March/April 2003
The Battle for the Mind
by Hank Hanegraaff
| Temptation is always crouching at the door. It's as close as the click of your computer mouse and as alluring as easy money. |
One of the things I enjoy most in life is hanging out with my kids. From the moment I walk through the front door to the time they hit the sack, they challenge me in everything from shooting hoops to playing checkers. Often I fall asleep with the words, "Just one more game!" ringing in my ears.
For years I've had the upper hand. But as my children continue to grow, the scales have begun to tip in the opposite direction. My boys now regularly whip me in basketball, and my girls beat me in checkers more times than I care to admit. One game I still hold a monopoly on, however, is golf. In fact, I told my kids that if they ever beat me in golf, I would put one hundred dollars into their savings accounts.
One afternoon the inevitable happened. John Mark, who was only nine at the time, challenged me to a putting contestand won. Johnny's ball had barely reached the bottom of the cup when he looked up at me with a mischievous grin and chirped, "Time to pay up, Daddy-O!"
But I was ready for him. "How about double or nothing?" I ventured.
"No way!" Johnny shot back decisively.
"How 'bout I give you a two shot head start?"
"No!"
"Tell you what I'm going to do, I'll give you a three-shot cushion. Take it or leave it."
By now Johnny was beginning to waiver. "I don't know," he waffled nervously.
"Come on, John Mark, two hundred dollars. I'm giving you three strokes. How are you going lose a nine hole putting contest with a three-stroke advantage?" I could see that Johnny was beginning to take the bait. "Yes or no," I pressed, adding a sense of urgency to my offer.
Reluctantly, Johnny caved in. Ten minutes later he was looking up at me with tears in his eyes. "That wasn't fair," he moaned.
"Wasn't fair? What do you mean it wasn't fair? I didn't force you to go double or nothing, did I? It was your choice, wasn't it?"
"Yeah, Dad," Johnny groused. "But you...you were just like a temptin' little devil sittin' on my shoulder!"
John Mark was not yet ten, but he learned a life lesson far more valuable than one hundred dollars. Temptation is always crouching at the door. It's as close as a click of your computer mouse and as alluring as easy money. Yet no matter how enticing the temptation, we are responsible for the choices we make. I may have made "the deal" sound too good to pass up, but in the final analysis, it was still Johnny's choice.
Today, John Mark's "temptin' little devil sittin' on my shoulder" quip is a classic. Every time one of us repeats it, we all crack up on cue. But there is a serious side: The devil is real, and he does tempt us in myriad ways. While we overestimate Satan's power by supposing he can control us against our wills, an equal-and-opposite error would be to underestimate his cunning craftiness.
Thus, before Paul launches into the covering that protects against the devil's schemes, he first emphasizes the fact that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesians 6:12). Spiritual warfare is waged against invisible beings that personify the extremities of evil. And their weapons are spiritual, not physical. While they cannot bite us physically, violate us sexually, or cause us to levitate, they can tempt us to cheat, steal and lie.
Furthermore, it is crucial to note that though the devil cannot directly interact with us physically, he does have access to our minds. He cannot read our minds, but he can influence our thoughts. Thus, Johnny's "temptin' little devil sittin' on my shoulder" quip was not far from the truth. If we open the door to Satan by failing to put on the full armor of God, he does, as it were, sit on our shoulder and whisper into our ears. The whisper cannot be discerned with the physical ear; it can, however, penetrate "the ear" of the mind.
We cannot explain how such communication takes place anymore than we can explain how our minds can cause the physical synapses of the brain to fire. But that such mind-to-mind communication takes place is indisputable. If it were not so, the devil could not have tempted Judas to betray his Master, seduced Ananias and Sapphira to deceive Peter, or incited David to take a census. Nor would the apostle Paul have instructed us to "put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything to stand" (Ephesians 6:13). In the final analysis, Scripture informs us that spiritual warfare is the battle for the mind.
Finally, Paul wants us to understand that while fallen angels are not physical beings, they are as real as the very flesh upon our bones. They are malevolent beings, the vastness of whose intellect exceeds that of any human who has ever lived. Thus, as Spurgeon put it, "we must not expect that a man, unaided from above, should ever be a match for an angel, especially an angel whose intellect has been sharpened by malice." From the primordial Garden to the present generation, Satan and the hordes of hell have honed the craft of temptation.
No doubt much to his delight, we often depict the devil as either a cartoonish clown -- with an elongated tail, red tights and a pitchfork -- or as a cultural caricature that traces "strange symbols" on bathroom mirrors, warns a Christian leader with "two little bite-marks" or pillages a woman by "violating her sexually." Far from silly or stupid, Satan appears as a cosmopolitan angel of enlightenment. In the words of C.S. Lewis, "The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks, who do not need to raise their voice."
Rather than brutish, demons are brilliant. As Randy Alcorn notes in his Lord Foulgrin's Letters, "They operate within a hierarchy dependant on issuing, receiving and carrying out orders. They wage war against God, righteous angels and us. Intelligence gathering, strategy, deploying troops, communicating battle orders and reporting on the results of engagements are all fundamental aspects of warfare...they live in a spiritual world where there's a certain clarity of thought even among the fallen....Their modus operandi is to twist, deceive and mislead, but they are intimately familiar with the truth they twist."
While contemporary Christians are fixating on seven-step programs by people such as Frank and Ida Mae Hammond (Pigs in the Parlor), they have all but forgotten the seven steps to freedom presented in Scripture by the apostle Paul. Satan knows full well that without the spiritual armor listed by Paul in Ephesians 6, we are but pawns in a devil's game. With it, however, we are invincible in the invisible war.
Adapted from chapter two of Hank Hanegraaff's new book The Covering: God's Plan to Protect You from Evil (W Publishing Group, 2002).
-- Hank Hanegraaff