darts of the evil one. And take the
helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end
keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and
also for me, that utterance may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to
proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains;
that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.
-Ephesians 6:11-20
Every time I look at the news I am
reminded that we are engaged in a Spiritual Battle, we collectively, and each
one of us personally. It has always been
so, and will be until Christ comes again in glory. The nature of the battle is
constantly changing: for individual believers there is always a personal,
internal struggle, but there is also a more external, public conflict which changes
and ebbs and flows over time and in different places. We can see this external spiritual battle
raging all around, and picking up intensity, in the so-called “Culture
Wars”. A major theme of George Weigel’s
authorized biography of Pope John Paul II is that the Pope understood that
culture trumps politics and economics, and that culture grows out of religion,
a given people’s understanding of God.
And acting on that understanding, John Paul the Great helped bring down
the walls of that latter-day Jericho, Soviet communism.
If the cultural war is really spiritual warfare, then, who is the real
antagonist? This becomes tricky, not
because we don’t know, but because saying so in our current climate is
difficult. Those of us of a certain age
will remember the Flip Wilson Show. One
of the comedian’s most successful gags was a character called “Geraldine”,
actually Wilson himself in none-too-convincing drag, whose most memorable
laugh-line was “The devil made me do it!”
More recently, Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” on Saturday Night Live always
provoked uproarious laughter from the audience when she said “Could it be . .
.[pregnant pause} . . . SATAN!?” For a
long time now, the message in the popular culture has been that anyone who actually
attributes anything to the Evil One is, well, ridiculous (interesting, by the
way, that both of the examples above involve men dressed as women). We are set up to be dismissed as unserious
cranks if we see the hand of the Devil anywhere.
There are some who are still willing to speak out, however. Just a few years ago, one South American
cleric described a law legalizing same sex marriage as “a move by the devil,
looking to confuse and deceive all children of God” [link] (interesting that this same cleric, who now has a rather prominent position in Rome, was recently named Person of the Year by the gay magazine The
Advocate). Closer to home, I was
listening to a radio interview the other day with Joseph Bottum, who was
arguing that one reason why it’s so difficult to make any headway with those
who have left the faith and are now clinging to new enthusiasms like gay
marriage, global warming, Marxism, etc. is that those beliefs have taken on a
religious significance for them, and are occupying the place reserved in our
hearts for God. Those other things, of course, are poor substitutes indeed for
the Real Thing, the One who made us for himself, as St. Augustine tells us, and
to Whom we can say “our hearts are restless until they rest in You” (inquietum
est cor nostrum donec requiescat in Te). For which reason they cling to
their false spiritual consolations all the harder, in the unconscious hope that if they just try a little harder, they'll feel fulfilled; but such things do not
ultimately satisfy. We can see here
where we get the word “Devil”, from the Greek Diabolos, the Divider,
because he divides us from God.
None of us is immune to the temptations of Division. St. Ignatius of
Loyola represented this internal battle as a conflict between the Spirit of
Jesus and the Spirit of Satan, and pictured it as Two Standards, as in Roman battle
standards, around which the armies of each Spirit gather. When we follow the Standard of Jesus
internally, we serve in his army out in the world as well, and so it is in the
case of the other side. As St. Paul tells us, our battle is with spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly
places. Those whom we take to be
their foot soldiers here on Earth most certainly do not think of themselves in
those terms. Having spent many years as
secular leftist, I know that the vast majority of those who serve in that camp
are well-meaning, and honestly believe they are on the side of good and righteousness,
not realizing that the breastplate of
righteousness is part of the full
armor of God. That’s the other message of Paul’s letter: we can’t withstand in the evil day without God’s
armor, without the gospel of peace, without all prayer and supplication. When we
separate ourselves from God, or don’t avail ourselves of all the spiritual arms
with which he provides us, we are helpless against the wiles of the Divider. We need to remember this in our interactions
with those who are on the other side. We
need to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15), and aim for the conversion of their
hearts, and, ultimately, their redemption, not their destruction.
Finally, this is the reason why St. Paul asks that utterance may be given me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the
mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains; that I may
declare it boldly, as I ought to speak. Jesus rallies an Army of Love
around His Standard. That’s why we engage in the culture wars: not because we
like brawling (see Eph. 4:15 above), and not to inflate our egos (Scripture is
chock full of warnings about getting “puffed up”), but to win hearts and souls
for Christ.
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