The Benefits of a Life of the Mind: 5. Engage in Spiritual Warfare

Christians are engaged in a spiritual war. This is not a war of bombs and bullets, but of ideas. Since the intellect is the realm of ideas, the spiritual war is, to a large extent, a war that wages on the battleground of the intellect. There is a spiritual clash of ideas happening all around us. False ideas make up the arsenal of the enemy, and to fight back, Christians have been armed with the truth. We attack false ideas by exposing them to the light of reason and Scripture. So, if you want to be well-trained spiritual soldier on the battleground of the intellect, you’ll need to be proficient in the use of your intellectual weaponry. Christians today find themselves in the middle of a global spiritual war; we’re caught in the crossfire of ideas that in one way or another come straight from hell. This is not mystical or invisible war being fought in some dimension inaccessible to our sight; the battles in this war are being fought right before our eyes, every day in the places we are most familiar with; in our homes, in our schools, in our churches, in our government, in our own minds. In this hour, the church needs soldiers well-equipped to engage in this war of ideas, intellects that are dedicated to Christ and skilled in the art of spiritual battle, who can effectively wield the weapon of truth to demolish intellectual strongholds, to destroy arguments, and to cast down every opinion raised against the knowledge of God.