Monday, March 06, 2006
Dealing With The Devil
In his Preface to That Hideous Strength, a piece of fiction that is also a powerful apologetic, C.S. Lewis says this
That's one of the resons I really liked this post from Cerulean Sanctum.
If you ask me, the bridge between the sacred and secular realms lies not in our understanding of God, but in our understanding of evil. When the two realms collide, or when we attempt to merge them we must fight on multiple levels. It is not enough to get a good idea, we must push back the very real forces that oppose the idea.
Do you pray when you blog? You probably should. Do you ask God to accompany you to the library or bookstore? You're going to need Him there.
We worship a personal God, and we battle a personal enemy. We really need to remember that.
Related Tags: devil, evil, Satan, CS Lewis
This is a "tall story" about devilry, though it has behind it a serious "point" which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.C.S. Lewis is certainly the most recognized Christian apologist of the 20th Century, a man of enormous intellect and he mucked about with the devil. The idea of the devil is downright foreign to many Christians today and many other think it childish and mythical. Not Lewis.
That's one of the resons I really liked this post from Cerulean Sanctum.
One of the sad outcomes of scientific rationalism is that Satan has been transmogrified from a real entity into a myth, a psychological malady, or a pointy-tailed object of mirth. Long before Nietzsche announced the death of God, Satan was well on his way to being mentally expunged from his role as ruler of this world, relegated by sections of American pseudo-Christianity to a box in the far corner of the basement.When you ar forming your nice rational arguement for Intelligent Design, do you pray? When you think about the "cultural captivity" of our faith do you consider that the active work of a terrorist enemy?
[...]
We need to do a better job in the American Church of understanding the opposition of Satan, ascribing the blame to him rather to God. Yes, we know from the Book of Job that Satan has no ability to afflict apart from the sovereignty of God over the affairs of all men, but this does not change the fact thatThe reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.We don't take that verse seriously enough. We talk about many reasons for Christ coming, but in too many sectors of the Church today we tend to focus on rainbows and ponies, love and peace, not on the annihilation of the Enemy's work.
--1 John 3:8b ESV
If you ask me, the bridge between the sacred and secular realms lies not in our understanding of God, but in our understanding of evil. When the two realms collide, or when we attempt to merge them we must fight on multiple levels. It is not enough to get a good idea, we must push back the very real forces that oppose the idea.
Do you pray when you blog? You probably should. Do you ask God to accompany you to the library or bookstore? You're going to need Him there.
We worship a personal God, and we battle a personal enemy. We really need to remember that.
Related Tags: devil, evil, Satan, CS Lewis
