BLOG 10/5/16. A CERTAIN NAIVETE REGARDING EVIL/SATAN
In a few weeks many Christian folks will be celebrating Reformation Sunday (which most of the present younger generation never even heard of!). They will robustly sing Martin Luther’s stirring hymn: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God with its line: “… and though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear …” The problem is that they will probably do this with an absolute naïveté and only the fuzziest notion of any cosmic warfare between “our ancient foe, who sees to work us woe” … and the realities of their present, ordinary, day-to-day lives. Let’s just call it for what it is: a certain mindlessness. These are the same people (most of us) who likewise pray the Lord’s Prayer which concludes with the petition that our Father in Heaven will “deliver us from the evil one.”
Why is this? How can we be so confronted with the huge energy of evil in the world today and remain oblivious to the reality that behind it there has got to be some malignant personality energizing it? Since the time of the dawn that intellectual movement called the Enlightenment, and its disdain for anything that could not be accounted for scientifically, or by human reason, it has been considered only the quaint remnant of a more primitive world view to acknowledge miracles, or stuff such as Satan and a cosmic spiritual warfare that is very real. The denial has prevailed over all of these centuries, and only in recent generations have there arisen some significant theological-philosophical voices countering it, and insisting that our present historical realities are not to be understood without coming to grips with this Satanic reality.
This is the more demanding since the apostle John summarizes the whole event of Jesus Christ with this: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (I John 3:10). Other apostolic writings tell us to be sober and vigilant since the devil goes about like a roaring lion, whom we are to resist steadfast. We are told that “the whole world lies in the evil one.” When the Risen Christ called Saul of Tarsus to become his missionary apostle, he gave him the commission: “I am sending you to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.” Or Paul’s thanksgiving to the Father, “who has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption …”
Ah! but all too much of the ostensible church of Jesus Christ is still in captivity to the Enlightenment mentality that denies even the relevance, if not even the possibility of such a dominion of darkness. Late in my own career I was asked to engage in a mentoring ministry to our Presbyterian students and faculty in a number of theological institutions. When I would introduce this huge Biblical thesis, especially, I was met with polite condescension at such a primitive notion. I asked one professor of evangelism if he had ever used Paul’s missionary commission (above) to explain what was their role in reaching the young adults of this present post-Christian generation with that which would set them free. Again, a smiling affirmation that was an interesting thought—end of conversation.
One of the church’s earliest hymns, which is still in many hymnbooks, is: Christian, dost thou see them on the holy ground, how the hosts of darkness rage thy steps around. Or, much later: Christian, seek not yet repose, thou art in the midst of foes.
The humorous irony is, that while all this is taking place, there emerged a couple of blockbuster literary pieces: The Lord of the Rings, with its Sauron the sorcerer, and the Harry Potter stories, with Voldemort, and the omnipresence of that evil influence. At least the fiction writers point to an explanation, even when the church is too often content to naively dismiss the subject. I commend my own more detailed grappling with this theme.
http://wipfandstock.com/the-church-and-the-relentless-darkness.html
