Enemy-occupied territory--that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.
--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
I really like this quote from C.S. Lewis as it captures my vision of "spiritual warfare." This is the vision that I tried to articulate in my "Warfare and Weakness" series, a vision of what spiritual warfare looks like for progressive Christians. (See the sidebar.)
Specifically, as I tried to articulate in that series, the "weapon" of spiritual warfare was Jesus's weapon: his cross, his self-giving love. Jesus's self-giving love is how he "defeated" the principalities and powers. The cross is how we "fight" evil.
The paradox, of course, the foolishness of the cross, is that love is weakness. That is what I like about Lewis's quote. Spiritual warfare isn't top-down domination. For it's the "satan" who is actually the "ruler of the world," the one engaged in top-down domination. Spiritual warfare, rather, comes up from the bottom, from the location of weakness. Spiritual warfare isn't the winning of the powerful but the sabotage of the weak.
Spiritual warfare is Love's "great campaign of sabotage."
Or what I like to call the subversion of doing beautiful things.
