Friends: In this political season it is fairly easy to spot Satan’s work. Better run to Jesus, scorn the devil, and smile. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality column #931

September 17, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Cheerful Scorn

By Bob Walters

“The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to the texts of scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.” – Martin Luther quote and epigraph to C.S. Lewis’s 1942 classic, The Screwtape Letters.

When I hear someone pray about “binding satan,” I reflexively and immediately spiritually go stand next to Jesus.  I talk to Jesus, pray with Him, trust Him, love Him, and entreat His peace, mercy, healing, wisdom, and grace on the prayer’s target issue.

What I try to do, in other words, is avoid talking, let alone arguing, with the devil.

C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, in 31 wickedly funny fictional missives from executive demon Screwtape to confused and incompetent junior demon Wormwood, splays open how best to tempt and control mankind into leaving our reliance on God.

Satan, you see, loves to argue.  And I posit to you this: America is in an intractable season of political argument, and Satan is having a heyday.

Perhaps our best Christian move is not to wade too far into the political muck because neither political party – if you read the article links I included last week – remains interested in forwarding the biblical Christian worldview. The Democrats strayed decades ago, and the Republican party at its convention this past summer generally offloaded, or at least softened, its traditional conservative and Christian aura.

As mentioned in those links, sixty-plus years of Republican-centered Christian political activism has brought large talk but few policies.  The idea of a “Christian fifth column” setting civic policy is a canard, i.e., it’s not there.  And the moniker “Christian nationalist” is a polemical chimera without meaning, as in, there is no “there” there.  It is a nebulous, debasing label invented for annoyance and argument, not clarity or truth.

These are indeed trying times for a believing Christian, but we may have been given an unexpected gift hidden within the political rancor and cultural upheaval of recent times. We are looking at a fifty-fifty U.S. presidential election where each side sees the other side’s candidate as Satan.  And without rehashing the news, perhaps we’ve learned at least this: Debate, alas, is futile. Maybe it is time just to be Christians.

It’ll be the hardest thing we’ve ever done, because Christians have long been cushioned from true activism by that with which we are about to be bludgeoned: a political system and culture now wholly disinterested in Christian influence.

What’s the cheerful part?  This: Jesus never told us to argue, Jesus told us to love God and love others.  He did not tell us, nor did he model for us, acquiescence to lies. He answered satan with scripture, the pharisees with truth, and disciples with love.

Our nation’s founders did not imagine a nation unmoored from Christ. As pointed out by Ronen Stoval in First Things (Link), Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 “saw in America not just a land of the free, but a land of the responsible … a place where liberty was always tethered to the common good. The founders understood that true freedom is not the absence of restraint, but the presence of purpose.” We are increasingly tethered to lies.

Stoval asks if we can reclaim our national moral compass. It’s a good question. Our challenge as Christians is to not lose our moral compass, and to not let the un-reality of identity politics – wokeness, LGBTQ, DEI, Critical Race Theory, climate and environmental bullying, intersectionality, perpetual grievance, and the like – govern us.

I’ll keep my joy in Christ, and cheerfully scorn the enemy where I find him. Sure, I’ll vote, but Christians need to focus on Jesus. The devil is in the political details.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) suggests these article links: The Screwtape Election and The Broken Promise of America, both from First Things. Also, the links mentioned are still live at the bottom of last week’s column.  Just scroll down.