Not a war in the flesh

Submitted by Drew Snider (Canada), Mar 14, 2006 at 09:50

We keep coming back to the Apostle Paul's word that "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers ....". We can't fight a fleshly battle with people who are acting out of a spiritual belief. One goes down, ten more rise up.

This is a completely different battleground, and responding to attacks which begin in the Spirit realm with a worldly military action is like trying to send a crack submarine unit into the African jungle. This kind of battle takes prayer, it takes standing -- truly standing -- on one's own faith, living it, and promoting that faith (and being an evangelical, I STRONGLY recommend Christianity) as not just a better way but the only way. The idea is not to convert everybody who doesn't believe (although that may well be a side-benefit), but in the Spirit, it starts to neutralize the attacks. You think battles like this aren't spiritual?

Remember Vietnam: it was ideology versus might, and how did that turn out? No: Christians need to respond to such threats through prayer and faith, just as the threats themselves are founded. I also believe it's naive to say that a "moderate, modern, good-neighborly" version of Islam will change things. According to this article, even Mohamed Reza Taheri-Azar seemed like a moderate, modern good neighbor.

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