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We prefer to think of following Jesus as a journey or lifestyle rather than a war.
And the problem is less that we tell lies and more that we live them; we let false narratives about reality into our bodies, and they wreak havoc in our souls.
A growing number of our secular friends and neighbors think of us not just as weird—because
but as dangerous. As a threat to secularism’s alternative vision of human flourishing.
“chronological snobbery,”
“the myth of progress,”
And your soul, like mine, is locked in a war with lies.
our fight with the devil is first and foremost a fight to take back control of our minds from their captivity to lies and liberate them with the weapon of truth.5
leading vast swaths of human and nonhuman creatures in their ongoing quest to seize autonomy from God and redefine good and evil as they saw fit (more on that soon).
In the interim, the devil is like a
wounded animal, a dying dragon, more dangerous than ever.
If Jesus’s anthem is “On earth as it is in heaven,” the devil’s is “On ea...
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Like all good lies, this idea is full of truth.
His motto: “Tear it all down.” Wherever he finds life, he tries to stamp it out. Beauty? Deface it. Love? Corrupt it. Unity? Fragment it into a million pieces. Human flourishing?
Jesus sees our primary war against the devil as a fight to believe truth over lies.
The best definition I know of truth is “reality, or that which corresponds to reality.”
And the best definition of reality I know is “what you run into when you’re wrong.”
When we call something a lie, we mean it doesn’t correspond to reality.
We all live by what psychologists call mental maps of reality,1 reference points in our minds by which we navigate the world.
Our mental maps are made up of a collection of ideas.
ideas as “assumptions about reality.”
Psychologists argue that the drop in those who identify as having “secure attachment” is wreaking havoc in our society.
It seems that the more sexual partners you have, the less capacity your body has for intimacy.14
Ideology is a form of idolatry.
ideology is when you take a
part of the truth and make it the whole.
The illusions we cling to become part of our identity and, with it, our security.
It’s only in coming face to face with reality as it actually is before God that we find peace.
The question isn’t, Do you have faith? But who or what do you have faith in?
Jesus and the writers of Scripture also recognized that the claim to have knowledge of reality does not imply arrogance or lead down the path to tyranny, contrary to popular opinion.
Ideas have power only when we believe them.
deception is tied to temptation, temptation to slavery to sin, and it’s the truth that will set you free.
Here it is again: the devil’s primary stratagem to drive the soul and society into ruin is deceptive ideas that play to disordered desires, which are normalized in a sinful society.
We prefer to think of ourselves as rational individualists rather than the emotional, relational, and easily manipulated social creatures we actually are.
We sin because we believe a lie about what will make us happy.
sin as “unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness.”
God’s not as good or as wise as he claims to be. He’s holding out on you. If you seize autonomy from God and do your own thing with me, you’ll be better off.38 This is the lie underneath all other lies.
The deception (or really temptation) is and has always been twofold: (1) to seize autonomy from God and (2) to redefine good and evil based on the voice in our heads and the inclination of our hearts, rather than trust in the loving word of God.
simply knowing something is not enough to change.
For ideas, good or bad, to reshape our lives, they have to get into our hearts—the deep centers of our beings that integrate our thoughts, emotions, and desires—and from there into our bodies, our muscle memory.
To change, to grow, to break free of our flesh and become like Jesus, we need Spirit and truth.
Human beings simply can’t live without loving relationships and meaning to both our suffering and our existence as a whole.
It plays instead to the undercurrents of desire in Jesus’s heart. The desire to take his kingdom by an easier way. To get the right thing, the wrong way.
15
Exuding a quiet confidence in his Father’s truth.
quiet confidence
The disciplines are embodied practices in a physical world whereby we present ourselves to the immaterial reality of the Spirit/presence and Word/truth of Christ.
