Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Cooperative Baptist Fellowship

Home
About

Home
Progressive Christian
Waging War: A Simple, Two-Step Guide

Waging War: A Simple, Two-Step Guide

Last updated on: February 20, 2017 at 8:00 am by Guest Contributor

Waging War: A Simple, Two-Step Guide 2017-02-15T15:28:27-04:00 Guest Contributor

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

By Michael Mills

Are you ready for a fight? Do you just want to punch something? Are you waiting to be provoked?

Before you make a fist and take off looking for your first victim, allow me to offer a simple, two-step guide to waging war.

Step One: Know your enemy.

Before we identify who our enemy is, we should identify our enemy’s greatest tactic: camouflage. Our enemy is sneaky. It has the ability to

Michael Mills is a CBF church starter and lead pastor of Inland Church in Spokane, Washington.

hide itself, to depict itself as something that it is not, to fool us into thinking it is, in fact, not the enemy. As our enemy goes about this, it offers misdirection and tells us, “That religious group down the street is enemy. That ideology on the other side of the world is the enemy. That neighbor with the political sign in their yard is the enemy.”

Considering our enemy’s ability to hide and be sneaky, it’s important to know who the enemy is not. Our enemy is not:

Donald Trump
Hilary Clinton
Steve Bannon
Bernie Sanders
Democrats
Republicans
The 1%
The 99%
The gays
The straights
The females
The males
The trans
The open-minded
The close-minded
The prejudiced
The tolerant
Russia
Israel
America
ISIS
The coalition against ISIS
Muslims
Jews
Hindus
Buddhists
Christians
Atheists
Catholics
Protestants
Presbyterians
Lutherans
Baptists
Methodists
Mainliners
And any other person or people group…ever.

Take your pick. We’ve all made someone in this list our enemy. We’ve demonized them and made them the problem. Again, the enemy’s greatest tactic is a form of diversion, to get us to identify and label the wrong enemy.

If diversion is the name of the game, who is the enemy’s greatest ally? It is those of us that believe we are fighting the good fight, all the while completely missing the point.

You’ve seen the bloopers of a blindfolded person swinging at a piñata, right? If you haven’t, you have my permission to stop reading this and go watch them. It’s a recipe for disaster. The blindfolded person knows the enemy (the piñata) is out there but they can’t see where. And so what do they do? They just start swinging and hope for the best. The likely casualty in this zealous yet misguided battle is not the piñata but the innocent bystanders. The friends and family are often the recipients of their passionate blows.

When we fight the wrong enemy, the true enemy is at a distance, enjoying the carnage. When we fight the wrong enemy, the victims are often the innocent bystanders. And depending on the passion with which we swing, we can do real damage.

——

As Paul concludes his letter to Ephesus with a call to war, he gives us insight into the true identity of the enemy. Paul writes:

“We aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens.” -Ephesians 6:12 (CEB)

According to Paul, whatever the enemy is, it is not human. Human beings are not our enemy. Sure, we can drive each other up the wall. We can be terrible to each other and to our planet. We can be downright abhorrent and even murderous. But no matter how horrible we are, there is always something bigger going on. There is always a greater enemy lurking in the shadows.

How are we to make sense of our enemy? Rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, spiritual powers of evil in the heavens? Despite our best inclinations toward personification, at its best, Paul’s description about our enemy is still pretty ambiguous.

I prefer the umbrella term, evil. Evil is all that is opposed to good/God. Evil is real. Evil is the enemy.

And here’s the dangerous part. It’s a very short step from identifying the evil influences in each other to identifying each other as evil.

So, to avoid that danger, what if we start with ourselves? What if we ask the question, “What has power over me that is contrary to the way of Jesus…that I probably don’t even realize?” The answer to this question leads us to step two of waging war.

——

Step Two: Unmask the enemy.

If the enemy’s greatest tactic is camouflage, the enemy’s greatest weakness is being exposed.

Unmasking evil is how we take away its power. When I discern these influencing powers in my life, name them, and reveal them for what they really are, they lose their power. They can no longer lurk in the shadows, reveling in our misguided attacks on each other. The light reveals them and they are seen for what they really are.

Let’s try this. I have identified some of these powers at work in my life. I would to like to name them and expose them. In my life, considering my past and my present context, these are the powers I see and feel at play: Mindless consumerism, American exceptionalism, my need to impress, an the ever-growing list of -isms (materialism, nationalism, militarism, patriotism, racism, sexism, genderism, ageism, etc.).

These are some of the forces that have power over me that are contrary to the way of Jesus. By naming them, I am taking away their power of diversion. I am identifying them, not my fellow humans, as the enemy and this allows me to size up my actual opponent. Through this unmasking process, I discover something surprising about my enemy: It is not as strong as it would have me to think. It is actually rather weak.

And why is it weak? Because there is a power that has shown itself to be greater.

——

I am somewhat new to pacifism. For the past couple of years, Christian pacifism (or my preferred term: active nonviolence) is an ideology that I’ve been drawn to. Eventually, after wrestling through it, after working through the questions of practicality and feasibility, I decided that it holds up and that I needed to own it.

When I was first learning what this meant for my life and how I am to be in the world, ideas like war, fighting, imagery of weapons, and aggression instantly became distasteful to me. I didn’t like them. Instead, I wanted what we all want, right? Peace.

Since then, I’ve been confronted over and over again with the fact that, whether I like it or not, no matter how uncomfortable I am with it, the reality is that we are at war. We are engaged in a battle and no matter how distasteful it is to me, I’ve had to come to terms with this fact. We are at war.

It is not a war of domination, subjugation, or humiliation of people. It is not a war over political ideologies, national borders, or positions of power. It is not a war for land, money, or resources. It is a war against evil.

In acknowledging this, I’ve realized that I have a choice. I could continue to believe that we are not at war or that war is a bad thing to be involved in and has no place in our world. Or I could continue to believe that someone else is going to fight the war on my behalf. Or I could believe that one day, God will win the war so there’s really no reason to fight now, allowing me to peacefully disengage. Or I could get in the fight.

If we choose to get in the fight, we can fight with confidence. We can fight with confidence because we know that the evil powers at work in our world today are weak. They are not ultimate. They are able to be defeated.

——

When Jesus showed up on the scene, he began to perceive and to discern the powers that were active in the world around him. As he discerned, he named them. In naming them, he unmasked them and he showed them for what they actually were.

The more Jesus did this, the powers that were against him became more aggressive and hostile. Eventually, Jesus found himself hanging on an execution device where the powers of evil were swinging at Jesus with their ultimate weapon: death. Jesus took blow after blow and finally, he submitted. He tapped out. He surrendered to the power of death. In that moment, evil was victorious. Evil won. Evil was the greatest power in the cosmos…in that moment.

Those of us that have heard the good news know that that moment was not the last moment. There was another moment, the moment that Jesus came back to life. In coming back to life, Jesus overcame the power of death, that in the previous moment was the greatest power in the cosmos. Suddenly, in that moment, there was a new greatest power in the cosmos: the risen Christ. In Jesus’ death and resurrection, he has established himself as the ultimate power and his reign as the one that will be decisive.

In Jesus’ discerning, naming, and revealing, what he did on the cross and the tomb was the ultimate act of war against evil. He went toe to toe with the power of death, the evil power that we thought was the greatest, and standing over the power of evil he said, “Compared to me, you are weak.”

For those of us that follow the way of Jesus, this is why we can confidently get in the fight. This is why we can join in Jesus’ way of discerning, naming, and revealing. Because we know the one that is greater. We know the one that has overcome.

——

This is the battle that we are in. It is a battle for the ages, for the eons, for all time. We know whose side we are on. We know that God will be victorious and will reign. We are beginning to discern the enemy among us. We know the responsibility that is placed on us. The question remains:

Are you ready for a fight?

Good! Join me in battle.

Michael Mills is a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship church starter and lead pastor of Inland Church in Spokane, Washington.

Note: The views expressed here in columns and commentaries are solely those of the authors.

Interested in writing for CBF at Patheos? Submit your column idea to CBF Communications Director Aaron Weaver at [email protected].

Church Starts

Previous Post

February 17, 2017

A Pastoral Word To Our President

Next Post

February 22, 2017 How Drinking from Alien Spiritual Wells Has Enriched My Life

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Advocacy Baptist Black Lives Matter Campbell University CCM Chaplain Children Church Starts Clergy Sexual Misconduct Coaching Culture Environment Equality Ethics Events Field Personnel Health History Human Trafficking Immigration Interfaith Interviews Lent Ministry Missions Payday Pentecost Politics Prayer Race Refugees Religious Liberty Sermon Spirituality Theology Uncategorized United Nations Women Worship Young Adults

Select a Month November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 February 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz