Behind Enemy Lies
“Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” (Ephesians 6:11)
The Screwtape Letters by Christian author C.S. Lewis is a fascinating read. Recommended by former Royal Canadian Armed Forces chaplain Rev. Dr. Harold Ristau, Screwtape Letters is a fictional correspondence from a demon named Screwtape to a demon-in-training, his young nephew Slubglob. Many people know Lewis as an Oxford and Cambridge professor, but few would assume that he had served in the British army during the First World War. (Lewis happened to be a hard-boiled atheist at that time, disproving the maxim that there is “no such thing as an atheist in the foxhole.”)
Screwtape’s advice to Slubglob moves from a gentle, familial tone to a markedly militaristic one the further one reads into Screwtape Letters. Slubglob is treated as an agent behind enemy lines. As is to be expected of a demon, his “affectionate uncle” Screwtape’s patience wears thinner as every naïve blunder on the part of his nephew renders victory – for which the prize is a human soul – further and further beyond reach.
It may bear to recognize that clear teaching about the supernatural has been a weak point in seminary education this side of the Atlantic (and, I might assume, the Pacific as well). Our materialistic culture often takes the possibility of divine, angelic, and demonic intervention and dismisses it as superstition – even supposedly religious circles. While shooting a breeze with an older pastor at Concordia Lutheran Seminary, I (while young and still comparably naïve) asked some advice for a term paper on spiritual warfare and exorcism. He had little to say besides: “They don’t play fair.”
One needs to know the enemy, or at least the enemies’ tactics, before advancing into the field of conflict. In the train of Lewis, I (on the rare occasion) envision what a strategic planning session may appear like between Satan and his underlings. From the vantage point of an ordained pastor, one might imagine a frustrated subtext to every dialogue between the demonic aristocrats and generals. Make no mistake here. The evil spirits are powerful beyond our human estimation.
In the Preface to the Large Catechism, Bl. Dr. Martin Luther refers to the devil as “master of a thousand arts.” We dare not face him alone, leave alone unarmed! After driving the point home, Luther turns around to call the Word of God the “master of a hundred thousand arts.” With that being the case, I picture Satan and his legions opening each conference dashing their heads against the fact that they strive against flesh-and-blood humans. They know, whether the battle is won or lost, they have already lost the war. Every passing generation of believers in the Church spells out another number of souls snatched into our Father’s heavenly embrace and lost to the kingdom of darkness.
Each of us knows our own hidden vices and shortcomings all too well; and so also happen to the demons after twenty-four hour observation. They may not read minds, but they do not have to. After some 5000 years of observation and experience (as the Augustinian friar Johann von Staupitz so eloquently put it) they can anticipate our pitiful plans and their outcomes down to the letter. If we did not have God on our side, our striving would certainly be losing! But there is no grounds for conceding defeat, not as long as our lungs draw breath and our hearts beat (whether lightly or heavily!) in this lifelong struggle against temptation.
The victory has already been won in Jesus Christ. St. Paul talks about the “full armor of God” in chapter six of his letter to the Ephesians – the classic go-to text on spiritual warfare. One of the presiding bishops at my ordination read it in full, but I quote it here in part. “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” (Eph 6:11)
In the pre-modern world, when soldiers relied on armour (rather than on radio and electronics) as their first and final line of defense, armour was given another important function. Brightly painted colours and crests – called “blazons – served to identify a combatant from a long way off. The enemy knew immediately whether he was looking at a captain, general, foot soldier, or king. It was not an unheard-of strategy to confuse the enemy in this way: for a king or higher-ranking officer to lend his armour or standard to an inferior, thus preserving his own life and efforts for a special coup. So when Paul orders the Church to put on the “armour of God,” he means nothing less than taking on God’s identity.
We receive the full armour of God the same moment we are enlisted in the battle against temptation: Holy Baptism. Paul writes to the Galatians, “as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” (Gal 3:27) The minister traces a cross on the forehead to mark one as belonging to Christ Jesus. As we daily live out our Baptism through exercise in the Word, through diligently confessing our sins and receiving the Lord’ Supper, the enemy shrinks back.
Satan may be able to squelch any of us like an insect if we for a moment set aside our Baptismal garments; but with them on, no foe can harm us. There is no contest between the powers of hell and heaven. No stratagem of Satan, however brilliant, cunning, our outright rigged it may be, can snatch us out of God’s omnipotent hand. He simply cannot penetrate the armour.
What does this mean? Left to our own devices, we may look at our failures or pet vices and think we are not fit for God’s work. We are not. One moment in the “hot seat” is enough to cripple our conscience almost beyond hope of God’s mercy. That is why we dare not look to our own merits, question our divine callings to any station – whether clerical or lay, mother, father, child, master or servant. We did not put ourselves into these stations; God created them for us. We are His own, and in the sacramental ministry of the Church, He makes Himself our own. Therefore stand strong!
Father Heide