The Enemy Part I

How Powers Beyond Our Comprehension Have Figured Out and Rigged The Game. Here's How We Beat Them.

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” - John 8:44

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” - John 10:10

“For we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the powers, against the principalities, and against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” - Ephesians 6:12

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” - 1 Peter 5:8

This post won’t be for everyone. Some of you might not believe in a spiritual realm, and that’s fine. I’d encourage you to read it though, because if we really want to understand and get to the bottom of what’s happening around us, we need to start outside of time and beyond our limited scope of reality.

Recently on her Substack, Naomi Wolfe discussed whether it was time for a discussion on spirituality and the role that belief in God should have in these days. It’s a fantastic, honest read that I would recommend wholeheartedly. While there were many things she said that were 100% on point, this section spoke the most to me, and this is what I want to expand on.

I told the group that I was now willing to speak about God publicly, because I had looked at what had descended on us from every angle, using my normal critical training and faculties; and that it was so elaborate in its construction, so comprehensive, and so cruel, with an almost superhuman, flamboyant, baroque imagination made out of the essence of cruelty itself — that I could not see that it had been accomplished by mere humans working on the bumbling human level in the dumb political space.

I felt around us, in the majestic nature of the awfulness of the evil around us, the presence of “principalities and powers” — almost awe-inspiring levels of darkness and of inhuman, anti-human forces. In the policies unfolding around us I saw again and again anti-human outcomes being generated: policies aimed at killing children’s joy; at literally suffocating children, restricting their breath, speech and laughter; at killing school; at killing ties between families and extended families; at killing churches and synagogues and mosques; and, from the highest levels, from the President’s own bully pulpit, demands for people to collude in excluding, rejecting, dismissing, shunning, hating their neighbors and loved ones and friends.

I have seen bad politics all of my life and this drama unfolding around us goes beyond bad politics, which is silly and manageable and not that scary. This — this is scary, metaphysically scary. In contrast to hapless human mismanagement, this darkness has the tinge of the pure, elemental evil that underlay and gave such hideous beauty to the theatrics of Nazism; it is the same nasty glamour that surrounds Leni Riefenstahl films.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve believed in Satan. Not put my faith in Satan, mind you, but acknowledged that this entity is a real manifestation in the universe. The older I get, the more I seek to understand my enemy, and in doing so, I’ve been given an incredible understanding of human nature.

Make no mistake, there IS an Enemy, and this enemy despises you. Every breath you take is a grievance to this enemy. Every laugh, every authentic connection, every joyous moment, is a universal middle finger in his eyes.

Humanity is the crown jewel of God's design. I don't understand it, but it's true. Of all the creations, dumb little human beings are God's greatest joy, His most proud work, at least in this known corner of the universe.

Because of that, our Enemy HATES us. He HATES God, and he LOATHES the fact that this fragile, brilliant, failing, contradictory, and innovative race is at the center of God's good design. We are enemy number one, because of that.

To that end, everything that Satan does is vengeance against God. If we're His prize, what better way to strike back at God's heart. If someone hurts your kids, that hurts more to you as the parent than anything. It's the same here with us.

So Satan builds traps and snares. He introduces one more layer of confusion to further cloud our eyes. He poisons all the wells and put malware in our Code. Every institution, every philosophy, it's all clouded and poisoned, and he's REALLY good at playing on all the chess boards. He has files on you, on human behavior, and knows just how to set you up and tear you down.

This enemy is very creative, but entirely predictable. And it’s in this predictability that we have our thermal exhaust port, our battle plans on how to combat this enemy.

Way back in the Genesis story in the Old Testament, we see the first interaction between this enemy and humanity. “The Serpent” comes to humans and does several things:

1. Plants doubt. “Did God REALLY say…?”.
   
   Until then, the world had a solid definition. There was authority and boundaries, guardrails explicitly put into place by God, the Creator. It was all His creation, and he very specifically told the humans what was permissible and what was not.
   
   So many people throughout time have believed that if there were not boundaries, we would be better off (looking at YOU Boomers). For a while, it’s WAY more FUN to have no boundaries. I’ve certainly explored that philosophy in my own life. It’s an illusion of freedom.
   
   But it’s just that, an illusion. We are MEANT to explore the limits of our boundaries, and in fact, God encourages humanity to do just that. “All of this is yours. Go forth, be fruitful and multiply.” (my paraphrase). “Fill the earth and subdue it.” It’s a command, and how exciting that must have been! This lie that God created us to be some lame, mundane bot is completely contrary to the reality. We were - are - MEANT by design to be explorers and scientists and innovators and adventurers. We were created to garden and tend and care for the environment and organize the world around us in a way that would allow for flourishing of all types.
   
   But we are MEANT to do this exploration under authority, with an understanding that while there’s the wild explorer, the scientist, the journalist, the innovator within us, there are still limits to what constitutes a good design, and those limits are put in place by a God who knows that any garden left untended, without boundary, will devolve into chaos, bear bad fruit, and get choked out, overgrown, and in time, become a dangerous place.
   
   Still to this day, Satan is whispering “did God REALLY say?” He uses it to create the belief that first and foremost, there is no God, no Creator, no good design. If there’s no God, there’s no definition. No accountability. Nothing stopping humanity from the insanity we see manifesting on all sides of us today. Those scientists who were meant to explore and question, that drive is still in them. But they never stop to ask, should we do this?
   
   Exhibit A - Gain of function.
   Exhibit B - transhumanism.
   I could go on and on.
   
   The point is, the first tactic of Satan is to create doubt, to destroy the reality of a God that has a good design, and to prompt us to smash through the guardrails that are there for true human flourishing.
   

2. “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.
   
   Satan sows doubt, and then when humans respond, he contradicts God. In contradicting God, he sets himself up - FALSELY - to be equal to God. One of the greatest lies in this universe is that Satan is equal to and opposite of God.
   
   BUT let’s be very clear, Satan is NOT equal to God.
   
   He’s what Fauci is to science - a pimp. A fraud. A charlatan. A manipulator. A predator.
   
   Once he contradicts God and equates himself to God, the illusion is easy. The lies are perverted into a sort of validity, some false credibility, another “lane” humans can choose to drive in. However, this lane only and always leads to an off ramp from the true highway. An off ramp that’s unfinished and leads right into the abyss. A broken bridge that will always collapse. Because it’s ultimately artificial and temporary, just like Satan.

   

3. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
   
   How intoxicating that sounds.
   We will be “like God.”
   We will never die.
   We will KNOW everything.

   
   How much money has been spent on eternal youth? On medical products and procedures designed to keep us looking and feeling younger? On seminars to increase our knowledge and understanding? On creating stories and pursuing myths of immortality?
   
   The truth is, we are eternal beings. We are a mystical union of spirit and matter, blended realities built for eternity. We always have been. We were designed to live in this flesh and bone costume forever, walking with God, living with each other, never tasting anything like death and disease.
   
   In that unbroken relationship with our Creator, we were invited to not just live forever, but to explore the depths and heights of knowledge and wisdom. Walking, talking with God, asking questions and having conversations. Being in our communities with others, sitting around fires and on beaches, debating new information and sharing knowledge and learning something new, something unfiltered and unaltered, handed down by the Author of all Life.
   
   That WAS the reality of humanity. It was already a fact before this fateful conversation between human and the Enemy.
   
   The tragic brilliance in what Satan did was falsely offer us what we already had been given. And in accepting that offer, what we already had been given was actually destroyed. Replaced by the very opposite of what was promised.
   
   Death, not life.
   Deception, not knowledge.
   Decay, not longevity.
   Chaos, not order.
   
   Ask yourself, isn’t this the world around us today? Doesn’t it seem like, in so many cases, we get the exact opposite of what we’ve been promised?
   

4. Shame, blame, and damage control.
   
   After the Enemy completes his primary mission an introduces the bugs into the system successfully, we see the predictable response that we continue to see today when humans realize they’ve been duped or have been caught in the act.
   
   They hide.
   The man blames the woman.
   The woman blames the serpent.
   They literally try to cover their own naked asses by hiding.
   They feel shame and understand guilt for the first time.

Now that you know these fundamentals, you must realize: this world around us is not reality. Satan, during this interaction, introduced bugs. Bugs that have become features. But they are not the original design.

Now, let’s look at the description of our enemy from those multiple scriptures I started this post off with. What is common?

Death. Lies. Destruction. The reality of a vast enemy seeking to kill, maim, and distort humanity. If our race bears the image and likeness of God, then everything Satan has tasked his armies to do is distort and destroy that image.

As we look around us today, how distorted we are! As a society, when we can’t even define the definition of a biological male and female - THE most basic truth about our race - then what CAN we confidently define?

Many times during this last 7 years - because I do include the Trump years and the fact that we witnessed an actual coup d'état of a sitting US president - I’ve just simply golf clapped at Satan. He has truly played out a glorious, terrible symphony of destruction on this earth, as Naomi describes above.

This terror, this deception, this coordination DOES come from a place outside of ourselves. Humans are brilliant and highly capable, both for incredible light and horrible darkness, but we are just the canvas that our real enemy paints on and the vessels through which he pours through.

In order to fight the battles the way we need to fight them from here on out, we MUST acknowledge and respect the fact that first and foremost, there IS an Enemy. He is powerful, he is formidable, he is intelligent. He is creative and informed and observant and relentless and ruthless. Nothing short of destroying humanity and overthrowing the throne of our Creator will make this enemy content.

The other vital thing we need to remember is that our enemy is NOT flesh and blood. It IS a spiritual battle, always and forevermore. This doesn’t absolve human hands from their wickedness or wrongdoing. This doesn’t lessen the sting of a betrayal or disappointment or a crime. Human actions are real, they carry consequences, and there will be judgement for every one of them.

But we must look a little lower and deeper in our quest for vengeance or our rage. We need to know that the humans in our life, whether personally or societally, are very broken and fallen vessels, being played and used by a masterful foe.

In part 2, I will continue to expand on the spiritual forces at play and start to show how the chess board has been set up and is being manipulated, but I want you to take the time now to reflect on this. Take some time and see yourself and others through this lens and understanding of reality. It WILL dramatically change things within you, free you, warn you, and bolster your ability to fight.

You can’t effectively fight an enemy you don’t understand, and my hope is that through this, through further conversation in the comments with myself or others, we can start here and then move out into our circles and take back some real ground. If we start on any other footing, it is temporary, and your enemy WILL exploit that false footing.