Welcome to the Faithful Resistance
What if the Armor of God is Actually Helpful?
Have you ever considered that if you lived in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692, you would have voted to convict someone of witchcraft?
Over a period of about 16 months, good and decent people, Christians, sent 19 of their friends and neighbors to their deaths, based on false testimony and a belief in spectral evidence.
It wasn’t the witches who believed in magic, it was everyone else.
No one went to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and brainwashed people, but in seeking to establish a safe community, the colony inadvertently created the perfect conditions for regular people to participate in horrible atrocities.
These conditions can also be manufactured.
In 1954, psychologist Jay Lifton traveled to Hong Kong and studied the process by which some American soldiers had been “brainwashed” (a term he found unhelpful) by the Chinese during the Korean War. He also learned the psychology behind how the Communist regime had broken down the Chinese people. His preferred term was “thought reform.”
It is a process by which our identity, autonomy, and critical thinking are broken down and replaced with submission. It is how decent people willingly make decisions to burn (or more likely, hang) their neighbors.
It’s conquest, not through physical violence, but through the mind.
We might say it’s a process that breaks down a person’s spirit.
With that in mind, reconsider the language Paul used long before any of this.
“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:11-12)
What if Paul was trying to explain the same thing that Lifton was with the only language he had? Our struggle is not against people but against processes, conditions, and ideas.
What if he was saying: “Swords and clubs are the least of our problems, we have to protect our minds.”
What if the way many of us were taught to understand the armor of God was the opposite of what Paul intended? What if the armor of God is a set of tools for resisting thought reform?
There are two questions that are asked of new members of the United Methodist Church that I’m not sure we ever talk about.
“Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?”
“Do accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?
Maybe the spiritual language frightens us. Maybe we’ve been turned off by the spiritual warfare movement of the late 20th century. Maybe we stopped believing in the power of evil or in the power of God.
Maybe we think that we are somehow immune to the effects of psychological warfare and spiritual abuse.
Regardless of the reasoning, we left out a core component of Christianity from our discipleship and Christian formation programs - resistance.
Paul was not an evangelist holding revivals all over southeastern Europe and Asia Minor like Billy Graham, he was the leader of a resistance movement. He was Victor Laszlo.
“Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.”
Over the next several weeks, I’m going to take a fresh look at the armor of God juxtaposed with the elements of thought reform proposed by Lifton and explore what it means to resist evil, injustice, and oppression. I hope you’ll join me!
Welcome to the Faithful Resistance.
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