If we are not involved in the Syrian Civil War by the time this essay percolates to the top of the IMonk rotation, I believe it will have been partly due to the fervent prayers of my wife. She came home from the gymnasium weeping and speaking in tongues aloud. She is an intransigent Pentecostal and we know that if she is in a state where she doesn’t care who knows it, something is wrong.
We don’t have cable or broadcast TV. Our media diet is Netflix, pirated Korean dramas, and the nightly Univision news broadcast. My wife enjoys going to the gymnasium because she can watch either Fox News or CNN, depending on which machine she uses. This particular night, she was deeply disturbed by something she had seen on CNN. There were pictures of Syrian children laid out in the street after an attack, followed by a war room scene where a middle-aged to elderly woman was directing a number of generals as to where the US should strike in Syria.
The woman was not Hillary Clinton, Condolezza Rice, nor Nancy Pelosi. My wife knows all the Usual Suspects, and she says it wasn’t anybody she recognized.
By now, I was braced for a rehash of whatever propaganda CNN was spooning out. From the sound of my wife’s report, pictures of dead children followed by a video promising resolute US action, it sounded like CNN was gunning to build support for US military action in that unfortunate land. I should have given my wife more credit than to swallow any propaganda whole, though.
“That women had the Devil’s face”, she said, and the diabolism was so apparent to her that it provoked an outburst of Pentecostal manifestation usually reserved for major family crises. “That woman will cause more dead children,” my wife continued, “not fewer. She was a cold-hearted bitch that one [Era una seca fria esa], moving her hands over a map of Syria, showing the generals where they should strike.” My daughter and I got her calmed down, and we prayed together for President Obama, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Assad, President Putin, Premier Li Keqiang, and, of course, Syria’s nearly two million Christians, as well as her Muslims, Jews, and Druzes.
Our time spent in the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, which was a positive experience for my wife, left us with a sensitivity towards Middle Eastern Christians and a strong sense of solidarity with them. My wife has befriended many Middle Eastern Christian women, whose culture bears a remarkable similarity to her own Latin American culture. She was particularly close to an Iraqi Baptist lady whose native language was Aramaic and didn’t need to read the subtitles when we took her and her family with us to see The Passion Of The Christ. The so-called “Arab Spring” has been hard on us because of all the worry about how events were impacting the lives of our friends’ families. I do not believe it is by circumstance that Syria’s sole official Pentecostal assembly meets (I pray to God it still does) in the deeply contested city of Aleppo in northern Syria. You could not have found a better way to get my wife’s attention.
I don’t pretend to know why after three years of Syria’s agony the United States has decided that it has become necessary to intervene militarily. I have my suspicions that a show of military resolution on the part of the US would go a long way towards shoring up our shaky dollar as the world’s reserve currency, or perhaps control of a major pipeline route for Iranian natural gas and oil through Shi’a controlled areas of Iraq and Syria. My wife’s response to the CNN broadcast sealed the case for me.
Regardless of American, Russian, or Iranian interests, it is clear that the Devil wants war in Syria, and if the Prince of Darkness is to be thwarted, it will be through the prayers of Christians like my wife. Pentecostals think like this, and often are ridiculed by other Christians for seeing “demons behind every bush.” Mention Pentecostalism and demons to most people and images leap to their minds about bull-bellied evangelists with bad haircuts placing their hands on poorly dressed rural folk with their arms upraised and their mouths voicing nonsense syllables.
I went over to Experimental Theology following a link from a commenter. Richard Beck’s blog is a wonderful place, albeit not as accommodating to conservative Christians as the Christian Monist, who keeps blowing my mind. Experimental Theology is a place for “progressive Christians” to discuss their issues intramurally, and certainly the place is full of them. The word ‘privileged’ gets used a lot, and they quote William Stringfellow and John Caputo without sniggering. I have to admit an animus against “progressive Christians”, but we are all of us here in the ‘post-Evangelical wilderness’ together. For a lot of ‘post evangelicals’, “progressive Christianity” is a viable alternative, a more viable alternative than Orthodoxy or Catholicism. Dr. Richard Beck, the caretaker over there, wrote as progressive Christians might understand it.
Dr. Beck says, although I take a bit of liberty with his exact words,
If you do not understand that Jesus came here as a warrior, then you do not “get” Jesus.
That single phrase is worth the price of entry. Jesus came to turn the power structures of the world upside down. You can think about most of the ways humans organize their energies as a pyramid, with a privileged few at the apex, and the lower levels supporting them and sustaining them. Jesus came and turned this upside down, placing the teeming poor and powerless on the top, then consciously taking the lowest place of all, at the very bottom, where the tip fell upon Him with all of its terrible weight, and, if you want to be close to Him, you gotta get down there too.
The parts of the Bible that talk about “principalities” and “powers” show a remarkable lack of concern about whether they were addressing political authorities or spiritual eminences grises. I don’t think the ancients experienced much of a difference. The titles Antiochus Epiphanes and Dius Iulius spell it out pretty explicitly. Rulers were gods, spiritual entities, and this makes the triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire under Constantine even more remarkable.
The pre-Nicene church did not topple the pagan structure of Rome because they were sweet guys and caring ladies who got along so politely with each other and acted like Mr. Rogers or Bob from Sesame Street. They knew the risen Christ was Lord and they took on the principalities and powers and wrestled them to the ground. When the basileus finally bent the knee to Christ, Dan Brown and the Trail of Blood notwithstanding, it was a great victory. Unfortunately, with victory came complacency, and we largely squandered that victory. Nevertheless, the Faith continued to expand as the sacred oaks continued to topple before the axes of Saint Boniface and his successors. European paganism did not fall before the Care Bears, but before a superior spiritual force.
Even today, even in the most hidebound cessationist groups where I’ve been told ‘Everything you need to know from the Holy Spirit you can find between the covers of this here Book’, there is more slack cut for the miraculous when the stories come in from the missions field. I remember a missionary during my days among the Calvinist tribe. He said that when he and his family had finally settled in and had learned enough of the language to be able to communicate with the local group, he asked them what their greatest need was. He expected it to be food, or medicine, but he was taken aback when the tribal elder told him ‘What we need is to be free from the tormenting spirits who live over there in that wood.’
I think that the reason spiritual warfare has such a bad reputation outside of Pentecostalism is that it is tough. We are reluctantly sent into battle against foes that are not only inconceivably more powerful, more diligent, and more cunning than we are. More importantly than this, they also have a fifth column inside our own souls. Even while we oppose them, we want to surrender to them. We dearly want what they are offering us.
This was why I was dissatisfied with Dr. Beck’s vision of spiritual warfare for his progressive flock. Despite the many virtues of his series and the Malacandrian tone of vigor it struck, they don’t believe in actual spiritual entities, what the Orthodox liturgies refer to as ‘our bodiless adversaries’. They believe in “white privilege,” “homophobia,” and “toxic Christianity” as manifestations of the demonic that need to be vigorously opposed, but there is never any feeling that they are genuinely tempted to go there. Forgive me, Dr. Beck, if you ever read this. Despite the manifest brilliance of your thinking and writing, the whole tone of the series struck me like this:
By the imputed righteousness of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose values I share, and by the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I abjure you foul spirit of being glad that Robert Zimmerman was acquitted to come out of this wretched Mule!
Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?
Where is the confession that Dr. Beck’s Knights of the Bar Sinister feel tempted to leave a public place when the number of African-Americans of a certain age, sex, and temperament increases beyond the point of comfort? Where is the confession that they laughed when told a particularly funny ethnic or sexist joke? Where is the confession that if their only daughter declared herself to be gay, they would secretly mourn the loss of grandchildren?
This is the difference between spiritual warfare as an extension of ideological propaganda and spiritual warfare as described by the moral genius of JRR Tolkien. There are two enemies in The Lord Of The Rings. The first one is the Dark Lord, Sauron, in his tower of BaradDûr. Sauron wants to subdue all opposition to his will in Middle Earth. He can be and must be withstood by sword and bow, but sword and bow cannot deliver final victory over him. The other adversary is the Ring of Power. The Ring whispers to you on the inside, telling you of all the good you could do, all the wrongs you could right, if you’d just slip in onto your finger and claim it as your own. The Ring cannot be defeated by force, but only by humility and ascesis. “This kind cometh not out save by prayer and fasting.”
It is tempting when you are reading through the trilogy to concentrate on all the exciting battles, swordplay, and diplomacy in the chapters dealing with the other members of the Fellowship, and to fail to realize that the real battle against Sauron is being waged by Frodo and Sam, forgoing food, water, and sometimes even air to put step in front of step and reach the Crack of Doom.
Even then, despite their best efforts, they were beaten. Sauron with his hordes of orcs and Southrons, his flying Nazgul, didn’t beat them. The Ring beat Frodo at the end. It was the weakness of the hobbits; specifically Frodo’s pity in sparing that foul Republican complementarian homophobic Gollum, and realizing his underlying solidarity with all that wretchedness, that saved them, and all Middle Earth.
You see, you have to be practically dead to wage spiritual warfare effectively. There is no substitute for what Paul called diakrisis pneumaton, the discernment of spirits. There is no policy manual you can write that can distinguish between, say, mental illness or corporate malfeasance and the operation of evil spirits. If you are driven by your passions, you will inevitably judge wrongly. You will rule in favor of your passions, and do a lot of damage.
Look at a dead guy. You can praise him, and he won’t get puffed up. You can tell all kinds of terrible lies about him and he won’t get hurt. Throw a wad of hundreds and fifties down in front of him and he won’t grab for it. Tell him Bush invaded Iraq or Obama let an ambassador get killed in Libya. You won’t get a rise out of him. Along with Father Capon, I think you can get there while still drawing breath. I think Benedict got there. I think Francis of Assisi got there. I think St. Therese got there. I think Seraphim of Sarov got there. I think Elder Paisios got there. I’ve met a Pentecostal lady and a Methodist lady who if they weren’t there are awfully darned close, as well as a married Orthodox priest.
It’s simple to get there. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Seek the one thing needful. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. All the powers of hell will rise against you if you try, even for a day. Old Adam will howl like a dog you are beating. I back down a lot. All of us do, but if we get up as many times as we fall down, we’ll eventually get there. When you get there, you can do some real damage to the kingdom of darkness.