Your Devil Is Too Small

I am finally back to taking Satan seriously.

Profound Christian thinkers of every age have had a deep appreciation for the opposition. They all have taken the Devil very seriously. In fact, they seem plagued by the notion that terrible demons are loose in the world. By contrast, profane eras like our own, in which rumors about the Devil are treated less seriously than reports about the Loch Ness monster, have not been times of deep conviction about anything spiritual: no great love for God; no great fervor to spread the gospel; no soul-stirring reflections on religious themes. Depth and demons may go hand in hand.

We live in a culture that has stopped believing in Satan. I am not aware of any self-professed Satan-Is-Dead theologians, but the title would fit most of our widely read religious scholars in this century. And all of us, whether we like it or not, are affected by the era in which we live.

Surely it is easier to stop believing in the Devil than to start up again. At least that has been my experience. In my freshman year in college I told a trusted Christian upperclassman that it didn’t make sense that the Devil would be real. He told me I was right, and that that was the only rational way to look at it. To me, that was the end of it. I had said it, my friend had confirmed it, therefore the Devil was not real. Once I had turned the corner, going back was very difficult.

A year or so later, I had an eerie encounter with a demon that was too real to deny, but too incongruous with my view of the world to accept. I was alone and suddenly felt that someone was staring at me. I turned to look. There was no one there—that I could see—and yet I knew that 12 feet away, at a very definite spot, a dark entity was glaring at me. Somehow I could tell that it hated me with a wild, pent-up, frustrated intensity. Trusting my eyes, I turned back around and thought, “How odd. There’s no one there.” Yet the awareness of the dark presence did not go away, and I became terrified. A few seconds later, I ran from the scene in a panic.

You might think that an experience like this would have given me reason to wonder: Maybe there is something to what the Bible says after all. But that is the problem. Once our minds are closed we cannot imagine that the Bible teaches anything else. I would have sworn that except for a talking snake and the Gadarene demoniac, demons never surface in Scripture. If the Bible does not care about them, why should I?

What The Devil Looks Like

What brought this to mind recently is Broadcast News, the Academy Award-nominated movie written, produced, and directed by James L. Brooks. One of the leads gives an amazing description of what the Devil would be like if he appeared as a human being. He will not have horns and a pointy tail. Instead, he’ll be “attractive, nice, and helpful.… But bit by little bit, he’ll lower our standards where they’re really important.”

These remarks are the theological centerpiece of the picture. The audience does not notice them as such because they come out of the mouth of a desperate lover. The speaker is Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), a sharp, multilingual reporter whose goal is to work his way up to weekend anchorman. But when he is given his one big chance, he fails—hilariously. Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) is his network producer, best friend, and inamorata. She too is fabulously talented, with an intense sense of journalistic ethics. Against her better judgment, Jane is attracted to Tom Grunick (William Hurt).

Tom is a present-day version of the Christian de Neuvillette character in Edmund Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac. He is warm, attractive, videogenic—but short on brains and fuzzy on integrity. And just as Christian needs Cyrano’s words when he stands beneath the balcony, Tom would be lost without the cues from others when he goes before the camera. Aaron delivers the movie’s message about the Devil when Jane confesses that she is falling in love with Tom. “Tom is the Devil.… He personifies everything you’ve been fighting against.”

But director Brooks does not really want us to think that Tom is Satan incarnate. He has given us a character too honest, humble, and human for that. Tom is an ambiguous figure: cursed in that Aaron is a better reporter drunk than he is sober, and blessed because the television industry couldn’t care less. His looks predestine him for the big time.

In his film, director Brooks is able to throw blunt theological stuff at the audience by putting it in the mouth of a panic-stricken lover. Desperate love can speak the straight truth to even the most secular audience. And what is this straight truth? There is something in life that lures us off the right path. We all feel it, and if we confess its influence, there is hope. We can clear ourselves and start fresh. But if not, we will find ourselves drawn to, and corrupted by, the very things our consciences rightly despise.

Why I Changed My Mind

Aaron’s Devil speech seemed to whiz right by most who saw the picture when I did, but it got me thinking. If I am finally back to taking the Devil seriously, it has been a long time in coming. My first big step was a graduate-level course in which I was assigned a paper on “Demons in the Bible.” The assignment forced me actually to look at the Bible. Satan turned out to be a much bigger deal that I had assumed.

This episode convinced me in an intellectual sort of way. I believed what the Bible said, but my ideas about my day-to-day experience came from my materialistic world view. I had no idea how the former might influence the latter. My one previous demonic encounter was not enough.

Nothing changed until I was able to go back into full-time parish ministry. Several incidents brought me partway: counseling sessions with practicing witches (this is northern California, you understand), and conversations with other Christians who had experiences similar to mine. But the clincher came four years ago. A man who was afflicted by unclean spirits came into my office for counseling. Actually, he thought his problem was that animals kept talking to him, telling him to do “terrible things.” I thought he was crazy, and quickly made up my mind to direct him to a social service agency.

But God had other plans. Right before he left, I prayed for the man. As I did, I felt lifted up by God—like I was in an elevator. I found myself inspired to pray words I had not planned to pray. I bound the demons in the name of Jesus Christ and ordered them out. That may seem rather old hat to some readers, but I can assure you, I knew nothing about binding demons. It is not a part of my typical Presbyterian prayer routine.

One other thing sealed this episode in my memory. The man came back a week later and said his problem was gone. I wish I could tell you that it was enough for me to encounter the realities the Bible talks about, and to discover what the Bible says about them in order to speak confidently to others about them. But it was not until God set someone else free through my prayers that I too was set free. Finally, the truth in my heart became truth on my lips.

How Our Devil Is Too Small

With these thoughts in the background, let me make some provisional observations. First, our Devil is too small if he is merely a personification. Many of us treat the Devil as though he were a symbol for evil rather than an active encourager of it. This is due in large measure to the fact that we have accepted the materialism of our culture even as we react against it. We accept its view of the universe, adding in God almost as an afterthought. Since this leaves us with no place for beings who are spiritual—like God, but opposed to God—like the world, we are forced to see Satan as a personification of the latter.

Second, our Devil is too small if he is consigned to long-ago times (the first century) and faraway places (the mission field). The Bible shows Satan to be capable of “roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it” (Job 1:7). And it says nothing to indicate that the centuries might wear him down. Thus we have to assume that he is as potent an adversary in America today as he was in Palestine hundreds of years ago.

Third, our Devil is too small if we assume that he leaves Christians alone. Christians are the ones he wants to trip up the most. We need to recall that Satan was able to tempt Jesus Christ. No doubt he can do that and more to Jesus’ followers. We have all heard pastors claim the opposite in a way that gives the impression they do not believe in the Devil but do not want to call anyone’s attention to it. Thus sermons end, “Yes, there is a ferocious reality some call the Devil, but others call by many other names. Whatever the Devil might be, he or it cannot harm those who have Jesus Christ as their Savior. So the question is really not a concern of ours.” It is true that the Devil cannot unsave a saved person, but he is able to unsanctify a sanctified one.

Fourth, our Devil is too small if we decide he is not capable of performing miracles and great feats of power. This would seem obvious, but some conservative theologians think otherwise. R. C. Sproul, for instance, contends that giving Satan the power to work signs and wonders attributes to another what belongs only to God.

Yet the Bible seems to teach that the Devil can deceive us by means of signs and wonders (2 Thess. 2:9, Deut. 13:1–2). One could assume that all creatures, including the Devil, are bound by natural law and therefore incapable of miracles. But that would rule out Peter’s miracle in Acts 3 and Paul’s in Acts 20. It is also far from obvious that supernatural beings are subject to natural patterns of cause and effect. Until we are shown that they are, we are better off being literalists with the relevant texts. For instance, the beast from out of the earth will perform “great and miraculous signs” and deceive the earth’s inhabitants (Rev. 13:13–14). That natural law is being set aside seems to be the plain intent of the passage.

This brings us to our next point. Our Devil is too small if we think we can recognize him without God’s help. I am grateful to Broadcast News for making this point so well. If we only look for the extreme cases of demonic affliction, we may miss the “attractive, nice, helpful” figure who suggests that integrity is not quite as important as we have been led to believe. I am sure I am taking this matter beyond what James L. Brooks intended. No doubt he thinks of the Devil as a poetic personification rather than the reality the Bible depicts. However, the amazing thing is not that Broadcast News did not go far enough; the amazing thing is that it brought up the Devil at all.

To do more requires that we admit our inability to recognize Satan on our own. We cannot, which is why we have to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 John 4:1). In the same way we have to test our inclinations and hunches, test our dreams and goals, test the advice of our Christian friends, test the ministries of the rich and famous, test the teachings of our seminaries and the sermons of our pastors. As Paul said, “Test everything” (1 Thess. 5:21).

Testing does not mean reasoning it out for ourselves according to some previously established criteria. It means taking it to God. It means asking God to reveal how something supports or opposes the lordship of Jesus Christ, how it confirms or questions the teachings of Scripture, how it deepens or vitiates a person’s prayer life, how it advances or retards the kingdom of God. On our own, we would have no way of knowing any of this. Positive and negative spiritual realities have to be spiritually discerned. This is what the gift of distinguishing spirits is for (1 Cor. 12:10). We need it because there actually are negative spirits that need to be distinguished from the positive ones.

Finally, our Devil is too small if we think we are smart enough, quick enough, strong enough, or holy enough to resist him on our own. He can scare us, advancing “like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). He can also beguile us, masquerading “as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). Thus, the life of faith is a struggle in which we are horribly outmatched. But God’s power gives us the victory. “The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). But we have to rely on God’s power and stay alert to our need for it.

John Calvin makes these points in his Sermons on Ephesians. “For not only by one blow but a hundred thousand times we should be overwhelmed by the power of the Devil, if our Lord did not uphold us. But whatever happens, let us march with our heads upright, depending upon the help promised from above, and we shall experience it in such a way that we shall go on invincibly.” If we are not on God’s side, we are without hope. But if we are on God’s side, then it is the Devil who has no hope. For Jesus Christ can continue his reign in our lives until such time as he has put all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor. 15:25).

As long as our Devil is too small, the “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12) will frustrate our attempts to serve Jesus Christ faithfully—and we will not have the foggiest idea what the problem is. We would be much better off to recognize the opposition we face, as all the best thinking from earlier times has done. True enough, Satan does not have God’s power, but he has far more than we do—even the power to work miracles. Let’s see him for what he is.

William D. Eisenhower is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollister, California, and an adjunct professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.

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