A Christian speaks out

The spiritual is real. Satan is real.

    "At least 51% of us see the train wreck caused by Trump’s audacious lies, and we ask how otherwise seemingly good and reasonable people cannot see through them."

         John Coster

Today's Guest Post author shares a Christian perspective on politics. He writes today about truth, deception, Donald Trump, and Satan. He says that to understand this historical moment we need to recognize that there are spiritual forces at work.

  

Coster

This blog is secular and amoral in its orientation. It has attempted to look squarely at political behaviors that are dishonest, deceptive, cruel, and blatantly immoral, and then I describe whether they are on-brand or not, and whether they worked to solidify political support. That perspective helped me observe that Trump plays the narrative role of "bad guy," and it has worked for him. It is a feature, not a bug. His base loves it. He kicks ass. He doesn't turn the other cheek. He breaks rules to win. His supporters love that he wins

John Coster brings a different perspective today, one based in faith and spirituality. He writes that one of those spiritual forces shaping world events is a powerful, invisible, immortal, being named Satan, whose primary tool is deception. We are his targets. Coster writes that the spiritual dimension exists simultaneously with the temporal world, and the division between those worlds is more permeable than most people understand. Coster told me he doesn’t consider himself a mystic, but he has not discounted many of his life experiences as mystical. 

 

Coster studies Theology and Society at Regent College while continuing his career managing multimillion dollar real estate programs in the tech sector.  

Guest Post by John Coster

In normal times, discussions about Truth have been the stuff of college philosophy classes. That is no longer the case as the nature of Truth is being redefined before our eyes. Many are asking how deception has so quickly become the main feature of our time, ripping apart families and fragmenting society and resulting in the loss of countless lives. What perverse motivation drives those who traffic in deceit? Anyone can now create and propagate lies that go viral and suck in the vulnerable. No assertion is too outrageous to be disbelieved. Trust is the foundation of any functioning human social structure and it is clearly in a free-fall.

As a secular political blog, the regular writers here view this phenomenon through lenses of social and behavioral sciences, looking for historical patterns and human reasoning to figure out where we are in this historical moment. But what about the spiritual? The comments here often range from being dismissive to being hostile toward religion. Empiricists see the spiritual realm as not real, so not worth considering. I believe that perspective is limiting and the mystical offers a more complete explanation.

Following the teachings of Jesus Christ, I rely on the facts of his life and his teaching including claims about himself as Deity. Christian thinkers like Francis Collins, Tim Keller, Tom Wright and Dallas Willard do a credible job of synthesizing spirituality and reason; that the spiritual and physical worlds make the most sense when they are seen together. Check them out.

I believe that the historical Christian view of the unseen holds part of the secret to the chaos we see around us. What I describe is not an allegory or something like poetry. I (and a few billion others throughout history) believe the unseen is more real and powerful than the seen. My goal is not to convince but to share an understanding that may resonate and possibly be a catalyst for sincere fellow Truth-seekers.

The three main monotheistic religions of the world are Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Despite their differences, they all believe in one God, who is the all-knowing, powerful, good, loving, truthful, and the creator of everything. The other force that all three recognize is a sentient being known in the west as the devil. According to Scripture he is the embodiment of evil, but his most powerful and destructive skill is as the master of deceit. His other names appropriately include The Deceiver and the Father of Lies. If you think about it, deceit almost always precedes some kind of death, usually physical, but it can include emotional, relational, or financial.

At least 51% of us see the train wreck caused by Trump’s audacious lies, and we ask how otherwise seemingly good and reasonable people cannot see through them. But think about deception historically: Big tobacco, Nazis and Jews, Hutus and Tutsis, Catholics, and Protestants (read Thirty-Years War), Sunnis and Shia, Confederate and Union, refugees, and "coyotes." Add to that every destructive habit: gambling, substance abuse, sexual abuse, binging of all kinds, and thoughts that lead to suicide. We call it self-deceit but at its core, rationalization comes from deceptive thinking. Therapies, policies, and laws are good and helpful to be sure, but they are insufficient to cut root cause of deceit.

The Christian view of the devil is not a cartoon character with horns and pitchfork or from The Exorcist. Most of the damage he does is through people and he is extremely effective. He has been deceiving and destroying humans for millennia and we are no match for his cunning on our own. But we who are followers of Jesus are not on our own, and we can have hope and peace in the midst of chaos.

Christians of all stripes believe that what makes all humans unique and sacred is that we are made in God’s image. It is not just metaphorical. It is why the devil hates us so much and seeks to destroy us. As God’s spiritual offspring, we are both influenced and influential in the unseen world for good or evil. It makes us the perfect vehicles to do the devil’s destructive work. All he needs to do is deceive us. One of his best deceptions of course is to convince us that he does not exist.