Who is the Enemy?

With so much combative clatter overhead in an election year and being disillusioned by ones of would-be virtue getting caught into the web of justifications and attacks, we sometimes have to ask ourselves: “Who really is the enemy?”

“We are brothers…” Deep down Abram(ham) and Lot embraced this. But they realized they were having a difficulty…it is with each other! Looking back, Lot had left his homeland next to Abram without even the call of God to do so. With Abram he had relocated, faced a famine, endured risks in Egypt. Together they had worshiped God. Thoroughly bonded, Abram had expressed “…we are brothers” (Gen 13:6).

Because of inner tension arising between themselves and their people, something must be done. In light of the fact that they were brothers, they would both need to cooperate to preserve the priority of their relationship. Wisely this meant separation in order to keep honoring one another. They would still defend each other as Abram did later. In recollection, Gordon MacDonald has said that separation is better than hatred. These two brethren believed this to be so.

But there was another driving force toward a unified blessing between them. Threat.”The Canaanites and Perizzites were also living in the land” (Gen 13:7). How could they possibly have a front before the REAL enemy when they were at odds with each other? Inward rotting while enemies loomed made it expedient to begin solving the inner conflict.

“Judgment begins in the house of God.” “A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand.” Do we see the “Canaanites and Perizzites”?

We as His people want to sincerely exemplify a standard for the world hungering more than ever to see and hear “we are brothers/sisters” wherever our part can zealously find the necessary means of resolution. There is too much at stake right now to spend our lives in battle, but never with the real enemy.

We can certainly understand why a crowd would respond when seeing miraculous healings of every kind (Mt 15:31). They put all the honor on Jesus; they were “ascribing honor to Him, acknowledging Him as to His acts and His glory because Jesus’ innate glory was brought to light.”

But does it take long until we try to reproduce or put into a jar of our own such a magnificent moment or experience?

For some reason, this puts in mind the finger-finger coordination test done in school in my era which involved taking both arms, sweeping them around full circle until they were in front of us. With eyes closed we were bringing them together hopefully meeting one index fingertip squarely on the index of the opposite hand. We landed! But what happens with this landing? We close the circle and conclude this is God and His current presence and work. It is now enclosed in our grasp, our church, our movement. It’s been apprehended, comprehended, summed up. It boils down to a thing of control…with us at the center.

Some years ago, M Robert Mulholland wrote an article about DECENTERING as God’s movements continually bring His center to another place while we assume our structures have Him right at the middle. It is ourselves at the middle; He has moved! “The God who had become the maintainer and sustainer of our status quo…is suddenly eclipsed by the troubling, disturbing, uncontrolled God who decenters our life by coming to us from the margins and beyond to call us to an often unimagined center…God will encounter us in ever more marginalized ways until we …learn to live comfortably in the ever moving center of God’s presence and action in our world.”

So it seems our fingertips that try to find their complementary partner do best to remain in suspension, not enclosing or confining Him into a box. As Jesus’ Disciples realized the “over and above” of Jesus’ acts in the collection of excess fragments from the miraculous feeding (Mt 15:37), so His ways go “exceedingly above all we ask or think” (Eph 3:20). If we give Him the freedom of ever moving, it sounds like we can come into the universe’s room of “comprehending…the depth” (vs 18), “dimensions and sphere of activities of God’s counsels and Christ’s love that occupies that sphere.”

And what will happen when we live in the midst of these exceeding dimensions, rather than attempting to surround them? “To Him be glory in the Church…” (Eph 3:21), “glorifying the God of Israel” (Mt 15:31) at “the revelation and manifestation of all He has and does…”

Threat is actually a very relevant term depending upon how alert we are choosing to be in our world right now. If we think of how we are wired, listening and responding becomes much more acute when threat is attached: from an exasperated parent to gain a response of obedience, to a boss’ ultimatum to gain a response of increased production, to a fed-up spouse to gain a response of changing an addiction…but realistically we move onto the sheer terror realm coming into our ears of those who will not reason with us in spite of any response we would give.
In an earlier dream world, a lot of us thought we should have the right to live without threat, and when we detected the slightest one being verbalized toward us, we would consider law enforcement. It is now more evident than ever that our lives stand underneath a growing statement of Threat?
Are we slowly becoming defined as a people of the Threat? Were we made to be a people only responsive when threat is involved? Should we respond to threat? We realize we cannot even lift up a valid expression of the Bible without acknowledging each Bible writer was moved by God to warn and even at times threaten. If we don’t want to be a people of the Threat, what type of person must we be? Or is there even an alternative?
The power to liberate is grace. Are we a people of understanding grace, a people of grace? Even if seems just a crawl space of freedom to exercise it in this violent world, it is the way of grace, learning grace. “It is good for the heart to grow strong on grace… (Heb 13:9),” “we are not under law, but under grace (Rom 6:4),” “[the Gospel] has also been bearing fruit and growing among you from the first day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth (Col 1:6).”
What does understanding grace teach me? Grace teaches me that I have a freedom in my response to threat, a freedom only I can exercise for myself. No one can take that away unless I let them. Grace teaches me that the Son has honored me and called me into the same relationship He had with the Father: John 15:10 “If you obey my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commandments and remain in His love.” Grace teaches me that it is my privilege to obey my Father because I love Him, and that coercion is not His ideal for getting loving obedience from me. Grace teaches me that there is no more earning His approval in Jesus, even though there is great effort.
So, if Threat inevitably becomes a shadow over our times to bend us into being Its people, can we now make the decision to let our hearts grow strong on grace (Heb 13:9)? If things become more violent than any of us desire, can we determine to be a people of grace?
“I should hear that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind, by contending side by side for the faith of the gospel, 1:28 and by not being intimidated in any way by your opponents. This is a sign of their destruction, but of your salvation – a sign which is from God.” (Phil 1:28)