This Tuesday, we are wrapping up Richard Beck’s book Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted. Please read Chapter 15, “Turning the World Upside Down,” and Chapter 16, “Satan Interrupted.” In this final chapter, Beck summarizes the discussions we have had and returns to his two great themes: spiritual warfare is about retaining our humanity and our faith.
Small Acts of Resistance: (pp.171-81)
Throughout his book, Beck emphasizes that evil is active in the world. Evil works against all that is good and opposes the Kingdom of God. Our calling is to resist. 1 Pet. 5:9. The example Beck gives is the Leaflets of the White Rose. The Leaflets were written in Germany during World War II by four students at the University of Munich. The leaflets strongly criticized the Nazi regime, and were distributed around the university. Once the Gestapo caught the writers, they were all executed for treason.
The question Beck raises is why these students risked their lives to criticize the Nazi regime when their criticism would have little to no practical impact on the government. Why risk everything when the results would be so minimal? Beck provides us with three answers to this question.
First, resistance is essential to preserve and protect a person’s humanity. p.174. Not resisting leads to the death of your humanity and turns you into a “moral and spiritual zombie.” Resistance is a spiritual and moral obligation that must be upheld regardless of the costs.
Second, resistance is a behavioral response to the problem of evil. p.175. As Beck discusses in Chapter 8, the question of evil does not call for an intellectual response but a behavioral one. The New Testament offers little, if any, explanation for why evil exists. Instead, it, from the exorcisms in Mark 1 through the great battles of Revelation, teaches that evil demands a behavioral response. Evil calls for resistance, not just theory.
Finally, small acts of resistance help expose evil. “When we stay silent in the face of injustice and oppression, we support the oppressive and unjust power structures because our quiet acceptance of the status quo makes it seem normal and right.” p.181. Resistance breaks the illusion that the status quo is acceptable, allowing others to dissent. Only when the boy declared, “The Emperor has no clothes,” could others join in.
Faith, Hope, and Love Interrupting: (pp.182-84)
Beck concludes his book by revisiting his theme from Chapter 2: that only through the lens of spiritual warfare can we face the evil in the world while keeping our faith. Confronting evil pulls us into dark places of pain, suffering, and fear. In those moments, we may question either God’s existence or his love. Only by viewing evil through the lens of spiritual warfare, as the New Testament does, can we maintain our faith, not just in God, but also in Goodness and Love.
Ultimately, however, our resistance to the spiritual forces of evil in the world begins and ends with love. As Beck wrote at the end of Chapter 1, Jesus never became Satan to fight Satan. p.10. He never returned evil for evil, but instructed us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Without love as the basis for our foundation, we become conformed to the power structures of the world. Luke 9:25.
Spiritual warfare is about disrupting the world with love. But, as Jesus says, “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?” Luke 9:25. If we succeed in resisting a particular evil, but lose goodness along the way, what have we truly gained? Ultimately, resistance and spiritual warfare aren’t about winning debates or policies, but about persistently practicing the self-emptying love of Christ, which will conquer even death and hell itself.
SCHEDULE:
- We are NOT gathering on July 15 and July 22. I am at Nashota House at school.
- We will begin a study of Jonah on July 29. We planned this study for the summer of 2021, but COVID interrupted us. My outline of the study is HERE.
Dinner at 6. The menu is pork tenderloin. Discussion about 6:45. Compline at 8. Hope to see you here!
He himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. And he made from one ancestor every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might reach out to him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us. Acts 17:25b-27