Let me share two quotes with you.

The first is by C.S. Lewis who famously wrote: “There is no neutral ground in the universe: every square inch is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.”*

I used to think that statement was a bit extreme, but not any more. The more I understand the Bible, the more I pray, the more experience I accumulate, and the more I study and talk with others, the more I discover it to be true.

The second quote is by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck: “one of the characteristics of evil is its desire to confuse.”** Makes sense. After all, Jesus calls Satan the “father of lies” (John 8:44).

Just think about all of the confusion in our world. Are some things confusing? Sure. But all things? No. A lot of the confusion we experience about who we are and our identity, about how reality functions, and about how we are called to live, is because we have not taken God’s word seriously.

Whenever we endorse the chaos, Satan smiles.

In what is often called Jesus’ high priestly prayer, he says this to his heavenly Father: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). In that same prayer he indicates that he is praying for those who believe in him—not only in his own day but in generations to come. That means us! In other words, Jesus prayed that you and I would be sanctified in the truth of his Father’s word.

One of the characteristics of evil is its desire to confuse. Are some things confusing? Sure they are. That’s life. But when the confusion starts to take over, and when we become untethered to the rock-solid word of God, we are being led astray. 

Let’s trust God, grow in faith, and cooperate with Jesus’ own prayer: “Sanctify them in the truth…”

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Notes:

-*As quoted in: M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (New York: Touchstone, 1983), 83.
-**Ibid., 179.
-Bible quotes are from the ESV.