The Devil

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. -- John 8:44

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. – John 10:10

I do not know what the devil is.  I am not a dualist, but I suppose material creation needs some sort of antipodes, an un-life against which life pushes, and a darkness in which the light may shine.  I know not what he is, but I know there is a devil.  I know, too, we are at war with him.  Frankly, right now, he seems to be winning, in part, perhaps, because we tend to ignore him. 

Someone was talking about a woman who wanted to be blind so she put bleach in her eyes.  In more enlightened and reasonable times, we would have considered this an indication of mental illness.  In far more enlightened times, we might see it for the demonic destruction that it is.  So, too, would be the case with Bruce Jenner and many others who are systemically and consciously mutilating and destroying their bodies in an attempt to destroy the soul. 

A young man who goes into a school and murders people, for whatever reason, is not just “crazy” or in need of help, he is an agent of evil.  He has sided with Abaddon, the destroyer, against life and against God.  The president who stands up and calls me “complicit” in that act of evil is an agent of Satan, the accuser. 

But maybe I am complicit.  Have I have sat back too long and refused to confront evil, to call it out for what it is when I see it?  Have I been too willing to let the devil slide?  Have I looked away from immoral and unrighteous lifestyles and said that it was, after all, none of my business what other people do?  It is past time for Christians to stand up and tell America the truth. 

The nation is in decline because we have substituted government for God.  We have built our ethics and morality on the shifting sands of scientism, and we are shocked when the winds of reality bring it down.  We have rejected spiritual wealth in favor of material prosperity, and we are rapidly approaching the point where we will have neither.  We have said that God has no place in our public square, and the void has been filled with the idolatry of celebrity, lust, promiscuity, perversion, faithlessness, and deception to the point that our children are held captive to fear of the wickedness that oozes out from it.

Obama is not the problem.  He is a stooge and a dupe, the symptom of a disease that rots the core of our culture.  No presidential candidate is going to save us.  Or doom us.  We have doomed ourselves by serving Mammon and doing the devil’s will.  We have created monsters, and they are coming for us. 

As much as I love my carnal weapons, we will be saved, as we talked about recently, only by spiritual weapons, weapons of righteousness on the right hand and on the left.  The shield of faith will guard our hearts, but we also need the sword of the Spirit -- to live and to speak the truth.  It is time to stop accommodating the walking dead.        

An Incoherent Monday

I do not know what is the matter with me today.  Fortunately work is not overly demanding, so far.  Too much gunk on the plugs, and running a little rough.  So if this doesn't make any sense, I'm still not drunk.  

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. -- John 8:44

How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!  How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!  You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’  But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. – Isaiah 14:12-15

It is said sometimes that the world is the devil’s heaven.  That’s not referring to the planet earth but to the human system, the world of human perception and understanding.  God’s material creation is good; He said so.  It is derived from His ideal.  Between that derived reality and us lies what the Bible calls “the world”.  The devil is the prince of “this world”.  When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, the devil declared that all the authority and glory of “the kingdoms of the world” had been given to him that he might do with it as he pleased (Luke 4:5-6).  Jesus did not argue with the devil’s claim. 

Indeed of that realm of perception and manifestation lies under the devil’s control.  We tend to think of the devil as the source of evil, and in a sense that’s true.  Most of what we call evil, though, does not come from the devil’s direct actions.  Instead a human or a bunch of humans accept the distortion that they perceive before them and perpetrate wickedness and iniquity.  We can hold them accountable because they should know better.  We always have a choice to believe the truth or believe the lie. 

Eden is not far from here.  God has the way guarded lest those who are not ready for it stumble into it and utterly destroy themselves. 

Meanwhile, the devil has most of the rest of us convinced that our hope lies outside in the shifting, bottomless morass of our experience and belief.  The call to work on the externals is seductive.  Success, we are convinced, lays with a new government, with a revolution, with the next election, with a new program, a new policy, vegetarianism, more time at the gym, a new partner, or a different job. 

What really needs to change is our understanding.  If we will turn from the lies and turn to the truth and start living, acting, and thinking in alignment with the truth, we will begin to see the eternal reality that underlies the world.  We will begin to see many of the things that trouble us are manifestations of our own short-circuited, twisted, perverted thinking. 

I’m not doing a very good job of getting at what I mean.  The basic, persistent flaw of all utopian thinking is its failure to change people.  All of us are sick to a great or lesser degree.  If we are put in paradise, we are apt to turn it into hell.  The only way there will ever be heaven on earth is for humanity to emigrate to Mars.  Conversely, if I could get all the hell out of myself, I could experience paradise right where I sit.  I could let go of the devil’s kingdom of lies and walk in God’s truth. 

This is impossibly easy.  That is, it’s easy; it’s just impossible.  Only one Man has ever done it.  We are invited to participate in His victory.  The Body of Christ is not a new force for societal change and improvement.  It is as radical a departure from the common way of living and walking as a spaceship blasting off for some new Earth 2.0.  Instead of leaving the planet, we leave the world. 

If the teleporter's working, just beam me on up.

Antichrist and Zombies

The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. -- 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10

Again we see that deception is the enemy's weapon.  Flip Wilson's 'Geraldine' used to say, "The devil made me do it."  This is an easy excuse and incorrect.  Rather, as James tells us:  Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.  But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.  Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (James 1:13-15) 

The problem is that a desire is generally rooted in something good.  It may get twisted into a macabre thing, like topiary that is shaped into a monstrous image, but the root is sound and legitimate.  All too often we are deceived as Eve was into disobedience, seeking that which we already possess.  The Serpent told her that she could be "as God, knowing good and evil", yet the man and woman were made in the image and likeness of Elohim from the start.  They already knew that obeying God was good and disobeying Him was evil.  The bargain they made was for dust, ending in death and bitterness.

There are no doubt exceptions, but in the majority of cases, I doubt that sexual pleasure is the primary motivation for adultery — as silly as that sounds.  Most of the time, adultery is about power, emotion, and status.  People feel neglected or oppressed in a relationship and think that a new partner will give them the attention and freedom they deserve.  Envy, greed, and slander are also rooted in a quest for control and dominance.  Yet the Lord told mankind from the very beginning that we have dominion over all the earth — just not over one another for we are all responsible to one Master. 

It is not necessary to seek to satisfy any need or to grasp for any good gift outside of a relationship with our Father.  He will pour into our lives everything we require, satisfying every desire at the root, like abundant rain that soaks down and is drawn up from the ground.  By comparison, yielding to temptation and seeking satisfaction in the world is like squirting water on a leaf.  You can't keep most plants in good health merely sprinkling a little moisture the leaves and branches.  Nourishment has to come up from the hidden roots for life and growth and fruitfulness. 

It all comes down to whom — not just what — we are going to believe.  God speaks the truth.  He cannot do otherwise and still be God.  Sometimes that truth is uncomfortable, disturbing, even confusing.  There is truth that will be incomprehensible to us, especially at the beginning.  Speaking for myself, if I lived twice as long as I have, much would still be beyond my comprehension.  On the other hand, our adversary is a liar and the father of lies, as Jesus said (John 8:44).  The devil will not tell the truth except in halves, distorted so as to serve his deception.  It is not just a matter of choosing whom we will serve.  We need to decide whom we will believe. 

In order to believe God, we will sometimes have to trust Him in spite of illusions, the "false signs and wonders" to which Paul refers.  This spirit of lawlessness, or the antichrist spirit, if you prefer, has a long history.  It is entrenched in the thinking and understanding of the old nature.  It is relentless and so tied to sensory perception that — despite it being rendered inoperable, it has the appearance of living on.  Zombies really are everywhere.  And they really do eat away at your brain. 

I confess that sometimes for days, even weeks, even months on end, I am living more like the walking dead than a son of the Living God.  It is not all that hard to get caught in the cycles of pressure, fear, stress, work, and worry.  We are apt to get locked into focusing on getting to the end of the day — and, honestly, even as we are believing the true report, some days are going to be a challenge just to survive.  But love the truth even when the thorns of it pierce the flesh.  As painful as it may be, it sharpens our awareness, deepens our understanding, awakens, and quickens, and it will cling to us even when we might rather let it go.   

The Belt of Truth

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. -- John 8:44

Most of the time I try not to get too subjective.  I try to stay objective, to look at things from a wider view than just how I feel about it or how it affects me.  I don't mean to imply that I am able to do that cleanly, but I try.  This means that I try not to attribute the worst possible motives to what other people do.  When I read the words of Jesus to those who were attacking Him, my first impulse is to think He is engaging in a rhetorical rebuttal trying to bring those people to their senses.  But I don't think Jesus goes for the hyperbolic much.  When God speaks, that's the way it is.  He literally cannot overstate His case. 

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places  (Ephesians 6:12).

I suppose I am a stranger in a strange land because I find Paul's statement to be very reassuring.  The real nature of our very real war is spiritual.  It works itself out on the material plane sure enough, but there's no need to get too concerned about the temporal, visible aspects.  If we take care of the actual, the derivative will take care of itself. 

There is no reason to ever expect your enemy to admit that you are right.  There is no reason to think that "the spiritual forces of evil" will ever concede.  The great error of "good" people is thinking that going about their business is all that is required, that battling evil is radical or unnecessary.  The truth is that you and I are in a war from the moment we enter the womb, whether we like it or not, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  The physical face of the enemy changes from time to time, but "the cosmic powers over this present darkness" remain — eternal, cold, and relentless as the blackness between the stars. 

As Peter said, Jesus " went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him".  He was not oppressing people.  He was not making people sick.  He was not doing anything bad or objectionable.  Yet there were people who wanted to kill Him.  This only makes sense if we realize that breaking through illusions is the way that the powers of darkness and evil are defeated.  Illusions are lies, and they are destroyed by the truth.  The devil cannot attack the truth directly.  It is simply not possible.  Instead he attacks the motives and integrity of the individual messenger.  In the case of Jesus, when the agents of Satan could find no other accusation, they became indignant that Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, as if speaking a word or touching someone were a violation of the Mosaic injunction.  The ridiculousness of the accusation is lost in the vehemence of the attack.

We can see the same thing today.  Turn on the radio, watch a news program on television, listen — if you can endure it — to the arguments of the leftists, and you will hear the "passion" of their arguments.  According to them, people like me hate homosexuals because we are against gay marriage.  We hate black and poor people because we want to require a photo identification for voting.  We hate Mexicans because we think that a nation's borders should be secure.  I can expose any of these lies, but let me pick on homosexuals. 

One of my wife's cousins is a homosexual man.  I have known him for decades.  We used to get drunk together.  I love the guy and consider him a good friend.  His father, my wife's uncle, was kind of a jerk.  I think my friend suffered because of that.  I think there are a number of reasons why he was drawn to homosexuality.  I certainly do not object to him having a happy and fulfilling life.  Here's the problem — he is not going to have a happy life.  He is going to suffer the consequences and the torment of pursuing an illusion. 

The proponents of gay marriage will point to "successful" homosexuals, like Elton John, but fame and money can buy a lot of pain killers, a lot of mind-numbing.  Even the most contented homosexuals often contend with addictions and over-indulgence trying to maintain the illusion and keep out the truth.  Like adultery or any other kind of sexual immorality, there is a price to pay for the pleasure.  Homosexuals frequently pay it in a very physical way with the break down of their immune system.  I am not willing to accept that an Elton John or an Ellen Degeneres would not be happier living a straight, moral and godly life.  They would be filled with joy and peace once the lies in their lives were exposed and driven out.  That's not to even point out that for every apparently happy "gay" person there are a thousand living in daily anguish and torment in the depths of their souls.  It is because I love people like my friend that I am opposed to sanctioning homosexuality.  I am equally against infidelity in marriage and sex outside of marriage for heterosexuals.  I am opposed to the idea of divorce.  And it is all for the same reason — it is based on lies. 

I don't have to go out and personally, physically keep people from committing sexual sins because I think it is wrong.  I am quite confident that God has the power to deliver people from their bondage if they are willing to accept the truth.  If they want to cling to the lies, that's not my problem.  Yet, despite all that I have just said, despite that obviously caring tone, despite the liberty that is implied, a person from the other side will read it and call me "intolerant" and "a hater".  Why?  Because I am telling the truth.  The Spirit of God witnesses to my words and to my love in the heart of my opponent, and he or she feels compelled to attack me.  I will be labeled intolerant, not for doing anything to anyone, actually interfering in another person's life, but for holding to and expressing a point of view — a truthful point of view. 

Though I use homosexuality as an easy example, the battle has many fronts, be it social issues, economic issues, education, families, oppressive governments, political corruption, and on and on.  I confess that I have all too often felt overwhelmed.  I have retreated into complacency and apathy.  I have insulated myself with innocuous diversions and isolated myself with petty pleasures while saying that I am not able to do anything.  In other words, I have embraced a lie of false peace.  Real peace is in the battle on the front line. 

Now where did I put my belt?