Mike's musings

Spiritual Warfare: a liberal looking inwards

I had to look up the term "Spiritual warfare" when the suggestion came up that we should do a synchroblog: you'll find a useful definition on Wikipedia. Well, it was useful for me, at least, to the extent that it told me that it's not a concept that I'm very happy with: certainly not very familiar with.

The aspect of spiritual warfare with which I had some passing knowledge was more in the Orthodox tradition of being aware at all times of the internal battle to live to the glory of Christ revealed to us, and to battle against the impulses to apathy, non-doing and, sometimes, downright evil which are part of our shared humanity. This battle is one that Christ's salvation, and the continuous workings of the Holy Spirit through God's continuous creation. This is the looking inwards that I referred to above, and is an understanding of spiritual warfare with which I'm entirely happy.

Where I struggle is with the demonic side of things: evil spirits who inhabit our world. I'm not a big fan of angelology, and this dark side of seeing the spiritual world is caught up with that. I'm much happier with a view of evil which is seen more as embedded within us - not so much original sin in the traditional sense, but more due to the brokenness of human society: an inevitable consequence of our fallen nature.

I'm very aware that my experience, however, is very limited. I have, thank God, never experienced real evil first hand. I've witnessed evil deeds, and come across at least one person in whom evil must be understood to have been at work. I know that there are things out there that are beyond my understanding. I suspect that this may change over the years that come, and that evil may press harder on those of faith than without, but I've yet to see anything that convinced me that evil spirits were at work in people.

This is partly due to the fact that I've had lots of exposure to issues around mental health. I've seen little in my life which I've not been able to understand or at least relate to in terms of human brokenness and mental illness. Moo has worked in mental health for quite a lot of her mental health, she's read widely in issues surrounding it - and I've mirrored some of that reading - I have friends and family who have suffered - and still suffer - with mental health problems. I worry very much when issues of mental health, which can be addressed - if not "solved" completely - through counselling and various kinds of care - are blamed on evil spirits.

This raises two points. First of all, I'm not a fan of over-medicalising conditions which have a large emotional component, as many mental health conditions do. A holistic view of illness - particularly mental illness - is often vital. This can often include a spiritual element of treatment: and maybe treatment here is too medical a term to be using. What is more, it is important to treat the person, and not just their illness, and in order to do that, it is important to allow the person being treated to understand their illness in a way which makes sense to them, and which is contextualised to their situation.

This leads to a second point: that it may be that the understanding that people have is strongly influenced by their spiritual beliefs. They may, in fact, see their condition - and I'm now carefully avoiding talking solely about mental illness - as mainly revolving around spiritual elements.

And here is an example of where looking at postmodern understandings of experience can be very helpful. A realisation that every point of view has a validity, even though they may not all be equally valid, means that we can understand that imposing our views of reality and experience without any attempt to understand and contextualise the explanations and descriptions of the realities experienced - quite fully and honestly - by other people, can be damaging to them. It also falsifies any pretension to tolerance, understanding and empathy that we make. Generally, this is something that the medical profession is coming to terms with, particularly in mental health. We, too, as religious practitioners, need to be aware that realities are relative. Yes, there is an objective Truth that God has given us, but we cannot fully understand it - we are too broken - and we must be aware of that. As Christians, we believe that the revelation of Christ to us gives us a better view of that Truth - if we listen to it - but we cannot, and must not, pretend that we have all the answers.

I've roamed a bit off my thread, and there's one more point I want to make. This is that sometimes the historical understanding of the practice of spiritual warfare can be used to excuse practices which are un-Christian. Some of the exorcisms that take place in the name of spiritual warfare, for instance, are more about control and abuse of the powerless than can possibly be considered Christian. While we need to contextualise belief - as I mentioned above - love of God, of others and, yes, of ourselves ("love thy neighbour as thyself") must inform at all times our practice, and praxis of faith.

Synchroblog

Today is a "synchroblog" on the subject of spiritual warfare. If you've liked what you read here, or, more particularly, if you didn't, and you'd like to read some other opinions, please visit one of the other participating blogs:

• Phil Wyman - Pagans, Witches, and Spiritual Warfare
• John Smulo - Portraits of Spiritual Warfare
• Mike Crockett - Sufism: How the Inner Jihad relates to Christian Spiritual Warfare
• Steve Hayes - Thoughts on Spiritual Warfare
• Marieke Schwartz - Grace in War
• Cindy Harvey - Spiritual Warfare. (?)
• Jenelle D'Allesandro - The Militancy of Worship
• Mike Bursell - Spiritual Warfare: a liberal looking inwards
• David Fisher - Spiritual Warfare: Does it have to be loud and wacky?
• Brian Heasley - Something from Ibiza via Ireland
• Webb Kline - Webb Kline
• Sally Coleman - Sally Coleman
• Mike Murrow - Mike Murrow

Labels: evil, mental health, spirituality, synchroblog