“You actually believe in a literal devil,” the professor laughed. “Does he wear a red suit and sometimes carry a pitchfork, or is he a talking snake?” Unless we expect to protect our children and grandchildren from the real world for the rest of their lives, we can pretty much count on such ridicule coming their way if they let others know that they are Christ-followers. This episode looks at how we might prepare the rising generation to respond confidently to such attacks and examines some characteristics of the Evil One that help us make sense of the origin and moral impact in our world of Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God.
This series has challenged men to step up and stop destructive ideas that are shaping much of our culture from taking our loved ones captive, ravaging their faith, and ruining their lives. The old adage is true: Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. This battlefield of the mind is described by Paul, who wrote, We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Christian men, as leaders of their families and churches, must both protect and equip the rising generation—to not be OF the world, i.e. shaped by the world, but to be IN the world, i.e. shaping their corner of the world Christ claims as his own. Let’s review.
We saw that in Romans 12:2, God gives us the first step in offering ourselves to him in gratefulness for his grace: DO NOT BE CORRUPTED BY THE FALSE WORLDVIEWS IN YOUR CULTURE. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. We noted that the wrong way to avoid being conformed to the ideas and values of this world is to think that “this world” refers to God’s creation and the human culture that Adam and his descendants were commissioned to shape. Rather this world refers to the wrong cultural values of our age, which Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:6-7 are doomed to pass away in contrast to the wisdom that God decreed before the ages. God’s age-old wisdom begins in Genesis 1:1, so we have studied the biblical worldview and how it is contradicted by strands in our culture by working through Genesis 1:1-3:7.
A. God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). This truth answers the worldview question of OUR ORIGIN. Where did we come from? Starting with our own living rooms, we noted that the most profound and obvious observation humans can make about the material world is that if we see order, their had to be an orderer. As the earth rotates on its axis once a day, and each year the earth completes its orbit of the sun in 365 days, five hours, fifty-nine minutes, and sixteen seconds, all humans see that this world follows the design of its creator every single day. We asked, “Why do so many intelligent people fail to see what a four-year-old who sees a sandcastle on the beach understands—that the castle is not a result of billions of years of sand randomly being washed up on the beach; it was created? Only an extremely powerful force could lead intelligent humans to deny the reality that every example of order in this world teaches: order can ONLY come from an orderer. That force is SIN, which causes mankind to suppress the truth about God and our accountability to him.
B. God created humans to exercise dominion over the earth (Gen 1:2-31). This truth answers the worldview question of LIFE’S MEANING. Why am I here? Do I have a purpose that matters? God went to a lot of trouble to instill in humans an understanding that our calling is to exercise dominion over the culture. God, himself, first models exercising dominion over the stuff of creation, filling and forming what was without form and void. Then, his method of creation was to first create realms and then create those assigned to “rule” those realms. So, by the time God assigns us to exercise dominion over earth as his image-bearers, this concept is clear. When we help the rising generation embrace this cultural mandate, we build the foundation for seeing their uniqueness, having been designed for this cultural contribution of “good works” before the foundation of the world (Eph 2:10).
C. Everything that God made was VERY GOOD (Gen 1:31). The profound goodness of God’s creation—that it is a mirror of his glory—is foundational for understanding the worldview questions of OUR DESTINY. Where is history going? The answer is towards restoration. Sin has corrupted our understanding of this truth at two points. We blame God for the evils that occur in life rather than our race’s rebellion, when it is our race’s rebellion against God’s rule that caused our kingdom, this physical world, to rebel against us resulting in all the brokenness and pain of our physical world. The second way the truth that God’s creation is VERY GOOD is lost is that sin makes us think God wants to deny us the pleasures this world offers. The truth is that God wants all humans to ENJOY—delicious food, refreshing drink, pleasant fragrances, awe-inspiring building projects, toe-curling married sex, heart-pounding drama, enthralling music, captivating art, mind-boggling technology, spectacular flower gardens, crashing ocean waves, majestic mountains, dazzling sunsets. To enjoy God’s creation is to bring pleasure to God’s heart, just as an artist delights in seeing others enjoy his painting.
D. Human beings have inestimable worth and dignity because they are created to be God’s image-bearers. This truth answers the worldview questions about OUR IDENTITY. Who am I? What does it mean to be human? Historically, it is this biblical view of human dignity that has led to Western ethical beliefs about human rights, equality, justice, the supremacy of love. Ironically, although most secular people hold to these ethical values, to do so is inconsistent because secularism can provide no basis for them. Materialism, (also called naturalism), says that the physical world of matter and energy is all that exists. Therefore, love, hate, beauty, virtues like courage and loyalty are just chemical reactions. Good and evil and right and wrong do not exist since they are neither matter nor energy. But empirical evidence proves that humans do experience a sense of right and wrong. We know Hitler was evil. But if we are nothing more than blobs of protoplasm, what is wrong with German chunks of DNA strands gassing Jewish chunks of DNA strands? The secular materialist view has no answer. We must help our teens see that the biblical explanation of the origin of mankind’s spiritual nature, including his desire for meaning and awareness of right and wrong, makes far more sense.
E. Male and female are created differently to complete one another (Gen 2:5-25). This truth further answers worldview questions about OUR IDENTITY. What does it mean to be the man I was designed to be? What does it look like to be the fulfilled woman I was created to be? Gender differences are not a social construct; the sciences of biology, anatomy, genetics, sociology, and history prove otherwise. In fact, the DIFFERENCES that God created into men and women are so important that God takes almost the whole second chapter of Genesis 2 to emphasize the distinction by the way he went about creating Adam and Eve so differently.
F. Marriage between one man and one woman is the foundational institution of society and best environment in which to raise children. This truth answers worldview questions about HUMAN FLOURISHING. What does human flourishing look like? How are society’s institutions to cause humans to thrive? We observed that God designed marriage to provide human companionship—the deep oneness of being naked, soul and body but still unconditionally loved, requiring therefore the vow to love each other unconditionally, upon which the security for vulnerability is built. We observed that marriage is the greenhouse where sexual passion grows best, that marriage success is related to overcoming the me-first orientation of sin, and that the love making of husband and wife being the context for creating children sends the message, verified by overwhelming data, that a child needs a home with both a mother and father who love each other.
G. The moral cancer of human sin has corrupted every human heart (Gen 3:1-7). This truth answers the worldview questions about MORALITY. What is wrong with the world and how do we fix it? Where did evil come from? No other worldview gives an answer to these questions that matches reality the way the biblical answer does. The biblical teaching about sin is that 1) it shatters the shalom—the harmony within the cosmos—man’s relationship with himself, with God, with others, and with creation, 2) sin corrupts our heart attitudes, misshaping our sexuality, relationships with others, worship, and the way we socialize, 3) it corrupts institutions as sinful humans intersect with other sinful humans building the institutions of society, 4) sin corrupts human thinking, causing us to cling to refuted arguments, and resist letting go of disproved reasoning.
Today, we complete this series on Christian worldview with greater clarity about what is wrong with the world. Paul explained this Christian worldview principle, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12). Let’s look at Satan’s temptation of Eve from the perspective of Christian worldview and then zoom in for a close-up of his strategy to defeat Eve. So, how might we respond to the derisive accusation, “You actually believe in a literal devil?” Perhaps this way:
- I believe Satan is real, if that is what you are asking. May I ask you a question?
- Okay.
- Who do you think Jesus was?
- Well, I don’t believe he was the Son of God, but he was unquestionably a great religious teacher.
- Did you know that of all the figures in the Bible, Jesus spoke the most about the devil being a real being—in fact over twenty-times?
- Oh, I didn’t know that.
- May I ask, “What do you think about good and evil? Do you think evil is real?”
- Yes. I was a history major. You can’t look at what Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot did to people, not to mention Islamic fundamentalists, and not believe in evil.
- Any thoughts about the origin of such evil?
- Not really.
- The biblical view is that God created two categories of beings, spirit beings called angels, and human beings—both categories of beings with the freedom of will to choose good or evil. Satan is one of the spirit beings who chose evil and then tried to seduce the first humans into evil.
- Okay—but a talking snake? Come on!
- Talking creatures are not as far-fetched as you might think. Ever heard of cockatiels or parrots?
- Yeah, but this was a talking snake!
- A talking serpent. Whatever this creature looked like, originally, the Bible says it was turned into a snake. One more quick question, if you don’t mind.
- Okay. Shoot.
- Have you ever been around a situation where Satan-worship was said to be going on?
- I knew a guy in college who claimed to be a Satan worshipper. He was weird and dark. I’ve heard enough about Satanic rituals to stay away from them.
- I have too. And that is another reason I believe Satan is real.
Satan’s Strategy To Attack Eve
In the book, The Art of War, written twenty-six hundred years ago by Chinese General Sun Tzu, he observed: If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. Here is our enemy.
The serpent said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate (Gen 3:2-6).
1. Satan plants doubts in Eve’s mind about God’s goodness. The inference in Satan’s opening question to Eve, “Did God actually say you can’t eat any of the luscious fruit from any of the garden trees,” is that making luscious fruit for them and then making a rule against eating it is just the kind of thing God might do. In fact, the wording suggests a rumor floating around the garden, implying that others in the garden knew something she didn’t know about God—He made all these pleasures for us just so he could deny them to us. Satan is saying, “God is like a cruel parent who invites his three-year-old daughter to go picking lush juicy strawberries but tells her she can’t eat a single one.” “God is the kind of God who would lead you on a long journey through a dry, sweltering desert reaching an oasis with a waterfall in late afternoon, and restricting you from having a single drop!” Temptation begins with doubting God’s character of goodness.
2. Satan puts Eve’s focus on God’s restriction instead of his blessings. By deliberately misquoting God, Satan causes Eve to focus on God’s one restriction. She answers God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” God’s moral law is given to restrict us from going down destructive paths. God’s Law is LIFE. Think of the Ten Commandments—God restricts us saying, “Don’t have other gods because if we build our life around any other god, not only will the idol eventually fail us, it will consume us, making us its slaves. Learning to honor our parents’ authority trains a child into self-mastery and respect for authority, both of which will bring him success all through life. Restricting sex to marriage in the seventh commandment trains us to learn that sexual arousal, which creates a demand for immediate gratification, must often be resisted. When such self-control is not learned, the damage done to spouses, children, and men’s own hearts is enormous. Restrictions are safety bars.
3. Satan directly attacks the truthfulness of God’s Word. Eve has just repeated God’s words that eating of the fruit would cause her to die. Satan directly attacks the truthfulness of God’s Word. You will not die. For thousands of years Satan’s strategy has been to try to convince humans that his revealed Word, The Bible, does NOT say what it says. This past week, I googled, “Transgenderism and the Bible.” Here are quotes from the first two articles that came up: This page seeks to serve as a brief overview of the Bible’s precedent for affirming the full inclusion of transgender, non-binary and other gender-expansive people in the full life of Christian community (Human Rights Campaign). The second article: If the Bible is our guide, then God’s design for gender is a gigantic rainbow of variation, not a black and white conformity with sex. (The Daily Beast). We need to help the rising generation understand that they will routinely face arguments that claim to be biblical, which deny what the Bible actually says. The most important principle of interpretation of Scripture is that Scripture interprets Scripture. God does not lie or speak out of both sides of his mouth. So, statements that seemingly contradict the rest of Scripture are almost always taken out of context. Satan has lots of re-interpreters of God’s Word.
4. Satan directly attacks God’s character, communicating that his restriction is based upon EVIL MOTIVES. “Eve, the real reason God has placed this restriction upon you is that he is selfishly unwilling to share his ‘God position’ with you.” For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Again, Satan attacks God’s character. He is selfish. If I were to be honest, I would have to say that nearly every time I get mad at God or turn a deaf ear to him, it is because I doubt his love for me. I doubt the purity of his motives. Satan argues that God refuses to share his “god-ness” with Eve. At the core of human sin is our desire to be autonomous—like God, answerable to no one. No restrictions. We also see that although Eve knew moral good (we're told that all of creation was VERY GOOD), she had never known moral evil. Perhaps she was curious about it. But we also know that there is a hidden part of humans that sometimes wants to do evil, just because it is evil. Forbidden fruit has a special allure. Affairs temporarily add a thrill because the sex is forbidden. While writing his Confessions Book 2 in his forties, Augustine looked back upon his now famous theft of pears, for the pure evil of it—when he didn’t even want the pears. He wrote, We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us…because it was forbidden. Satan knew that doing evil can have an allure just because it is evil. “Eve, you will get to know the forbidden—evil.”
Men, in closing out this series on worldview, I want to open my heart to you. In the 21st century, we are seeing many of the boys and girls from our homes, who have invited Christ into their lives, when they reach young adulthood, turn away from Christ or biblical teaching. Could this be linked to the enormous difficulty our kids are having today following the most foundational requirement of discipleship, “Do not be conformed to this world?” In a world of near universal devotion of teens to their cell phones, and unprecedented social media pressure to conform to ungodly strands of thinking in our culture, teens cannot resist this pressure on their own. But, I’m not sure anyone else can either. If we see our culture decaying, could it be that Christians are failing to stop decay as its salt. If we see blindness in our culture concerning gender and the institution of the family, might we be failing to be its light? If false ideas are shaping Western culture in an unprecedented way through the extreme, nearly dictatorial power of the social media, could it be that Christians, who inhabit every niche and cranny of the plantet are being silent, instead of spreading truth through our culture as leaven spreads through the dough? You and I were created for this moment in history. We are needed. It is time to heed the call of the High King, to come to his table in the round, and in the company of men, renew our passion to fulfill our mission--to seek the spread of Christ's kingdom righteousness over every sphere of his earth.
For Further Prayerful Thought
- What stood out to you about how we might equip the rising generation with confidence to respond to one belittling his belief in a real devil?
- Which of the 4 tactics followed by Satan to get Eve to rebel against God stands out to you?
- Which of the 4 tactics does Satan seem to have success with, in your life?
- What might God be calling YOU to do to help the rising generation not be squeezed into the world’s mold?
