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Jim's PERSPECTIVE

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March 04, 2014

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12 (ASV)

We do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds), casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:4 (ASV)

The chief struggles in life are spiritual in nature. That’s what Paul believed. That’s what I believe. Even though the struggle, for the most part, is in the context of human conflicts, nonetheless the root nature of that conflict is spiritual. So one could realistically say that all of life is actually spiritual. In the above Ephesians 6 verse Paul reminds his readers that (If you have been told that Paul did not write Ephesians, that’s OK. He’s still behind it, whether through a scribe/secretary or a disciple/friend. Let’s move on.) to focus on the human aspect of the struggle is to miss the point. Furthermore, one has to incorporate other means to prevail and overcome than the earthly means to subdue the physical vessel in which the struggle appears and fleshes itself out.

He suggests that what is necessary—and what Christians have access to— is a means for “pulling down strongholds.” So, you may ask, what is a stronghold? Some Christians will tell you that a stronghold, plain and simple, is demonic. Period. Some will tell you that it is about spiritual warfare. I believe that it can be—in both cases—when it “goes to seed,” but it doesn’t really start out that way. It’s much simpler and more basic than that. Spiritual life is a matter of degree: degrees of comprehension and/or understanding and experience and/or involvement. Many Christians live practically without so much as one thought spent pondering spiritual warfare. Just as in earthly wars, many go through life without having to live or fight in a war zone. However, for those who cannot escape living in a war zone, even non-combatants will suffer the effects of it. There’s really no escape from it. But I’m not necessarily talking about either spiritual or earthly warfare. I want to talk about the nature of a stronghold.

A stronghold (get ready for profundity) is “anything strongly held.” The word in the original Greek text comes from “ochyroma,” a word meaning “fortress.” According to the one-volume abridged Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (the TDNT) by Kittle and Friedrich (the so-called “Little Kittle”) Paul apparently is using this word here as “the bastion of vaunting reason.” This is the sense in which I also want to talk about degrees to which things are strongly held.

But I want to say at the outset that strongholds can be both external and internal. So first, let’s talk about the nature of external strongholds. In terms of a place or position that one intends to hold or keep, from the simplest to the most complex, one might start by establishing a perimeter. I like to think of the “DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE” yellow tape that fire, rescue, and police people use to secure an area. But if you think about it, how actually secure is that? If I didn’t have to worry about getting arrested I could walk up to the line, pull in two, and walk right through it or else under or over it.

If someone wanted a stepped-up line that would be more difficult to penetrate than just a perimeter, one might construct a barricade. Here one would place obstacles on or around the line in order to block an unwanted entrance. But I could probably just drive through it with a large enough vehicle—maybe a truck or a tank.

To make the position even harder to invade, one might entrench, like both North and South did at Petersburg, VA in the Civil War or the Allied and Axis powers did in World War I France. An entrenchment is stouter than a barricade. But if I wanted something even stronger that that, I would fortify. I would build a fort. And if a fort needed further strengthening, I could build a fort-within-a-fort, or a bastion. So the progression from least to greatest would be from a perimeter to a barricade to a trench to a fortress to a bastion. These would be examples of degrees of external strongholds.

In terms of internal strongholds, the simplest “strongly held” position is an opinion. Everyone knows those who have “strongly held opinions.” Such persons are usually cryptically referred to as “opinionated” (but certainly not you or I, right?).

An opinion, when reinforced, can actually move in two directions, one negative and one positive. On the negative side, a strongly held opinion made stronger becomes a prejudice. On the positive side, a strongly held opinion made stronger becomes a principle. When either prejudices or principles become concretized, they turn into doctrines. Doctrines become manifestos. Manifestos become dogmas. People go to war over such things as doctrines, manifestos, and dogmas.

It is in the internal struggle that the degrees of spiritual strongholds manifest themselves: from opinions to prejudices/principles to doctrines to manifestos to dogmas. And it is in these arenas of the mind—through ideas (of ideologues and despots)—that a great deal of mischief has been perpetrated over the centuries.

So what would happen to a mind that is submitted to God, in the context of “taking every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ?” How many poorly-made decisions could have been avoided had one the presence of mind to do that? How much suffering could have been eliminated? How many unknown and untried solutions to problems could have been discovered if one were to ask seriously, “Hey, Lord, what do you think about this?”

We are told to love God with “our whole mind” as well as with our whole heart. What do lovers do but give themselves to the beloved? To love God with our mind is to give Him our minds. We have heard commitments to God expressed in terms of “giving Him one’s heart.” One would assume, perhaps, that if one gives God one’s heart, then the mind will naturally follow, or, put another way, some would think it impossible to give one’s “heart” without one’s mind coming along for the ride. But, as we all know, it’s possible to give God our “hearts” without giving Him our heads. Consider, for example, devout 19th century slave-holding Christians who did not seem to understand or comprehend that “in Christ…there is no bond (slave) or free.” Incidentally, Abraham Lincoln once said, “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.” In my opinion, this would be an example of one who actually contemplated what the Almighty thinks about what one thinks.

“(Taking) every thought captive until it acknowledges the Lordship of Christ” is the way and means to overcome the darkness and the world, the way and means to “pull down the strongholds.” Love God with your mind. Give Him your mind.

  
 

 

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