Satan's
Indirect Strategies
We have begun to focus on the indirect assaults of Satan, those assaults
where Satan attacks the human race indirectly through circumstances, through
individuals, or through systems of thought that dominate human
history—religious systems, philosophical systems, any kind of system that allows
man to think that somehow he can find meaning, significance and happiness apart
from complete orientation to the authority of God and His grace and His Word.
All thought is either going to be grounded on the Word of God or it is going to
be grounded on some autonomous ultimate reference point, usually within the
creation itself. This is why it is called demonic. It is because it partakes of
the same fundamental destructive thought forms that characterise the thinking
of Satan. So this include all world religions other than Christianity; it
includes all forms of Christianity other than biblical grace-oriented
Christianity; and so it is important to understand how the Bible teaches us to
think, and what the Bible teaches us about reality.
These thought systems seem so comfortable to us because there is an
affinity between them and our sin nature. So often, depending on the culture we
come out of, we are inculcated in the planks of that thought system from the
time we come out of the cradle. The default position of our sin nature always
goes back to that because that is our comfort zone. So often we fail to
recognise those things because only by the Word of God can we really get far
enough out from who we are and our own culture to be able to have an honest
objective critique of what we are thinking. That is hard for a lot of people
and some people never can do that.
Biblical thinking starts off with a creator God, a Triune creator God,
not just any god or some being that is out there that is ill-defined, not just
some unmoved mover, some prime mover, or whatever philosophy may come up with;
but a God who is totally, radically distinct from everything else, a creator
God who is the ultimate reference point for everything but stands totally apart
from everything that is in creation. He has created a finite universe and in
that universe He creates matter and energy, life, vegetation, animals, and he
creates man. When he creates man, God as a creator defines who man is. You don’t
discover who man is by going to sociology. You may go to sociology and discover
some truths, lower case, but how do you know that next week you won’t discover
some truth that changes your view of today? You don’t, unless you have some
ultimate reference point, which is God. So God defines who man is, and this is
also true for psychology. Who is man in terms of his soul? The Bible claims to
be the sole authoritative source of information about the soul. All of the
secular psychologists come along and on the basis of empiricism seek to speak
authoritatively about that which God claims to have exclusive authority. So
they come up with all of this guessing and imaginative reasoning which the
Bible refers to as simple vanity to tell us who man is. This is simply bled
into our culture. We are such a psychologised culture.
God says He is the one who tells us who we are and what our problem is.
He tells us what pour purpose is: that man is distinct from all other living
creatures. He is totally different because he is created in the image of God.
He has certain social institutions that are established by God so that in
society with other people there can be order and achievement. He defines man as
a social creature and so He makes man male and female. He establishes marriage,
family, and later on after the fall he establishes human government so that man
is responsible for governing himself and punishing those who violate the rules
and the laws of society. So we can go to the Scriptures and learn things that
relate to law and politics, not that the Mosaic Law is to be something as our
Constitution but that as a perfect law it is a model for any other nation. If
we want genuine freedom then a pattern can be developed from looking at the
Mosaic Law.
The Bible says we are all sinners, and the only hope is the Word of God
and being transformed by the renewing of our minds. So the biblical system is
that God speaks to everything—ethics, aesthetics, that God is the original
creator of beauty. We can’t understand beauty unless we start with God, or
music, because music was in God’s thinking long before it was ever voiced by
the angels. Truth is what resides in God; He establishes its reality. God is
truth; He defines reality. He speaks to things He creates, or else He doesn’t
speak to anything He creates. Those are the only two options. So it is God who
defines everything. But Satan comes along and wants to redefine, and so he
works within the thinking of human culture.
Ultimately, because we reject any sort of external absolute which peaks
absolute truth to everything in creation, we will always end up in relativistic
thinking. Man is born with a magnet in his make-up called the sin nature. He is
born with this orientation to reject an absolute authority because the centre
of his little universe from the day he was born is himself. That is true for
every single sin nature, and the process of growing as a believer is to get
beyond that. Satan has various ways in which he inculcates us in his kind of
thinking, and because the sin nature is attracted to it, because it is the way
your parents thought, your teachers thought, and your friends thought, you just
think it is common sense. A lot of times “common sense” is not common sense, it
is just what works within that culture. What works within that culture is what
has affinity to the autonomous thought forms within that culture; it just seems
so natural. But what seems to normal and right to you maybe abnormal, strange
and downright suicidal to somebody living in another culture because they have
totally different influences and presuppositions than you do. As a Christian
you really set yourself over against everybody else; that is why the world is
hostile to Christians. This is why religion is truly hostile to the Bible. Why is
it that no one can pick on anything but everybody can pick on Christianity? It
always boils down to that, where Christianity is everybody’s favourite whipping
boy but you can’t say anything negative about anybody else. Why? Because
Christianity is absolute truth. And at the core of man’s being there is this
antagonism to truth because in arrogance man wants to be the ultimate definer
of everything.
The bottom line is that we have to do what the Scripture says. Romans
12:2 NASB “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed
by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is,
that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” We are born conformed to the
world; we grow up being conformed to the world; that is our normal modus
operandi. But once we become saved we have to be transformed, and that engages
our volition. We have to think, we have to think about the elements in our
thinking and we have to think about the blueprint of our thinking. Both have to
change because if we change the elements of our thinking without changing the
blueprint of our thinking we are still going to be thinking biblical thoughts
but within the framework of pagan concepts. So we have to be transformed by the
renovation of our minds. That is why we exist: to overhaul our thinking. It is
not easy, and not everybody wants that challenge. Every generation has to learn
on its own; every generation has to relearn these lessons; every generation of
believers has to decide whether doctrine is going to be first or whether self
is going to be first. So are we going to be dominated by the world or are we
going to be dominated by Scripture? The only source of freedom is going to be
the Word of God. When Jesus confronted the Pharisees they claimed that they were
free but they weren’t. Every one of us is enslaved three ways. We are a slave
to Satan’s dominion; we are all born under Satan’s authority. We are slaves to
our own sin nature and we are slaves to the cosmic system around us that shakes
our thinking. It is only when we can break those shackles—first at the cross
when we transfer from the domain of Satan to the authority of Christ, and then
second by the ongoing study of the Word of God that transforms our
thinking—that we can have real freedom. This is why Jesus said: “You shall know
the truth and the truth shall make you free.” By truth he meant God, the
originator of truth, as over against everything in His creation. Only by
orienting to His absolute truth is there real, genuine freedom.