the midway point of the “praise service,” the CD with the accompanying musical tracks for the soloist started to skip. As the CD was skipping, the pastor quickly informed the congregation, in what I understood to be an attempt to bide a little time so the sound technicians could get things under control, that the “Devil is working extra hard today to keep us from praising Jesus’ name. But it’s not going to work Devil. You should just know that right now. It’s not going to work, Devil.”
He stated the next three sentences very slowly, deliberately, and with an increasing sense of urgency, “It is not going to work. You should just leave right now. You can’t stop us from praising his holy name!”
And the crowd went wild.
As the pastor was relaying his message to the Prince of Darkness, the majority of the congregation was in an uproar of agreement. “Amens” and “Praise the Lords” were tossed around with a more fervent spirit than when the CD was actually playing.
I can’t lie to you; I was actually excited.
To find out that Satan was in the building, at that very moment, felt like an opportunity worth seizing. Unfortunately, by the time I could figure out how to make the most of my opportunity, the sound engineer in the back of the church shouted, “We’re good to go. Take it away!”
The pastor, a white, middle-aged man who appeared to be relatively uninformed about the Christian practice of fasting, informed us that the Devil had been defeated (those sound guys were good!) and was nowhere to be found.
“Oh, well,” I thought. I guess I missed him. But, apparently some other folks, who must have been far more spiritually in tune with the forces of evil than I am, felt his presence. After the service, I decided I would ask the pastor about it.
Fast forward through a sermon on the virtues of The Andy Griffith Show, as well as eight teary-eyed choruses, and church was finally over. I asked the pastor if I could have a few moments of his time outside the obligatory handshake offered on the way out. He consented, and we made our way to his office.
I began the discussion by asking the pastor if he could talk to me a little bit about Satan, his demonic strategies, and how to avoid them. I thanked him for meeting with me, and I told him I understood such a subject to be a bit peculiar.
“Not at all,” he told me. “However I can help increase another person in the knowledge of the Lord, I am happy to do so.”
“‘Increase another person’ . . . what?”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Nothing, nothing. I’m just interested in what appears to be, though I must be getting this wrong, the seemingly omnipresent status of the Devil.”
“Well,” the pastor stated, “he is the ruler of the air.”
“Ephesians chapter 2, correct?”
“That sounds about right to me,” he confided.
“I guess my more immediate question is this: Why is it the case that some Christians are more aware of Satan, or the Devil—I’m going to use those two terms interchangeably if that is okay with you—why is—
“It’s the same person,” he interrupted, “so why wouldn’t you?”
“Right, sure. Of course, there are some historical differences and a clear development that occurs between the Old Testament and the New Testament, but . . . wait, are you saying that Satan is a person?”
“Well, no, of course not,” he responded. “Satan is a fallen angel. I just said that because there is no need to obsess with the carefulness of our words.”
“Yeah. The curse of doing graduate work is that in order to obtain the degree we have to obsess with speaking carefully.”
He laughed as if that were a joke.
“That can eat up a lot of valuable time,” he told me. “Time that should be properly used giving glory to God. You agree?”
Wait a second. Did he just take a shot at my education? I think he did. Awesome. Admittedly, my education is not without fault. For one thing, it was terribly overpriced. So his shot was not without merit. But hey, at least at this point I knew our conversation was going to be interesting.
I attempted to defend myself by suggesting that anyone willing to spend most of their life in higher education, learning as much about Christianity, her doctrines, her history, and the God she worships, would, as crazy as it must sound, be time well spent.
“Such service,” I explained, “is itself a form of prayer. Actually, it was a Nazarene professor who instilled that notion in me. Plus, Augustine and Aquinas argued along those very lines, and that’s coming from two of the most influential theologians our church has ever produced. Do you not agree?”
He quickly attempted to assure me he was not trying to demean my studies, but was only pointing out that “education doesn’t always translate into the kind of love Jesus requires of his disciples.”
“Well,” I conceded, “there is no disagreement on that point.”
“Right.”
“Right. Okay, so, my question is this: Why is it the case that some Christians are aware of the presence of Satan in a way that others are not? I mean, is that a gift? To feel the presence of Satan?”
With a hearty and incredibly patronizing laugh he responded, “Talking about speaking carefully, I’m not sure I would call that a gift. Though there’s all kinds of gifts in the church, and I guess you could say that some people, more so than others, are more properly in tune with what the forces of evil are up to.”
“You mean like messing with CD players?”
“What’s that?” he asked, as he had to think about it for a second. Suddenly remembering he said, “Oh, yes. Well, sure. Sure. Why not? He’s trying to interrupt our worship service. Satan hates it when people praise the name of Jesus. He does everything in his power to stop it. Anything is fair game for the Devil.”
“Then why does he even show up?” I asked. “I mean, if he hates it so much, and he is powerful enough to apparently be in a whole lot of places, perhaps all places, at once, not to mention his uncanny ability to poke a stick in the wheel of technology, then it seems he would be capable of just not listening.”
“Well, that’s part of his punishment. He is forced to listen to God’s people singing the Lord’s praises.”
“Well,” I admitted, “I can definitely see how that would be a cruel form of punishment.”
He nodded. Unwittingly, I assumed.
“Could you point me to a text?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“A text? Well, a text is another word for a book or a section of a book. I—”
“I know what a text is,” he interrupted. “I’m asking you what you mean by pointing to a text.”
“Oh, well, you said that part of Satan’s punishment is he is forced to listen to Christians
