6. Your Decision Matters to the Enemy
If we cannot be torn in pieces by the roaring lion, we may be hugged to death by the bear. The devil cares very little which it is, as long as he destroys our love for Christ and our confidence in Him.
CHARLES SPURGEON
I’ll never forget the first day of my marriage to Ken. What a carefree, delightful morning!
As our jet lifted off from Los Angeles to fly us to our honeymoon in Hawaii, we cuddled and kissed. The flight attendants giggled and presented us with a cake and a couple of leis. After they served refreshments, we settled back and put on the earphones to watch the in-flight movie. To my surprise, it was Whose Life Is It Anyway?—a film about a quadriplegic who tried to get everyone, from his friends to his doctor to his lawyer, to give him the right to die.
Ken and I pulled off our earphones. This was not the time to think about the depression of quadriplegia or the desire it often brings to cut one’s life short.
As the opening credits appeared on the screen, the flight attendant knelt by my seat and whispered, “Oh, Mrs. Tada, I’m very sorry about the movie selection today. Shall we change your seat?”
I smiled and shook my head no. I knew I had hope and a future, although I had a difficult time for the rest of the flight convincing the attendants that I was not bothered by the visual images on the screen. Yet even as Ken and I snuggled and talked of our future, I kept sneaking peeks at the film.
Without the soundtrack, strange and twisted thoughts began to whisper and wheedle into my brain. Does Ken really know what he’s gotten himself into? What if we can’t handle it? Divorce and suicide happen to couples like us all the time. What if . . .
Hold it! This was the happiest day of my life, and I refused to entertain such deplorable thoughts. I shook my head, jerked my attention away from the movie, and riveted it totally on Ken. I wasn’t about to allow subtle ideas, like flying birds, to build a nest in my head.
It’s called resisting temptation.
A provoking thought. A strong inclination. An inducement, an enticement to give in and give up. A crazy idea that settles in and begins to sound pleasing and plausible.
Thoughts leading to death begin that way.
I’ve had enough experience with temptation to know that such provocations aren’t furtive ideas that dart out of nowhere, disjointed and having no connection. There exists an intelligence behind those ideas. Such thoughts are part of a deadly scheme, the end of which is always death.
I can just hear some say, “She believes there exists an ‘intelligence’ behind evil? What is she, illiterate? This sounds like something out of The Twilight Zone.”
In case you think I sound insane, stop and consider. One glance at the track record of moral evil in this world’s hall of history horrors should convince you that it smells of something systematized. And systems don’t just happen. They are devised. They are schemed. Behind them is intelligence.
Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam—they all recognize an intelligence behind moral evil.
Little wonder that Jesus not only recognized the existence of a devil, but nailed him with the name “tempter.” Jesus called him that when the devil enticed Him to tell stones to become bread, to stand on the highest point of the temple and throw Himself down, and to bow down to the devil and worship him.
And the tempter had one goal: murder. That’s why, later on, Jesus nailed him again: “He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
The tempter. Murderer from the beginning. Father of lies. The devil’s goal is to destroy your life, either by making your existence a living nightmare or by pushing you into an early grave. Take heed. If you have ever been enticed to prematurely end your life, then you’ve been listening not just to something but to someone. And just what are a few of the tempting lies he whispers?
“No One Cares”
One afternoon some time ago, I was sitting at my friend’s coffee table, wrestling with whether I should tell her about the depression that had gripped me for several days. I decided to open up.
“Do you have time to listen?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said, and promptly rose to retrieve a whistling teakettle from the stove. As she poured, I took a deep breath and started to unfold my problem.
Pause. “Milk in your tea?” Nod yes. Start again. Phone rings. “Wait a minute.” Pick up where we left off. Knock at door. “What were you saying?” More distractions.
Friend half-listens. Friend gets up to warm tea.
Help. I hurt.
And this person couldn’t care less.
Early on in his book To Love Mercy, Sam Storms wrote, “It’s amazing how adept we . . . have become at getting along without each other.” And a little later, he wrote, “Beneath the water line of every life are the urges, motives, thoughts, fantasies, frustrated longings, crippling doubts, and sinful schemes of a fallen soul. This is where people are hurting. Tragically, though, we rarely encounter one another at such depth.”
It’s true. Some people couldn’t care less. Friends get preoccupied . . . nurses rush by your bed to tend to the next patient . . . neighbors never venture across the street to see how you’re doing . . . families move apart and connect only occasionally over the phone.
In fact, you may feel no one cares for you. If so, those feelings might be justified. I’ve wheeled down nursing home hallways and peered into rooms, only to grieve to see lonely people sitting and staring, waiting for someone to visit them. Or you may be a lonely person who rubs shoulders with plenty of people all the time but has no intimate contact with any of them. Discussion about weather and sports may fill your day, while the real issues, the kind that eat at you when you lie awake thinking at night, stay harbored inside. You think, Does anyone care?
There are people who care. But it’s possible you have built a self-imposed wall around you, a wall that allows absolutely no one inside to see what you’re going through and to hurt with your hurts.
Your Creator never intended for you to shoulder a load of suffering by yourself. That’s the whole purpose of spiritual community. God deliberately designed people to need each other. We must rub shoulders with people of hope and faith if our innermost needs are to be met.
And what if your relationships with those few friends aren’t as open or as dependable as you’d like them to be? Then it may be up to you to do something about it. A community of people who give the kind of love that rolls up its sleeves can be created, if not found! A spontaneous, warm connection can develop with a chaplain in the hospital . . . a new friendship can happen with the kindly woman who visits your roommate . . . a fellowship can grow with those one or two people you always see praying in the hospital chapel . . . or maybe caring people can be found in that support group you’ve been avoiding.
That caring person may be a relative who is not so distant. An old friend you almost forgot about. A coworker who used to invite you to lunch now and then. People who care can be found in homeless shelters. Meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. Parents Without Partners. Weight Watchers. Disability associations. Churches.
Someone cares.
“There’s Nothing More to Expect from Life”
This is another standard lie, and it’s a tempting thought, especially when you can’t see beyond the thick, gray fog of hopelessness that has settled around you. But it’s still a lie. There is life on the other side of that fog.
Viktor Frankl put it this way:
In the concentration camp, I remember two cases of would-be suicide which bore a striking similarity. Both used the typical argument—they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them . . .
We found in fact that for the one, it was his child whom he adored . . . for the other it was a thing, not a person. This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still needed to be finished . . . A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”
You may not be expecting anything from life, but life is still anticipating something from you. As with the man in the concentration camp, your responsibility may be to a child, perhaps a grandchild or the young boy next door. Your decision to die or not to die has a powerful impact on the mind of a child.
In the movie The Boy Who Could Fly, a father who felt he had nothing to give in the face of a cancer diagnosis ended his life prematurely, leaving behind two children, Milly and Louis. Louis became withdrawn and sullen. Leaning on his elbows, the teary-eyed boy mumbled about his father’s demise, “He didn’t even try, Milly. Why didn’t he try?” The father’s decision had a lasting and negative impact on that child’s life. Fictional, yes, but the boy’s response is easy to believe.
In a real-life example, a friend of mine named Carol Swegle had everything: a rich husband, a beauty queen title, a gorgeous country home, wealthy friends, and loving children. But Carol became depressed and tried to find relief in a combination of prescription drugs and alcohol. She had pinned all of her hopes on a little bit of fame and a small fortune, only to discover emptiness. One day in her bedroom, she held a gun and readied herself to pull the trigger. At that instant, her children burst into the room and startled her. The gun went off.
Carol fell to the floor, a quadriplegic. She lost her husband, her house, and her friends, and she ended up living in a nursing home. If ever there were a time to pull a trigger, it would have been then! But Carol hung on to the hope of claiming back her children. Her daughters gave her reason enough to try again.
In the end? Although it was true that her children were seriously affected by her suicide attempt, in the long run, through Carol’s perseverance and changed attitude, her decision to live became her children’s redemption. They were reunited.
Life, perhaps in the person of a child, is still expecting something from you.
Or then again, perhaps as it comes to expression in the form of a particular thing, life is anticipating more from you. I receive letters from prisoners, disabled people in institutions, and elderly folks who often send poems, small paintings, crayoned drawings, crocheted bookmarks, pot holders . . . whatever. These things are creative expressions of one person to another person—to me. Scribbled drawings and tattered bookmarks are expressions of the soul, and these simple things tie this person to the rest of the world.
“I Can’t Live with This Depression”
You don’t have to believe this lie. Admittedly, nothing distorts reality like depression. A blowup with your husband has you discounting twenty years of a good marriage. A little headache has you wondering if you’ve got brain cancer. A diagnosis of a serious illness has you digging your grave the next day. It’s amazing how quickly reality gets turned upside down when you’re depressed.
But I was impressed with the way this teen approached her depression:
Dear Joni,
My name is Katherine, and I’ll be fourteen in four days. It also marks my first year in my wheelchair. I’ve lost the use of my legs and one arm forever. (The arm part is my own fault though.) I wouldn’t do my therapy because I was so depressed over my bleak future.
Now I’ve discovered I need God’s love more than ever. I want to start off talking with someone who knows what I’m going through. Please help me find the love a Christian knows.
Love,
Katherine
Katherine is barely in her teens, has lived in a wheelchair for a year, and yet devotes not more than one line to her depression. Most of us would devote an entire page!
When I wrote Katherine back, I shared how even stained-glass window saints like the apostles got depressed. The apostle Paul wrote to his friends, “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed because we don’t know why things happen as they do, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going.”
There’s a little bit of that attitude in Katherine. Somehow after hitting rock bottom, she was able to get up again and keep going. I’m sure it took time to work through her sorrow, grief, and limitations, but somewhere in the fog of hopelessness, she found a thin ray of hope.
It’s called faith. You don’t need much more than the mustard-seed-sized faith of a fourteen-year-old girl. True, Katherine, like most of us, will face even tougher times in the future, but she has begun to learn to choose her attitude and to invest her life in others. In so doing, she will be able to live courageously, no matter what her feelings.
“Nothing Awaits Me after Death”
This could be the biggest lie of all.
And this is exactly why the devil enjoys helping you scheme your own murder. Does that sound harsh? You may call it self-deliverance or aid-in-dying if you wish. It matters little to the devil; it’s all murder to him.
Moreover, it matters little whether or not you believe in hell. The devil doesn’t care whether you label it “a white light at the end of a tunnel” or “nirvana” or “never-never land.” It’s all hell to him.
And what is it like? Fire and brimstone? A black hole? A bleak nothingness? The devil once again shrugs his shoulders at such descriptions. All that matters to him is that hell is separation—total and final—from God. Hell is misery, deeper and more profound than any misery you could experience on earth. And because misery loves company, the devil wants to take as many with him to hell as he possibly can. That includes you.
Frankly, it’s enough that Jesus believed in hell, and He spoke of it more often than He did of heaven. Without my going into a lot of detail here, Jesus simply warned, “It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.”
The tempter would have you believe it’s not that bad a place. And just how does the devil beguile you into hell before you can find heaven? His strategy reminds me of a letter I read that described advice given to a man dying from AIDS:
Dear Editor,
A terminally ill AIDS patient recently called the Hemlock Society of North Texas. He was suffering greatly . . . In our phone conversations, his anguish over the conviction that he would probably go to hell also came out.
I told him of my own and other beliefs, which differ greatly, on this subject. I described a recent survey which shows that about 50 percent of all Americans believe in the existence of hell, but only about 4 percent think they are likely to go there. With the help from my friendly local librarian, I obtained a copy of this survey to send him, along with the Drug Dosage Table of the National Hemlock Society.
This may be the first time the Society has helped someone to carry out a “double self-deliverance,” both from a harsh terminal illness and from a harsh theological conviction.
The Hemlock Society
of North Texas
This person with AIDS was told the truth about how to kill himself with lethal drugs, but he wasn’t told the truth about hell. The letter was an eerie cover-up of the facts. Do you believe that nothing awaits you after death? Would you be willing to stake your life on it? Of all the questions to be settled before you take the final exit, this issue is paramount. So take a long, hard look at the consequences of a decision that is so fatal and, worst of all, so final.
If you think hell is fiction, then say so. But if you have even an inkling that it may be real, then wake up. Leave no stone unturned, no means untried, until you find life worth living both on this side of eternity and on the other.
Don’t Believe Lies
The devil will go to great lengths to charm you into an early grave. Everything from pushing drug dosage tables in your face to pooh-poohing hell as pure nonsense. He’ll move all of hell (and heaven if he could) to stop your heartbeat and have you pronounced dead.
Let’s unmask his way of operating.
This morning I was having a rough start to my day. My chronic pain made it impossible to get comfortable in my wheelchair. I shook my head and growled, “This body is a pain. I hate it!”
Why was that so awful? Because the enemy has a deep hatred of my body, and all I was doing was agreeing with him. He gets a charge out of my verbal barbs about my body. And he would like to get you to do the same. Whether you are approaching the final throes of a terminal illness or you’re deep in depression, the devil delights in hearing us bad-mouth our bodies.
Why? Because your body, even underneath wrinkles or fat, and in spite of the ravages of illness or old age, is made in the image of God. Your heart, mind, hands, and feet are stamped with the imprint of the Creator. Little wonder the devil wants you to do your body in!
This morning I had to once again plug my ears against the lies of the tempter and remember that I am, as David writes in Psalm 139:14, “fearfully and wonderfully made.” I rehearsed the old, familiar truth that God has a plan for this flesh and blood of mine. That’s why the devil considers my body a threat. He understands that when I yield my body to God, though it may be paralyzed, my feet and hands are powerful weapons against his forces of darkness.
Listen to the Truth
By the way, the devil would have you believe a couple more lies. He wants to convince you that he is either a powerless “elf gone bad” in a red suit with a funny tail or an evenly matched and almost-as-mighty opponent of God.
Neither is true.
The devil is only a fallen angel.
He is a deceiver.
He is doomed for destruction.
And until then, he has one goal in mind: your destruction.
Questions for Discussion and Reflection
Liar, Liar . . .
Just this once, you get to practice lying. Consider the following situations, and develop a lie that Satan would tell each person.
Satan’s lie to . . .
• a teenage girl with cerebral palsy (a disability that can restrict motion and speech and affect physical appearance)
• a forty-year-old man with Down syndrome (a form of intellectual disability—what many used to call “mental retardation”)
• an eighty-year-old man in a nursing home
• the parents of a four-year-old son in a coma
• a disabled child of a parent just filing for divorce
1. What is Satan’s purpose in telling such lies?
2. Why does Satan want society to be deceived? What is the evidence that such deception has occurred?
3. What does the Bible say about defending ourselves and others against such lies?