November 4, 2012
I've thought on and off for years about the Kingdom of God on earth and how to bring it about. As a teenage acolyte in the Episcopal Church I remember thinking, "We don't practice what we preach". It seems like ever since I've been trying to find the way to practice true religion, real Christianity, how to truly follow Jesus. Recently, my search has led me to investigate healing prayer, a subject I felt had been neglected by the church and by followers of Jesus. I have twice reported my findings here, my experiences and what I have come to believe about healing prayer. Briefly, I have come to believe that Jesus was convinced that his disciples could heal if they believed and I didn't see why that was not true today. So, I proceeded on that premise. After studying Jesus' healings and reading several books on modern day healers and experimenting with prayers for personal healing with several significant successes, I have centered on several basic truths:
First, that there is a bias toward healing in the universe; i.e. that under normal circumstances animals, plants and people tend to heal naturally, to get well without medical attention. God has provided on earth an atmosphere for healing. Bruno Gronig called it a healing stream which emanates from God 24/7. If we, in response live in harmony with God's ways, we will usually be healed.
Secondly, if we are not healed normally, we can ask for help. Jesus told seekers of healing that if they believed they would be healed. But believing does not come easily, even asking seems risky. I have come to believe that if we can imagine healing taking place, it is almost the same as believing. This is not fantasy. Visualizing the person well in the mind's eye is real work and not a simple transaction. It requires an inward movement of the spirit and brings us to the threshold of belief. Imagination is powerful and can help us develop our faith in healing and it gives us more courage to ask for healing.
It's helpful to realize that we are dealing with the spiritual world here, asking help from God who is spirit. Especially hard is two-way communication with God. It takes patience and imagination and silence to hear God's voice. As I've tried to listen to what God was telling me about healing, I was directed to the three scriptures that were read today and the subject of healing expanded, suddenly and widely, and that's when I began to realize that God wants us to be a part of the healing of the world, its people and the planet and not just our physical bodies.
Let's look at the Matthew scripture. It has Jesus fasting 40 days and 40 nights in preparation for this big test against a very formidable foe, Satan. This is more than a debate. If Jesus doesn't pass this test he will not be fit for the work God has called him to. So the devil challenges him with three questions, each beginning with, "If you are the son of God..." Jesus answers each with a quote from scripture and passes the test. This account has Jesus, who is a human, fighting a spiritual being, Satan. Of course, as a human Jesus has a spiritual component, a very highly developed spiritual component, capable of fighting a spiritual battle. But remember that he had to get in shape for this battle with a rigorous training regimen: 40 days and nights of prayer and fasting.
As I reflect on this passage I wonder what happened to Satan after his defeat at the hands of Jesus. Is he still around? Contemporary thinking does not include Satan. You never hear his name mentioned. In most seminaries Satan is regarded as merely a poetic symbol of evil rather than a real personal entity. This is generally the manner that conventional wisdom treats him, and this really heightens my interest.
Let's go to our next scripture, from Mark. Jesus reveals to his disciples that he will be given over to the authorities and be killed. Peter reacts angrily, "No, Master, No", but Jesus cuts him off. "Out of my way, Peter" and then speaks directly to Satan, 'Get thee behind me, Satan" or in Peterson's Message version, "Get lost, Satan". Jesus speaks directly to Satan who departs and then Jesus can get on with his business. So here's Satan again, a real obstruction to God's work, but quickly disposed of when exposed and ordered to leave. Again, the question, "Is this same evil being still alive today?"
Conventional wisdom shuns even the thought of Satan. No one mentions his name anymore. I've even had trouble saying the name, but I must persist in my question, "Is he still alive and operating today?” This is my basic question and our dilemma. What shall we do? We have two choices: one is to continue on our present course, studying scriptures, seeking and proclaiming truth, and protesting against Empire. Why do we have to bring in Satan? Our situation is different now, 2000 years later. Our thinking has evolved to a realization that evil spirits are passé, a thing of the past, archaic thinking. Haven't we in this age of rational and scientific thinking risen above such nonsense? That is conventional or cultural or Empire thinking and it’s the choice of the day.
Our second choice begins with a quote from one of our greatest scientists, Albert Einstein.
A human being is part of the whole, called by us universe. He experiences himself, his thoughts, his feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us...
Einstein sees us stuck in a prison of Empire thinking. Is this prison we find ourselves in one of our own making or is there some active force working against us, limiting our range of thought and separating us from others? Isn't separation from others part of our basic problem? Our modern day Empire proclaims loud and clear, "Look out for number one." Our culture glorifies individual accomplishment and success. We have concocted this dream of the self-made man and bow down to it. We have become victims of extreme individualism. In fact, extremism has broken out all over the world, further separating us from each other and from God. Is this all just from our sinful nature or is there an evil power taking advantage of our weakness?
Our second choice, then, is to realize the prison we are in and open our minds, our consciousness to the possibility that Satan is still active in this world. I have spent the last couple of months exploring this possibility. Following are my findings and my conclusion: First, an old Chinese proverb says that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. Are we calling our situation, our adversary by its right name? In our conventional thinking we don't see this problem as an adversary. We would be in a stronger position to see it as a foe and call it Empire, or Evil Empire? Or Satanic Empire? I have come to see Satan as Empire's architect and creator. He is that clever and effective.
How then can we fight against him, overcome his power? Any military officer will tell you that going into battle it pays to know the nature and strength of the enemy. So what is Satan like? What are his weapons? They include confusion, distractions, deceit, darkness and disguise. He is sneaky and can get inside our heads like a computer virus. One of his main tricks is to get us to believe he doesn't exist. In the past 200 years he has wiped out nearly every vestige of his existence in modern thinking. He is tenacious and his strategy is brilliant. Jesus was wise to prepare seriously for his battle with Satan. We would be, too.
Let's continue with Paul's letter to Ephesians when Paul tells his followers that it's a tough fight they are in, no afternoon athletic contest, but a life-or-death fight to the finish with the Devil and all his angels, and that they are up against more than they can handle on their own. They'll need every weapon God has issued: truth, righteousness, peace, faith and salvation. Also, that God's word is an indispensable weapon. Prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Paul tells it like he sees it: serious, all-out, life-or-death warfare against the Devil and his minions with these spiritual weapons our greatest hope. It's very hard for us to understand this because it's a foe coming from the spiritual realm. We are used to only God and angels coming to us from that place. So, instead of seeing Satan as a spiritual being, as Jesus did, we blot him completely of our thinking. This, I think, is basically where we are now.
When I began to take all these scriptures more at face value, I saw us engaged in serious spiritual warfare against Satan and as I did I found my inner life moving to a different place, with new belief and understanding. My exploration into healing prayer had given me a foundation for better understanding of the spiritual realm and now I began to see that there was a real adversary there. However, thoughts and beliefs were not enough for me. As one schooled in scientific methods, I needed results. I got them one night as I prayed for healing. I tried to pray but I kept getting distracted. Again and again I tried to focus but couldn't. I was becoming terribly frustrated when I thought of the Devil. Is Satan doing this to me? I've heard that the closer one gets to God, the harder Satan works to stop you. So I spoke directly, like Jesus did, to Satan, "Get out of here". I spoke with all the vehemence I could muster. And it worked! He was gone. I proceeded with my prayers with no interference. Days later, as I prayed, I experienced interference once again, like a cloudiness over my spirit which rendered me unable to pray. This time I called on the Holy Spirit for help and the clouds were dispersed.
After these experiences I looked back and realized that my thinking, my work and my relations with others had been clearer recently, more focused and with very little distraction. My work on this teaching began to jell. Many things in my life began going right. I was amazed. It was as if I had moved to a new place in my spiritual life and settled in. I became more confident, surer of my relationship with God, less worried about temporal things, the election, etc. I began to see the bigger picture more clearly, including the spiritual world. And this included Satan. Yes, as distasteful as the idea seems to me, I have come to believe that Satan exists and that what we are experiencing is a war between good and evil., between our allegiance to God and to Satan.
As I began calling it by the right name, the way ahead became clearer. God is in his heaven but Satan is also at work to recruit more of us to his side. His siren call is seductive and his strategy is brilliant. We mustn't underestimate him, or deny him. Our best tactic is to bring him out into the light where he is less effective and to call him by name. To close our eyes and pretend he is not there is worse than foolish. I believe if we take this second choice we will experience greater clarity and vision, more confidence, fewer distractions and generally have less resistance in following our call. We will also find ourselves living more and more into the spiritual world. We will begin to see more activity there and maybe wonder why God doesn't just zap Satan and get it over with.
Then we realize that God's overall strategy includes giving us, his people, free will, the choice of which way to go, how to live. Then when we finally choose God's side we will be able to experience the full range of God's delights; the joy, bliss and ecstasy that God desires for us, both here on earth and in the life to come. The more we can visualize this possibility, the greater our faith becomes. God is calling us to accept all of his truth, not to just cherry-pick the parts that are palatable. Give it some thought, and lots of prayer. May God bless you in your search for his truth.