Spiritual Warfare is Boring

A couple of years ago, I heard a wise elder describe a church split in an incredibly gracious way. He had been on one side of the schism and some in the room had been on the other. They had all long-since reunited, but if you’ve ever been through one of those things, you know the memories last and the pain can linger. So here’s what he said; “I experienced those events differently than some of you in the room, but it is a part of a history that shapes all of us.” A masterful combination of truth and grace.

This post isn’t about church unity. It’s about spiritual warfare. But I want to begin by acknowledging that you and I may experience the same events in different ways. We may even read the same biblical texts and reach different conclusions. That doesn’t make one of us right and one of us wrong. In fact, we could both be mistaken. I am confident, though, that you and I approach the subject and its related biblical references with much less objectivity than we’d like to admit.

When I use the term spiritual warfare, I’m referring to the idea that the world we can see with our eyes and test in our labs is not all there is to reality. There is another dimension, a parallel universe, just beyond the horizon of human perception, and it affects us. That’s why Paul talks about putting on the full armor of God in Ephesians 6:10 – 18. Most theologically conservative Christians believe, to some degree, in this preternatural reality.

But we generally fall into one of two groups – those who hardly ever think about their lives from a spiritual warfare point of view and those who nearly always do. Both of us would probably benefit from listening to one another.

Some of our ideas about spiritual warfare have no doubt been shaped by media. Movies like The Exorcist, Constantine, The Conjuring or the Omen make a strong impression. No wonder some of us prefer to not think about what may lurk at the thin borderland between the physical and spiritual dimensions. Writers, like Frank Peretti with This Present Darkness and it’s sequels, and Jerry Jenkins with the Left Behind series, had a bigger impact on Christians for two reasons – they’re Christians themselves and we Christians trust what we read in a book more than what we see on a movie screen. I’ll give them props for good writing (especially Peretti) but in my opinion, their take on spiritual warfare makes a good argument for why biblical doctrine should not be novelized.

Here’s my problem with the more, shall we say, dramatic views on spiritual warfare: Satan is evil – he isn’t stupid. If a co-worker you’re standing next to at the office water cooler suddenly turns ashen gray and his head spins 360 degrees on its axis while he speaks curses against God in Latin, I’m going to bet you won’t be skipping Wednesday night church any time soon. You’ll hear, believe, repent, confess and do a triple gainer into the nearest baptistery faster than Adobe sends out updates. It just doesn’t make any sense for Satan to shed his cover and make a frontal assault on the souls of men and women. In many ways, he has us right where he wants us – inattentive, unaware and distracted.

Which is why Peter warned his readers to be alert and of sober mind in 1 Peter 5:8. Why would we need to be alert if Satan was going to go all Linda Blair on us? I’m not saying Satan isn’t out to get us. Peter says he prowls about like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. He is definitely looking for his next meal. The question is, how does he do it?

In the verses before Peter issues his warning about our prowling adversary, he cautions us about two dangerous attitudes – arrogance and anxiety. The arrogant think they get along just fine without God. The anxious fear that God either doesn’t know, doesn’t care or can’t do anything about what they are going through. Both of those attitudes make us as vulnerable as a three-legged Gazelle on the Serengeti just before a lion attack.

I’ll admit that cultivating humility and nurturing trust are not quite as exciting as exorcising possessed souls or casting out demons. But, historically speaking, pride and doubt have an impressive track record for undermining God’s people. From King Saul to the Apostle Peter, the arrogant are usually the first to bite the dust. And Psalm 37:8 says, Do not fret – it leads only to evil.

I think the devil would like for us to think that spiritual warfare is dramatic and vivid and histrionic. But it isn’t like that. We are at war, alright. The war, however, isn’t a cinematic struggle against a great dragon or a dramatic exorcism of a filthy demon. It’s all the little battles we fight every day. The temptation to take credit for work we didn’t do. Or project an image that is about as true to real life as one of those computer generated characters in a super hero movie. The battle we fight is to admit that we are not only incapable of walking a straight path to heaven, but that we are not even able to figure out which way the path turns. We fight to stay humble.

And to trust that God cares more about our lives than even we do. For the anxious, the struggle is to remain calm in the middle of chaos; to keep the faith when we can’t pay the rent; to believe God cares about us when our current circumstances make that claim seem more like a busted myth than a rock solid fact.

If you and I can remain humble in success and trusting in struggle, we win. It may not be all that electrifying, but it will be an eternal victory.