I had an interesting revelation earlier today; we often have the metaphor for spiritual warfare wrong, especially as it involves living a godly life. The classic verse in the area comes from James 4:7-"Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you."
Note that it doesn't say "Whup the Devil's ass, and he will flee from you." Excuse my French, but that's the attitude that you get in many quarters of the modern church. Paul does use the Armor of God metaphor in Ephesians 6, but only the Sword of the Word is an offensive weapon; everything else is designed to deflect the blows of the enemy.
If we seek out a battle with the Devil, Ol' Sloughfoot might win, or at least get in some blows in the process. Our job isn't to defeat the Devil, just to resist him. Even Jesus merely sidestepped his offers when He went mano-a-mano with the Devil in the wilderness; Satan wasn't destroyed, but he merely "departed from him until an opportune time" after throwing his bag of temptations at Him.
Instead of taking an attitude from the various cable TV gladiators, our martial art of choice shouldn't be boxing or karate, but judo or jujitsu. Instead of trying to strike blows, we need to step out of the way of temptation, possibly using it's own momentum to toss it to the ground.
We can't usually defeat temptation once and for all, we can merely make it go away for the time being by not letting it knock us down or grab us. After a while, temptation will get the message and get out of Dodge.
There's the old saw about wrestling a pig; you both get muddy and the pig enjoys it. Try judo; you don't get nearly as muddy and the pig gets sick of it after a while.
Jesus will get the joy of defeating Satan once and for all at the end of the age. We don't need to defeat him; all we need to do is get his paws off of us for the time being.
Good point. Mind if I use it when talking with others?
Posted by: HokiePundit | May 24, 2007 at 12:40 AM
Feel free to share; I put it out there for folks to use.
It helped Eileen when I shared it last night, so I may well have stumbled into something useful.
Posted by: Mark Byron | May 24, 2007 at 12:58 AM
Having both wrestled and boxed, I'd have to lean towards judo as it is closer to the type of grappling we go through in/on our daily struggle in our fallen estate.
Posted by: Mean Dean | May 24, 2007 at 05:36 PM
Jujuitsu is not a defensive art. It is rather brutal. Aikido is the evolution of jujitsu (Jujitsu -> aikijuititsu -> Aikido) Takeda -> Ueshiba. It is refered to as the art of peace by John Stevens...
Judo is "the gentle way", and in many respects is quite apropos
Posted by: fasdf | May 26, 2007 at 12:34 AM