The Battle for Humanity
You're the Problem, and its Solution
Humanity, since its creation, has been the theater of spiritual war. The Bible indicates a battle between God and his angel armies and God’s satan and his fallen angels. Other ancient texts indicate struggles between divine creatures, at times overlapping with mankind. To varying degrees, and with varying results, humanity has tried to discern the divine wills, and obey them or rebel against them.
I’ve been thinking this past week about the evil in the world. Some personal and familial issues have been bringing this thought up, as well as national and global issues. There is one common factor: people.
People seem to be the problem. People are the weapons of spiritual war. People are the vehicle of evil.
Bleak, I know.
The other side of this dark coin is that people are the means of good.
…the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.
Aleksander Solzhenitzyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Why is it that we are all involved in this unending spiritual war?
We are the weapons, the supply chains, the territory to be seized. We are also the perpetrators, the profiteers, the pawns. Even still, we are the saviors, the knights, the heroes. Good and evil have enlisted every generation in this dispute.
It’s tricky to talk about something so grand, so cosmic. It’s not that good and evil are distant from us. It’s just not easily defined. What is good? What is evil? Supposedly we attained the knowledge of these things long ago in that garden. I’d say the watershed was developing the ability to dispute these things.
It is incomprehensibly fascinating that our feeble little selves are involved in this conflict.
One hundred percent of humanity’s beneficial achievements have been accomplished by people. And at the same time, one hundred percent of humanity’s detrimental atrocities have been perpetrated by people. I don’t know where that leaves the net calculations; maybe we never will.
Yet we are continually propelled by these two opponents: good and evil. We are clearly essential to this conflict.
Discovering the vital nature of our role in the spiritual conflict means discovering our responsibility.
We don’t just have an opportunity to participate in this war, but a duty. It is our purpose. We are created to foment peace and flourishing, to protect life and freedom, and to hope in the future. Our future. Our children’s future. We are not merely an experiment in temptations: God bets that we won’t sin, and Satan bets he can make us do it. But we are far more influential than that.
When the Apostle Paul taught people about their role in the spiritual battle he encouraged them to clothe themselves with spiritual attitudes.
Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil. For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand.
Ephesians 6:10-12
When we get dragged into the fight with our flesh and blood neighbors, we succumb to the diabolos or the slanderer. The one who falsely labels our very own flesh and blood, our brothers and sisters, our family: humanity. These lies subvert our power, found in connection and divert our attention to the symptoms, but not the causes.
Our shared humanity is the foundation of society. Of relationship. Our humanity is the essence of humanity writ large. It is our humanness.
When we lose our connection through pain, bitterness, and hate, we begin to lash out at others in what amounts to self-harm. Whether we believe it or not, we are all connected. The way we value the least of us, is the way we value all of us.
Stand, therefore,
with truth like a belt around your waist,
righteousness like armor on your chest,
and your feet sandaled with readiness
for the gospel of peace.
In every situation take the shield of faith,
and with it you will be able to extinguish
all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
Take the helmet of salvation,
and the sword of the Spirit,
which is God’s word.Ephesians 6:14-17
In times when every day there is a tragedy worse than the one the day before, and our countries are being rent in two, and our rent is 2x what it was, the need for these words grows.
We are hopeless without truth. We desperately need righteousness. Not virtue signaling but genuine virtue. We need to be so quick to run towards peace. We are helpless against evil without faith. Faith in God, faith in ourselves, faith in humanity. Salvation (soteria; also translated as healing), is maybe the most essential piece of armor here, we need our minds to be healed, made whole.
We’ve lived pathological lives for decades, trying to cope with our cognitive dissonance through distraction or therapies that leave us feeling like we have a permanent illness, rather than the hope of healing. We need most desperately to pick up the sword of the Spirit. It’s fine to start with the Bible, but please, I beg you, let that extend to your life. Allow the words to bleed from the page into your body.
Let God’s words be true through you.