Spiritual Attack
Submitted by Wayne on Wed, 2008-07-30 16:49.
Doctrine
Some believers see devils everywhere, blaming them for all their woes. In so doing, they're avoiding personal responsibility for what is really just the natural consequences of their own sins. The recently popular euphemism for seeing demons behind every difficulty is "spiritual attack".
Stuff happens. Life is unfair. Life sucks, then you die. These glib sentiments are far more consistent with Biblical doctrine than seeing spiritual attacks as the reason for life's difficulties. It's important to discern the source of difficulties. If you blame devils (or spiritual attacks) erroneously, you're merely denying sins. Instead, search out your sin and repent of it.
Financial troubles, parenting issues, marital problems, and even most job, home, and vehicular related matters tend to be natural consequences of our own sins (sometimes, others' sins contribute, too). These are not spiritual attacks any more than they are the result of demonic playwrights. Grow up and take responsibility for your own sins.
Repent, and not only will you see just how many of your troubles go away simply because you're no longer doing something stupid, you'll also grow spiritually. You'll grow by taking responsibility, repenting of sins, and choosing God's ways instead of blaming devils or imagined spiritual attacks.
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Real attacks
So what constitutes very real spiritual attacks?
How about 9/11? Yes and no, but mostly no. No, the part about Muslims flying planes into buildings was not a spiritual attack. That was a physical attack, for those having difficulty parsing reality. The spiritual attack came in much earlier--about 1400 years earlier. The spiritual attack came in the form of Islam itself, its existence, its doctrine, its anti-Biblical nature. Very little encouragement is needed, demonic or otherwise, for men to rebel against God. Islam provides a great way to rebel against the One, True God of Israel while simultaneously providing numerous ways to be "religious". No spiritual attack is necessary to explain 9/11, except very indirectly via the roots of Islam itself (which, in fact, go back much further than Mohammad).
People are not puppets. We have free will. We choose either obedience or disobedience. Demons cannot force us to do anything and cannot be blamed when we choose to do evil. The only influence they have over us is when we willingly choose to submit to them. In so doing, we accept personal responsibility for the consequences of our sin.
This is not to say there is not a spiritual war waging. This war, though, is not like a worldly war. It is not a matter of God versus the devil. God's already won that "war" (more of a noisy skirmish than a war, given the lopsidedness of power distribution). There is a war over men's hearts, to be sure. The demons offer temporal temptations, appealing to our stupid desire to rebel against our Father. The Lord offers, through His Son, freedom from sin and life everlasting in His Presence. We choose. I suppose you could consider it an ideological, cold war.
Having said all this, I do not deny the supernatural. There are times, as the Word of God records, when the demons are granted great power (or freed up) for a time to do evil. Even here, God can use whatever was meant for evil for His purposes instead. Ordinarily, though, we don't need to appeal to the supernatural to explain great evil. We mortals are more than capable of it ourselves.
Just how demonic or Godly influences are meted out and how this can be called a spiritual attack or victory--well, let's just say that's a whole other can of worms. History can indeed unfold according to God's plan without Him performing evil (He can't, by definition), without Him removing free will in even a single instance, and with only the tiniest appeal to the supernatural. Similarly, though not by the same power or authority, evil forces too can rule this world with barely a whisper of the supernatural and without loss of free will. Such true spiritual attacks are not manifest in the ways believers commonly use the phrase, though.