Who The Enemy Isn't

Who The Enemy Isn’t--March 20, 2017

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:10-12)

It’s a little like The Matrix, really.

Without spending a lot of time rehashing the plot of the 1999 Keanu Reeves sci-fi/kung-fu action movie, let’s say this.  The movie imagines a dystopian future in which computers control everybody and have us all plugged in, via machines, to a vast network (called “the Matrix”) in which we all think we are living out our normal, everyday lives…when actually we are all stuck in pods in the “real” world, which is a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by robots and artificially intelligent programs.

Have I lost you already?

The reason I want to take a trip into the world created by the Wachowskis in the Matrix movies is that it offers a parable for the Christian life.  In the movies, Keanu Reeves’ character Neo learns the truth and gets freed from the control of the machines.  But he has to learn that anyone he encounters while he’s plugged into the Matrix is a real person, out there somewhere in one of the pods somewhere in the real world.  But until they realize that truth, everybody else is a part of the system, and everybody else can be manipulated by the machines to try and stop Neo and his band of freedom-fighters.  That means recognizing that everybody they meet while they are “plugged in” is caught up in the illusion of the Matrix, but is not the real enemy.  The real enemy is the machine-fabricated illusion of the Matrix itself, and their whole system that keeps human beings trapped inside it.

In all the many ways that the movie is like any other shoot-‘em-up action movie, that one difference is illuminating: it’s recognizing who the enemy isn’t as well as who the enemy is.  And at least at some level, the other freedom fighters in the movie come to see that other people are not the enemy—they are waiting to be freed from the real enemy.

As fantastical and outlandish as all of this science-fiction movie’s premise is, that is an important dose of realism for Christians:  other people are not our enemies.  There are times we may well need to take stands, as disciples of Jesus have taken stands before—against slavery, against Hitler and fascism (as well as the complacent state-churches of that era that turned a blind eye to the horrors of Nazism and fascism), against human trafficking, against greed and hypocrisy.  And there will be times we need to take stands for things—the protection of the vulnerable, the care of the poor, the needs of the hungry or the stranger or the marginalized, and the preservation and preciousness of life, among them.  But we can never forget that other people are not “enemies” to be squashed.  There are forces of evil out there, but they enslave and entrap us into their service—we are not to hate the people.  And that is the key to the kind of victory Jesus has won already.

Dr. King used to say that the goal of using nonviolent resistance as a means for making change was that it not only intended to free the oppressed, but that it also freed the oppressor from the spirit-distorting posture of being oppressors.  King’s approach was to avoid demonizing anyone, while still being crystal clear about what kinds of changes needed to happen.

That, I think, is a piece we are so often missing in our day.  It is all too easy for Christians to demonize others—to make other people themselves into the “enemy” rather than seeing others as people beloved of God who may be caught up in systems they do not understand and cannot see.  Evil is real, yes, but it holds us hostage and makes us complicit in it like kidnap victims with Stockholm syndrome sympathizing with their captors.  Evil is out there, but we are not doing the work of Christ if we think that gives us license to hate other people. 

Paul never forgets that.  He reminds us that our conflict is not against “enemies of blood and flesh”—that is, other people.  The forces of evil are real, and those forces have their hooks into all of us.  But that never gives me the freedom or right to hate someone else, or to lump “those people” together as “the enemy.” Our goal, our calling, is for everyone—yes, every last one of us—to be freed from the pods that had kept us trapped.  Let the demons be the demons, and not make anybody else to be the scapegoat. If other caught up in the systems and powers of the day are rotten to us, we will rise above their rottenness--we will not play by their rules.  That is the power and freedom of the followers of Jesus. The directive here in Ephesians is to quit thinking that you and I are supposed to be doing the fighting; it is Christ who has already won the victory in the cross and resurrection.

Today's call, then, is to refuse to demonize other people or forget that even the people most strongly opposed to God are still beloved of God. 

Lord God, strengthen us in the fight against all the forces that oppose your rule of love, but help us, too, to see clearly how each and all of us are in need of rescue from those forces, too, even when we are complicit with them.