Spiritual Warfare

Today I wrote a reflection on a chapter in the book "Introducing World Missions" for my Foundations of Christian Mission class; an assignment due tomorrow. I've decided to post part of it here, as it is a topic that interests and concerns me. The topic is spiritual warfare.


Spiritual warfare is a topic that has greatly interested me in the past, and right up to the present it continues to occupy my thoughts from time to time. The authors discuss the phenomenon of “spiritual mapping”, a spiritual technique which by discovery of various demonic strongholds one is able to determine the spiritual climate of a given area and is thus better able to pray and combat the forces of darkness in that location. I wish I knew the history of such thinking, but as the authors make clear it was promoted most effectively by means of Frank Peretti’s books, This Present Darkness, and its sequel Piercing the Darkness. In these books, the reader is taken behind the scenes of spiritual warfare to see what goes on in the spiritual realm, the realm of angels and demons, when Christians are engaged in the fight against the kingdom of Satan. I read both of these books when I was in my early teens, and they had a profound influence on how I perceived the spiritual world and how the Christian should engage this spiritual war. Like so much of evangelicalism, my own worldview and understanding of how to live the Christian life was radically shaped by these books. It was not these books alone, of course. Many other Christians were saying the same thing, and still are today. Today, however, I am much more critical of such an understanding of the Christian life, and I see very little, if any, value in having such an understanding in order to live the Christian life or go out on the mission field.
If there was something positive accomplished by Peretti’s books, it was, I think, that they reminded Christians of the reality of the spiritual battle we are all engaged in. It dramatically and creatively portrayed what may go on behind the scenes as Christians engage unbelievers, struggle against sin, and pray for their communities. The negative effects are seen in the very evident priority many Christians give to such an understanding of spiritual warfare, as a necessary understanding to have before one can minister effectively. To use myself as an example, I let This Present Darkness inform how I understood the events of life and determine what my behavior should be in response to sin and evil. This understanding of spiritual warfare, an understanding based upon personal experiences more often than the Bible, became the higher spiritual knowledge necessary to make effective warfare for God’s kingdom. I believe Scripture does suggest much of what This Present Darkness and other writings and experiences portray about the reality and involvement of the demonic in the world. What I have a problem with, however, is the suggested response of the believer to such knowledge. What is being suggested by so many “experts” on spiritual warfare is that believers and missionaries need to know that Satan works in this manner so that they can be effective in struggling against him. The problem is that what Scripture hints at in several passages[1] has been blown up to be a major grid through which one views the Christian life. What was intended to be in the background has been taken and forced into the foreground. Or, perhaps a better way to put it is this: we have become overly interested in what God has not chosen to reveal, and have in the process overlooked what he has revealed. Scripture certainly does portray the Christian life as a battle against the forces of darkness; and if God has revealed such a portrayal to us, then it is certainly helpful for us to know it. The means of fighting this war has also been revealed to us, however; and it is this that has been tragically neglected by so much of the church. The means of our warfare, as Scripture constantly portrays, is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul responded to Christians in Colossae who were being told they had to reach a higher plain of spiritual knowledge by reminding them that all spiritual authorities and rulers were created by Christ and for Christ (Col 1:16). Paul reminded them that Christ disarmed and conquered all spiritual rulers by his death and resurrection (2:15), and that they must hold fast to Christ in order to grow spiritually (2:19). Paul’s response to the situation in Colossae was to affirm to the Christians there that yes, there are evil spiritual rulers in the heavenly realms, but the attitudes and behaviors being promoted in response to such an understanding are not right. The message of Colossians is one we all need to hear: Christ has conquered and is currently reigning. Our weapon of warfare is simply this: the gospel message. Any kind of spirituality that leaves Christ and his work as an event in the past, with little usefulness for how we go about fighting now in the present, Paul would have us reject as “empty deceit” (2:8). The church, and its missionaries, do not need some Gnostic-like, higher knowledge, beyond what God has chosen to reveal in his Word, about how to wage the war of faith. God has not hidden secret truths deep away in his Word that we must discover and exploit in order to be effective in our warfare against sin and Satan. He has revealed it plainly and openly, so that as Paul says, we may all “reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (2:2, 3).


[1] Daniel 10 and Ephesians 6, for example.