Living In The Armor (Introduction)

Spiritual warfare can be a difficult topic. Maybe it’s not something you think about daily, but it is a reality which confronts us every moment of our lives. Pop culture may portray spiritual warfare in spectacular dramatic fashion with movies such as The Exorcist or Constantine, but in reality, it typically manifests in ways far more mundane. The insidious nature of the enemy’s tactics, more often than not, leads us astray little by little, in ways which we may not recognize until trouble is at our doorsteps.

So how can ordinary people stay safe from spiritual hosts of wickedness from the heavens?

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Ephesians 6:10-17 is a very well-known passage of scripture often quoted when discussing the topic of spiritual warfare. In these verses, the Apostle Paul lists six components of the “whole armor of God.” They are, in order: a girding, body armor, sandals, a shield, a helmet, and finally, the sword.  The apostle Paul wrote this passage knowing that each of these pieces of military equipment would have been familiar to first century Christians living under Roman rule with the ubiquitous presence of Roman legions.  For us today, a proper understanding of this Biblical passage hinges, in part, on a working knowledge of the equipment used by those Roman soldiers. 

"You Can't Be A Christian If..."

I recently saw an article (reposted by one of my Facebook friends) written by a man who grew up in a certain church but left it in favor of a different denomination. When he went to a service at his old church with his parents many years later, he was “triggered” by what he saw there. He then proceeded to bash his old church and the entire denomination in his blog.

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I have Facebook friends from all walks of life, of many different political and religious views, and I am sad to say that I see this kind of thing all too often, coming equally from all sides. It’s one thing if such condemnation comes from a non-Christian, but when the conflict and attacks are between fellow Christians or “rival” denominations, it’s truly a tragedy. Whether in church, on a blog, or on Facebook, the problem is the same: human nature. We see all sides pointing fingers, saying things like, "Well you can't be a Christian if..." (insert your topic of moral outrage). 

One Mysterious Word (Selah)

Whodunnit?? Long before the 2013 TV show of the same name, this was a popular term referring to murder mysteries. I whiled away many an hour as a youngster reading Hound of the Baskervilles and other Sherlock Holmes stories, and I have also thoroughly enjoyed recent American and British TV interpretations of the character as well. Sherlock has a knack for making keen observations and stringing together tiny, seemingly insignificant details to solve the most puzzling of cases.

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If only he were a real person, we might call upon Holmes’ services to uncover the truth of one the most mysterious words found in the Bible: selah. As it stands, Bible scholars today still do not know for certain what this word means, though we certainly have several ideas about it.

The Homan Illustrated Bible Dictionary has this to say about selah: “Term of unknown meaning… Scholars have advanced various unprovable theories: a pause either for silence or musical interlude; a signal for the congregation to sing, recite, or fall prostrate on the ground; a cue for the cymbals to crash; a word to be shouted by the congregation; or a sign to the choir to sing a higher pitch or louder.”

Not much help there.

Can We Really Be Free If God Is In Control?

July 4^th is Independence Day in the United States; it’s when we celebrate our nation’s successful struggle to be free from the kingdom of Great Britain. The idea of independence reminds me of one of the great theological conundrums: the notion of mankind’s free will placed against God’s ultimate sovereignty. Certainly, I am neither the first nor the wisest among us to try to figure out how God can be in control of all things, yet still allow for human beings’ true independence of thought and choice.
The problem with unraveling such a complex issue is that we humans tend to like “either/or” situations. We want to be able to separate one thing from another and analyze the two things separately in order to determine which one of the ideas is true and which is false. But approaching this puzzle using such methodology leads to a number of serious problems, as we shall now examine.