Lately I have seen certain questions raised
concerning good and evil, truth and lies, life and death, and free will. While
I don’t plan on going into great detail on everything I have ever experienced with
such things, I will share a few of my thoughts.
Free will is often an issue for my
own mental self-conjecture, concerning who has it and how it works. On the face
of it, I’ve always thought of free will as the ability to choose to live my
life as I see fit. Beings such as angels and evil spirits, or demons if you
prefer, simply do what they were made to do and, in that manner of thinking, it
makes sense to say that they do not possess free will. However, having a deeper
understanding about the corrupt nature we all inherit from Adam, I know that
angels and evil spirits do not have the internal conflict we all know too well:
when we want to do one thing and end up doing another, through no fault of our
external circumstances. If we truly had the ability to choose to live our lives
as we see fit, then we would do exactly that, every single time without any
difficulty or regret, and I know that is not the case. In this sense, angels
and evil spirits, devoid of such an internal struggle, have free will, the
ability to do what they know to do, however confined it may be to the purpose
for which they were created. The only way I know of to rid ourselves of our
internal conflict is to submit ourselves to God. From my own experiences with
Him working in my life, I know that God never asks me to change and be someone
I don’t want to be, but rather that I allow His Spirit to bring the real me to
life and become the perfect version of myself.
Concerning good and evil, I know
that many people think that there is some sort of battle going on between God and
the Devil, and between angels and demons, but I’ve learned that this is false.
I’ve been taught and studied that the only thing that is against God is our own
corrupt way of thinking and feeling, what the Bible calls the carnal mind.
Concerning what the Bible says about the Devil and evil spirits, every account agrees
with the fact they are subject to God: what He says to do, they do, and what He
says they can’t do, they don’t. A lot of people have heard stories, of course,
about someone being tormented by some sort of evil spirit. The only way to be
untouchable is to be under the mantle of Christ. The Bible actually uses the
language of being “in” Christ, and it makes sense that a person living in
Christ can’t be haunted by demons because they are subject to God’s Spirit.
Some may have a problem wrapping their head around the truth that evil spirits
are subject to God because God is love, light, and life. Just remember that the
Lord Himself placed the tree of knowledge of good AND EVIL in the very Garden
of Eden at the beginning of the world. It has been the sinful actions of
mankind that has led to the wide spread of spiritual evil in the world.
The carnal mind is something else
entirely. First we should be clear; a mind is a way of thinking, consciously
and subconsciously, about everything we experience and do. The carnal mind is
what the Bible calls the corrupted, iniquitous way of thinking we inherited
from Adam which causes us to sin. It is because of sin that people die, according
to the Bible. The son of God came down to Earth, however, that we might have
life; he showed us by example and through his teachings how we can have the
mind of Christ, the way of thinking that leads us to life as well as all the
things that make a life worth living: love, joy, peace, boldness, wisdom, etc.
The language of the Bible can, at times, be
obscure, even self-contradictory, and requires personal time spent studying it
to decipher the truth of it. Specifically, when Jesus spoke of denying yourself,
picking up your cross, and following him, he was actually referring to this
matter of the mind of Christ: leaving the carnal mind, having instead the mind
of Christ, and allowing that mind to operate in you, producing the same kind of
life Jesus had. Other phrases found in the Bible such as “reckon yourself dead”
and “I die daily” may be hard to fully comprehend because it’s hard, understandably,
to take them literally. I myself like to think that the word “reckon,” in this
instance, means the same thing as the word recognize, and the “self” you need to
recognize as being dead is the version of you created by the carnal mind.
However, a new way of thinking is something that no one can simply completely
adopt anew just because they were able to recognize the truth once; it has to
be made a habit, which explains the need to do it on a daily basis. We need to
practice having our thoughts made subject unto God. That might sound
complicated or obscure, but the true reality of this behavior is not for the
physical brain of a person to understand, it is for the spiritual thinking. On
the surface it looks something like this: you have a thought, you know how you
would act on this thought, you know why you would act this way, you recognize
if this action will actually bring you closer to what you want, if it brings
you good or evil, if it would bring you good you do it, and if it would bring
you evil you choose to think and act differently. I know that it doesn’t always
seem so simple but it is, and when it happens you will feel a softness in your
spirit and a clarity in your thoughts.
The key to all of this is being subject to
God. If you can make that sole decision, the rest is much easier, even if being
diligently self-analytical is not one of your strengths. Pray for God to reveal
to you the parts of your heart where darkness resides, to open your mind’s eye
to the truth, and to establish you in the truth. Do this and God will give you
faith, the spiritual “substance” of a righteous life. Think of faith as energy
with which you can finally do all those things that the carnal mind said were
impossible and have the life God wants for you, a life full of love, joy,
peace, and success in every area.
That’s all I had for now, but I hope whoever reads
this will get something edifying out of it. God bless you!
