A Cloud of Evil
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 1 Peter 5:8
There is a strange cloud that seems to hang over the world. Everyone seems to feel it, though no one is able to clearly define it. It’s increasingly hard to see what is really happening.
Fear, despair, violence, disconnection, and a subtle chaos seems to pervade the thought life of most people I we interact with these days. The malevolence does not hide. The evil seems to persist and lash out with a vehemence I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before. Everyone seems to be on edge.
The underlying rage seems to barely hide in waiting like a cobra waiting to strike. It lies in wait, ready to spring into retributive violence at the slightest and remotest sniff of provocation. Much of this anger and fear seems to stem from the myriad of global traumas that have been left to fester without a true experience of healing and/or restoration. This trauma mixed with an never-ending onslaught of injustice and senseless violence can leave us to fall victim to hopelessness and despair.
The cloud of fear, violence, disconnection, and chaos make it increasingly more difficult to discern the voice of God and see where He’s at work around us. If we’re not careful with our hearts and minds we can easily get swept up in the fog and be consumed with the despair that is seemingly trying to devour everything in its sight.
Powers and Principalities
There has never been a time in my life where I’ve seen so clearly the truth of Paul’s words to the Ephesians, “For 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.” Whether one believes in God or Satan, it’s hard to argue that most people (at least here in the US), have a sense that something else is pulling the strings, something else is pushing and pulling the world towards anything other than good.
People are increasingly aware that there are forces outside the ones that we can see that are driving humanity off a cliff without restraint and devoid of any care or compassion for an already hurting world. People are hurting. Powers and principalities are purposefully putting their fingers squarely onto the wounds of humanity, pushing the pain to unmanageable and unsustainable thresholds. How much more can humanity take, groaning under the weight and pain of such cruelty.
The Status Quo Is Killing Us
Our world is groping for something to assuage the pain and numb the reality. It is desperately searching for answers. There is a deep need for stillness and peace, humanity feels it in their bones. But the trumpet of humanistic and vapid remedies blares loudly. There is a chasm within, devoid of a deeply desired love that eludes most. Hope has been replaced with despair and desolation. Buy more. Care for yourself. Escape to a far away place. Stream another show. Do whatever you have to make sure you don’t actually feel the pain, fear, and disorientation within your soul.
It feels as though most are barely crawling through life. Many are hoping they’d die painlessly so as to avoid whatever they fearfully expect to be on the horizon. Parents have little hope that the world they are leaving their children will be better or safer for them. They are increasingly resigned to this, hoping they don’t live long enough to see things get much worse.
Our world beckons us to keep going, don’t give up on the status quo! But the status quo is becoming increasingly more and more untenable. The status quo, the culture we live in, is increasingly more and more unkind to our souls. Slowly people are awakening to the broken systems and corrupt structures that make up the slavish conditions most are required to live by. The world exudes death, broadcasts death, and increasingly celebrates it. If that’s all we ever see and reflect on, we too, can easily fall in line with a tragic perspective that destroys all hope.
Cultivating Kingdom Eyes
Again, the apostle Paul points us to something so very poignant and vital. His words offer a way to lift us out of the malaise that blankets our world. Paul writes to a Corinthian church demoralized and buried under forces that vie to destroy the last vestiges of hope writes, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
In other words, if you live only by what you can see, you too will fall under the spell of death. And it becomes a self -fulfilling prophecy. Eventually you’ll be consumed by death. Life is found in the spiritual realm, in the Kingdom life. This is the true life. The reality we live is seen only and fully in the spiritual realm. We must develop spiritual eyes to lift us out of the deathly hallows of the world.
This is the invitation, now more than ever, cultivate spiritual eyes or you will fall deeper and deeper into a false world that leads only to death.
Discernment and Spiritual Eyes
So how can develop “spiritual eyes”? The early church fathers often talked about a way to guard one’s mind from the onslaught of attacks the enemy wields on the people of God. They called this way “watchfulness.” The fathers argued that watchfulness is a way embracing every virtue, every commandment. It is the heart’s stillness and, when free from mental images (attacks from the evil one), it is the guarding of the mind.
Ultimately watchfulness was a way that the early fathers taught the church to think about the thoughts that came across their mind. As the world continues to bludgeon our souls with its ways of enslaving man, we must become more aware of how we are receiving the messages of the world. Watchfulness is a way that we can discern what is true from what are lies from the evil one.
Watchfulness
The fathers taught that there were four steps to practicing watchfulness.
- Closely scrutinize every mental image or provocation that comes across your thoughts.
- Free the heart from all thoughts, keeping it profoundly silent and still, and in prayer. (We don’t have to latch on to every thought that parades across our mind – see Philippians 4:8)
- Continually and humbly call on the Lord Jesus Christ for help.
- Always keep the thought of one’s death in mind.
In this age of warfare, understanding what warfare is and what it is not is vital to the ability to engage and remain rooted in truth. The battleground for all things spiritual is always first and foremost in the mind. It is no wonder that so many of the church fathers and mothers speak so vigilantly on keeping watch over the mind and heart.
Be Sober and On Guard
To be sure, world events and scenarios will occur setting the trajectory or course for the world around us. While undoubtedly these things affect us to one degree or another, we can increasingly see where the real battle takes place. Dallas Willard would often say, “the ultimate freedom we have is what we allow our mind to dwell on.” In other words, we can affect the way(s) our minds respond to the events and spiritual fog of our world.
Some world events and daily happenings may cause my mind to go to fear – I don’t have to dwell on them. Other events cultivate joy and expectation – I can receive and celebrate those. Some thoughts lead my mind to predict that horror that awaits my life and those around me. Other thoughts invoke an envy or hatred within me. Ultimately, I must pay attention to these thoughts, how they come and what they are trying to do within me.
In a world that is, and will continue increasingly become more and more unkind to our minds, hearts, and souls, we must stay sober and vigilant. To remain, as Peter writes, “on guard,” requires us to cultivate watchfulness. It requires us to set our eyes, mind, and hearts on Jesus and his Kingdom. It requires us to be increasingly aware that our battle is not against flesh and blood.