Satan’s Favorite Battleground – the Minds of
Men
By Evangelist Paul Mershon
February 4, 2010
On January 23, 2010, I wrote an article entitled, “A Clear and Present Danger.” The thoughts contained in that particular treatise generated enough conversation and input that I decided I would follow up with an edited version of something I wrote in 2008. As was the case with “A Clear and Present Danger,” the 2008 article entitled, “The Battle for the Mind,” also generated a fair amount of feedback and input. With that said, I am publishing again an edited and updated version of the 2008 article, and trust that it will be helpful and edifying to you, and will provoke much thought as you read and consider it.
“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your HEARTS and MINDS through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, THINK on these things” (Philippians 4:6-8).
“Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23).
In his helpful little pamphlet entitled, “Basics for Pressured Believers,” Dr. Jim Berg makes the following statement regarding the importance of the renewed mind.
If a believer has a renewed mind about his pressures, he can consider them a source of joy (II Corinthians 12:9-10; James 1:2-3; I Peter 1:6-9). If instead they are sources of irritation, fear, and guilt, he still does not have God’s perspective.
Peter tells us (I Peter 1:6) that a pressured believer (one who is “in heaviness through manifold temptations”) can “rejoice” while he is experiencing difficult times. The recipients of this letter from the Apostle Peter were persecuted and harassed because they were believers. He urged them (I Peter 1:7) to remember God’s purposes for the pressure. He told them (I Peter 1:13) to “gird up the loins of [their] minds.” That meant they were to restrict their thinking to God’s perspective only and change their responses accordingly. The result would be joy. Any believer can experience that same joy if he handles his pressures God’s way. The prophet, Isaiah, puts it this way: “Thou will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee” (Isaiah 26:3). (Bold emphasis mine – ed.)
The thing I wish to lift from Dr. Berg’s commentary here centers around the absolute importance for all of us who are saved by the grace of God to take great care to always restrict our thinking to God’s perspective only. We must take great care to have the mind of Christ in all things, and reject the influence of a world gone mad with sin when it comes to the way we think. More than in any other age, we need to be ever vigilant as to what we allow to influence our thinking, and what we allow to be impressed upon our hearts. In every matter and area of life, we must have God’s perspective alone.
The Apostle Paul made it clear that in all things God’s people ought to have a singular mind – the mind of Christ alone in everything pertaining to this life. In Philippians 2:5, Paul instructed the believers at Philippi to have the mind of Christ in looking to the things of others. He said, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” It is plain from Paul’s statement to the Corinthians believers that God’s people can, and must have the mind of Christ in all things when he said, “ . . . But we have the mind of Christ.” To not have the mind of Christ leaves folks open to the worldly-mindedness that is destroying marriages, homes, and not a few local New Testament churches. We are coming precariously close to losing the next generation of young people, and indeed may have already lost them as the battle for the mind has targeted them perhaps more than any other generation in all of history. God help us to see this.
Satan probes for “chinks in the armor.” There are several areas of possible weakness where Satan may gain in the life of a believer . . .The believer’s thought-life is the major battleground for spiritual warfare with Satan . . .(II Corinthians 11:3 – Hebrews 12:3 – II Corinthians 4:3-4 – Ephesians 4:23 – Philippians 2:5) . . .Evidently Satan worked on the imprisoned Baptist’s mind causing him to question the very thing he had been preaching – Matthew 11:2-3 . . .(Pastor Robert J. Sargent)
Some have designated the mind as Satan’s last and final frontier. I do not accept that position in that the battle for the mind has be going on since Adam’s fall in the Garden of Eden. The battle for the mind has been going on with a vengeance since God created man and placed him in the garden to dress it and to keep it (Genesis 2:15). From the side of man God made the woman, and He brought her unto Adam to be his completer and partner in life. With the first man and first woman on earth, God instituted the sacred marriage relationship and the first home, an institution precious in the sight of God and inviolable. Reading in Genesis chapter three, it becomes apparent that as soon as this holy union was formed by God Himself, Satan targeted it and came after it, and when he found the woman alone, unguarded by her husband, he tempted the “weaker vessel” (I Peter 3:7) to reject the headship of both God and her husband, and disobey God’s clear command that she and her husband not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “ . . . for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17b). So, how did Satan get Eve to capitulate to his evil suggestion? What apparatus did he work upon to get her to buy into his wicked deception! What was it that he targeted? Take a look at the Scriptural account given to us in Genesis 3:1-7.
“NOW the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye shall eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
Now, there is literally no end of commentaries written to describe and discuss this sordid and sad account as to how original sin came into being. It is not my intention to discuss here at length the full scope of what happened in this scriptural account. Let the Word of God stand alone and speak for itself in this case, and allow me to draw one simple truth from what we have here before us as to how Satan manipulated the woman, and what apparatus he appealed to in persuading her to disobey God, as well as her husband, and reject God’s clear commandment. Clearly, the devil appealed to Eve’s intellect – her mind. He very craftily appealed to her logic and her reason. He appealed to the thought processes, very cunningly trying to convince her that God was being unreasonable, and that he really did not mean what He said when He gave the commandment to her husband, and her husband most certainly instructed her as to the commandment himself. She knew what God had said because her husband would have reinforced what He had said without any variation. It was in her thinking that Satan sought to influence Eve, and use her own intellect against her. The devil knew that Adam would not capitulate if he approached him directly, so he waited for the weaker vessel to come near the tree, and waited until in that process she was not by her husband’s side. I believe that Adam demonstrated a greater love for his wife than for God when he willingly took of the fruit and did willfully eat as well. I have noted that Satan did not speak to Adam directly as he did to Eve in the temptation. The Word of God makes it abundantly clear that it was the woman, not the man, who was deceived in the transgression (I Timothy 2:14). But, I want you to understand that the rejection of God’s clear commandment, and capitulation to the Satanic suggestion on Eve’s part came through manipulation of human intellect, and the perverting and twisting of the mind. No, the battle for the mind is not the last frontier of the devil just now being launched against mankind, but had its origins and inception in the Garden of Eden, and has continued on to this day. Satan has refined and fine-tuned his attack on the mind, and has grown more sophisticated, that’s for sure. He has many more tools in his bag to use against us than ever before, and the battle for the mind is now at a high-pitched, fever pace as the devil knows that his time is getting shorter and shorter by the day.
We would do well to recognize some of the direct byproducts of this unrelenting assault upon the minds of men today. Unreasonable fear, anxiety, panic, violent thoughts, depression, obsessive compulsion, aberrative habituation, lust, worry, and all sorts of “phobias” are all indicative of wrong thinking. Though some of this thinking, and maybe much of it, comes from the way a person has trained him or herself to think and deal with the hardness and difficulties in life, nonetheless, Satan will surely exploit it all to his advantage. Some of the things men think may well come from within, but still the devil will exploit and use it against those Christians not understanding the importance of the sanctified mind. Consider that the number one line of pharmaceuticals being sold in America today are anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, mood elevators, and other medications formulated to address the problems of the mind – the mental and emotional problems that afflict so many people today. I never suggest that folks taking these drugs get off of them when a doctor has prescribed them, but I do suggest that they consider why it is that they must take them in the first place. Objective thinking would necessarily lead me to believe that it is due to emotional distress rather than organic issues leading up to feeling the need for medication as the answer. In most cases, this just subjects the believer to yet another form of habituation. Again, the way one has trained him or herself to think has much to do with how one will respond to the hardness and struggles that are always attendant to life. (Counseling with a good and compassionate Christian counselor will help immensely.)
The mind is a battleground, and there are many forces working relentlessly to gain control of all that we think and do. I have been giving much thought to the power of the media, especially talk radio, news agencies, both left-wing and right-wing, and Hollywood. You could never convince me that all of these outlets controlled by mostly secular-humanists are not being used of the devil in the battle for the mind. If you fill your mind with all of the junk that is coming across the airwaves, you will find your thinking being shaped by media sources as opposed to the Word of God. You will eventually think the way the world thinks if your major source for living and thinking comes from the world.
Some of my older readers might remember a man by the name of Rod Sterling. He was a very prolific screenwriter responsible for programs like, “The Twilight Zone,” and “Night Gallery.” Serling was raised in a Jewish home, but later on in life he became a Unitarian Universalist. He had a fascination with the macabre, the occult and Gothic horror. Millions watched his television programs around the country each and every week. I can well remember a brother-in-Christ from our home church relating to me that he came home late from work one night, and someone in the house had “The Twilight Zone” on the television set, and whatever the subject of the program, he could sense a demonic presence in the house. He quickly turned the television off, and the demonic oppression ceased immediately. Satan is not the prince of darkness for nothing. One cannot watch hour after hour of rape, murder and mayhem and not have dark thoughts and struggles with corrupt thinking. The images and the implanted thoughts of evil are etched upon the memory and these things corrupt the heart It takes much prayer to cleanse what has been recorded there.
Please consider this quote from one of the handouts from our family conference material entitled, “Sheltering and Protecting the Christian Home.”
Protecting your children from the outside world is a must in our wicked society. Yet it may be one of the most difficult tasks of dealing with a child. Don Adams points out in his book, The Child Influencers, published by Home Team Press, 1990, that the influences upon our children today are drastically different from 200 years ago. Two centuries ago the most important influences on a child’s life were 1) reading, 2) parents, and 3) family-based learning. Today, in stark contrast to these, the three most dominant pressures upon a child’s life are 1) school, 2) peers, and 3) television.
The average child today watches 31-49 hours of television per week and some more than that. The average high school graduate has watched 15,000 to 22,000 hours of television and has seen by age fourteen 18,000 murders, thousands of rapes, robberies and assaults. Compare that to the fact that the average father spends 8-14 minutes a day communicating with his children and you see the problem. If you add to that the fact that children were taught at home almost entirely by their parents 200 years ago, and now they spend five days a week, at least six hours a day, in the godless public education system, you realize the difficulty of our task. On top of that, our children face enormous pressure to conform to their peers – pressure that is multiplied by the fact that parents spend so little time with their kids to counteract the influence of their friends.
I believe that the average Christian spends copious amounts of time saturating his or her thoughts with much that is not spiritual in content. Could this be the reason why we are seeing so many folks opposing all that is godly, and seem to be developing a carnal mindset when it comes to the way which we should live before man and God? One place that I see this carnality demonstrated to the greatest extent is in our family conferences. The world has had so much influence upon the thinking of our church members, that any concentrated Bible teaching on the home, the marriage relationship, and the raising of children seems to raise the ire of those one would think would know better. I cannot think of a subject regarding the home that does not seem foreign to a growing percentage of church folks, many who have been longtime church members. So, where, then, do these folks develop their thinking regarding the home and the marriage relationship? There are not a few church members who value the opinions of Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil and Oprah Winfrey over the truth preached from the pulpit of the local church of which they are a part.
Consider that far too many of our young people from Christian homes are having their thinking and their behavior shaped by video games, cyber-games, the internet, worldly music (including the horrible contemporary “Christian” music that is being dished up today), television, movies, so-called Christian romance novels, wrong friends and acquaintances, and so much more. I have seen Christian schools and entire youth groups corrupted by the MySpace phenomenon, and other scary things that church kids have gotten into in addition to all of this. In all of these cases, parents are failing miserably in assisting their children in forming a healthy mind, and a heart that is in alignment with the Christ of the Bible. Too many of our children coming from professing Christian homes have corrupted thinking which leads to corrupted doing and living. Evangelist Harold Vaughan noted:
A survey was conducted in a Christian school on the topic What constitutes Success? The top answers were: win the lottery, become a Rock Star, become a famous actor, get into professional sports, get into the stock market, and think of a great product and sell a million of them. These answers are identical to what you would expect from children raised in atheistic homes. We live in a generation where most of us have had to mentor ourselves. For a number of reasons, we have grown up with disciplinary and directional deficits. Precious few have been privileged to have fathers who were vitally involved in their lives. Detached parents are little better than absentee parents. Too many children are left to themselves which ultimately leads to shame (Proverbs 29:15).
I know a young woman who was raised in a Southern Baptist church, and attends a Christian school which is the ministry of an independent Baptist church. Though it seems that no one notices, or no one cares, this gal is saturated in the occult. She has somehow been introduced to the darkness of the Goth movement, and wears jewelry and other symbols of that evil aberration. Her thinking has been so dominated by that to which she has attached herself, that she is openly sullen and in opposition to all that is godly in Christ Jesus. She professes to be a Christian because that is what she is expected to do, but she denies the faith by her very conduct and actions. Her very countenance bears the marks of rebellion inculcated in her thinking by the devil and that which she has been allowed to immerse herself in. She is a sullen and lost individual whose mind has been corrupted by a world gone mad. Beloved, it is sad, but true, that she may not be as much the exception amongst our young people in our churches today as you might think her to be.
As Satan targets the minds of God’s people, we would do well in remembering that one of his primary goals is to turn us away from right thinking and right doing. Satan’s conspiracy is to desensitize us to the exceeding sinfulness of sin. I do not want to hobby-horse this issue, but I want you to consider that television has turned its main focus on two main themes – sex and violence. Television marketing (advertising) has grown so salacious and vile that it just boggles the mind. My grandmother would faint dead away at some of the pornographic advertising that predominates the airwaves today. Everything goes, and there is nothing sacred anymore.
I was recently in a home where everyone was gathered around the television set watching the Super Bowl. Has anyone figured out that professional sports is financed in large part by the booze industry? And what about the rock ‘n roll halftime show? And then there are the half-naked cheer leaders. What of the commercials? My soul! I may enjoy a good football game, but not enough that I want to sit before the television set and have my senses assaulted for the better part of three hours or more. What are we thinking? And do you think that all of the worldly marketing and carnality in this modern American bacchanal will have some effect on the thinking of those who are filling their minds with this stuff? And what of the Christian woman who soaks her mind in soap opera slime every day. I guarantee you that she is not going to have God’s perspective of life, and will have a corrupt world-view. Even in the world of politics and governance today, much of our thinking is shaped by something other than the Word of God.
As I bring this article to a close, please allow me to quote just a few verses of pertinent scripture.
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2).
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” (II Corinthians 10:3-5).
“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ” (II Corinthians 11:3).
“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7).
“And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:23-24).