Spiritual Warfare

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." 

     -Ephesians 6:12.

 There is evil in the world. I have no doubt of this. I catch glimpses and hear whispers and rumors and stories of evil here and there, even while I myself am living a rather secure, rather comfortable, and rather good life.

      Just because you don't see something doesn't mean it isn't there. I've learned the truth of this over my life. Many evils, like slavery, abuse, corruption, and criminality are often hiding in plain sight. Right in front of us, sometimes even. 

 What I know to be true is that the Devil and his angels are everywhere.  Scripture describes the Devil as "the prince and the power of the air" Eph. 2:2 implying that even the air of this world is his territory. Scripture also describes him as the prince of this world.

    He has been poisoning this world and corrupting this creation for a very long time now.

           I have come from some pretty dark places. I have had some pretty bad stuff happen to me, and I can be pretty sure that the enemy had his hand to play in much of it.  Even so, I don't fear him. My faith is much bigger, MUCH bigger, then the snares, poisons, and hate of the enemy. 

God is still sovereign over all of this.

God is still good and right.

    In a lot of Christian circles, I hear the topic of "spiritual warfare" brought up in conversations with believers. It's a particularly popular topic amongst young believers and new Christians. The warrior for Christ concept is very powerful in many circles of Christianity.

     This is definitely not a bad thing. The call of defending the faith and being a warrior for God is a noble call for a noble cause, one that gives us much purpose and much meaning in our life.

 Spiritual warfare, unlike conventional warfare, doesn't require the shedding of blood and the destruction of physical things. Spiritual warfare is waged in our minds and in our spirits as well as realms of existence we don't fully understand.  Spiritual Warfare can be fought by acts that aren't considered warlike at all, like kindness, compassion, and treating others around you with dignity and respect. 

 

These may not be very warlike things, but in doing them you are doing what Christ commands you to do, which by default fights the darkness and hate of this world more effectively in the long term than the shedding of blood. You are fighting God's enemies and the agents of hate with one of the core natures and components of who God is; Love. 

       Even with this, I don't believe God is a wimp by any means. He is strong, mighty, and glorious.  His enemies are going to pay a brutal price for going against Him. In this world, there is a time and place for harshness and a time and place for gentleness, and God knows perfect discernment between those two things. He knows the perfect response to any adverse situation or challenge He and His followers face.

 Fighting a spiritual war doesn't always need to be physically violent. It can be "fought" by following Jesus's commands of love and compassion and generosity, sometimes even more effectively so than bloodshed.

 Spiritual warfare can also be fought with ideas and information, not so differently than how you would fight psychological warfare.

     When I try to fight spiritual warfare, I try to wage it with my words, my ideas, my stories, and my theories.  I try to present ideas that can maybe reshape someone's thoughts and change their minds. 

      I try to paint with my words an image of God and an image of His creation so much more vast and so much more complex and so much more wondrous than what most people would consider Him to be. I paint Him as infinite. Truly infinite.

     I try to paint God as something completely and utterly invulnerable because of his sheer infinity, and I try to paint this world and the constructs within it as so tiny, so insignificant, so reduced that nothing of this world can even touch a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the infiniteness and supremacy of the Creator.  

         In fact, the Devil, that great, big, bad, enemy who rules this world, is a zero-point compared to God's infinity and the infinity of God's creation even. Any sample of an infinity, compared with the scope of an infinite system, is always a zero-point of that system, no matter how big the sample is.

          I paint such a massive picture of God and such a small picture of this world and, as a result, the devil, because it reduces the presence and status of the enemy to what he is; a finite creation, not an infinite creator. 

          I write this, and put my ideas and theories out there as much as I do because I know someone's reading them. This is how I wage my spiritual warfare; with information, stories, theories, and ideas that I share with the world.  I also wage it by trying my best (and falling short quite frequently) to follow Jesus's commands of respecting and loving the people around me and showing kindness and compassion to strangers and friends alike. Love can be such a beautifully powerful weapon. One need not look much further than the cross to see this. 

       I hope and trust that in some way I am making a difference in people's lives, or maybe even impacting the world in a spiritual way, contributing to the great spiritual war between good and evil.

      My war isn't fought with guns, bombs, planes, and ships anyways. Spiritual warfare and psychological warfare share some strong parallels. Both are fought abstractly with abstract information, and both are fought in, and target, the human mind.

      

   I fight my war with information. I fight my war with ideas, which themselves are the source and cause of most conflicts in the world in some way or form. 

       Spiritual warfare was the first form of warfare, exists in the backdrop of the entire world's conflicts-whether that be actual wars or the contentions between our own friends and family on the personal level, and spiritual warfare will most certainly will be the last form of warfare humanity, and existence as a whole, will engage in.

When the spiritual war is won, all other forms of warfare become unnecessary and purposeless.  They no longer need to exist.