“The trouble with the Devil,” writes Richard Beck in his introduction to Reviving Old Scratch,” is that we see him in the faces of those we hate, justifying our violence toward them. (xvi)” There are many problems that come with not believing in the Devil. This problem is the worst and it is a problem which Beck returns to again and again in this important book.
Beck, a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, TX, writes to Christians whose worldview no longer has room for the Devil. For many, the Devil has been displaced by doubts fed by a scientific world view which has resulted in what Beck (and others) call a “disenchanted” view of life. In a disenchanted world neither God nor the Devil are personally and actively involved in the day to day life of humans. Such doubting and disenchanted Christians have pushed the Devil far away from their understanding of the world as they know it.
As a result, social justice has become the primary weapon the church wields against the evil it senses in the world. Feeding the poor, digging water wells, and providing medical relief have become the dominant ways in which the church fights evil in the world. For some, social justice is also partnered with political activism. Not only do these churches feed the poor, for example. They engage in political battles against the institutions responsible for the poverty.
All of this, this, Beck acknowledges, is good. Yet, it is also short-sighted.
After all, Jesus not only healed the lame and the blind. He also cast out the demons. Jesus engaged in what we would call “spiritual warfare.” Beck writes, “Jesus was in a battle with Satan, and if we want to follow Jesus we have to fight the battle that Jesus fought. (35)” In fact, the cross was not merely Jesus’ victorious defeat of our sins and our guilt against God. The cross was Jesus’ victorious defeat of our enslavement to Satan. Through the cross Jesus ransomed us from Satan. This view of atonement, known as Christus Victor, reminds us that spiritual warfare lies at the very heart of the “good news” of the Christian faith. Jesus’ ministry was as much a battle against Satan as it was good deeds for the sick and the poor.
One of the most distressing results of the contemporary church’s failure to embrace a robust vision of spiritual warfare is that it falls into a corrupting vision of political warfare. Beck writes, “Spiritual warfare is routinely traded in for political warfare. And in political warfare the battle becomes very much about ‘flesh and blood,’ about defeating the Bad People…it’s our refusal to talk about demons that causes us to demonize other human beings.(59)” Beck argues that the church too often follows this pattern as it engages evil in the world:
- Social justice pursued for the poor and for victims of injustice —->
- Political activism against agencies and institutions causing the poverty and/or injustice ——->
- Demonization and dehumanization of the people within those agencies and institutions.
The great error of this is that it violates the greatest call of those who follow Jesus, the call to love, especially the call to love our enemies. Spiritual warfare, the belief in the Devil, is what makes such love possible. Beck writes, “We can see oppressors as human beings, as vulnerable to evil the same way I am vulnerable to evil. Our battles for justice can be focused upon the unseen satanic aspect rather than upon the flesh and blood of human beings. (65)” When we truly believe in the Devil, we are free to rage against Satan and love our enemy.
The church, then, becomes a “laboratory” where that love is fleshed out–a community of compassion in a world suffering because of the evil brought upon it, in part, by the Devil. The church’s primary role is not necessarily to make sense of that suffering but simply to love in the midst of that suffering (81). It is only as the church embraces this role of self-giving love, and not power–the very role modeled by Jesus, the lamb, in his battle against Satan–that we “win” in the ways that truly matter. And every act of love, even the small and unnoticed, becomes a massive and mighty salvo in the greatest war of all.
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: Fortress Press (May 1, 2016)
ISBN-10: 150640135X
ISBN-13: 978-1506401355
[Cover image: http://www.fortresspress.com/sites/default/files/product-main/9781506401355.jpg]
