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A faithful presence of love in the absences of our city.

The Good Fight

The good fight

I like movies.  I don’t like all movies.  I don’t like horror movies, romantic movies, and especially not the dreaded romantic comedy.  I like fantasy movies like “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy (not “The Hobbit” movies, those were…looooong), Star Wars (again, the original trilogy), and movies with “guns…lots of guns”.

I remember seeing the Matrix for the first time when I was in High School.  Wow, that was awesome.  The guns, the fights, the slow-motion effects of bullets rippling through the air at faster than the speed of sound.  Especially the lobby scene where Neo shoots everything and everyone.  As a senior high school boy, that was cool.  The computer hacker that saved humanity from the computer-programmed dream that all of mankind was living.  Definitely a messiah movie if there ever was one.

I loved the Lord of the Rings movies.  How a man who had lived in exile by choice, who knew he was king, finally took his rightful place, and defeated evil.  Oh, and there are sword fights and well-choreographed bow tricks as well.  The movies are an awesome spectacle…but, as a nerd, I still think the books are better.

These movies and the many like them are all about one thing: good triumphing over evil.  This week’s passage reminded me a lot of these movies.  The humble hero destroying the proud, cunning enemy.  It’s a declaration of war.  Only this isn’t the Soviet Union vs. America.  These aren’t two equal powers duking it out with naval, air, and ground forces.  This isn’t Hannibal coming over the mountains on elephants, nor the upstart, under-prepared Americans taking on the most established military at the time.  This is God, the creator of the universe, the one who put each star in place and created a planet so extravagant and complex that we still can’t understand most of it, declaring war on Satan, his and our enemy.

We, Christians around the world, live our lives in the daily grind of battles against this evil foe.  We experience the temptations of this world, the struggles for freedom from sin and addiction, the fear of totalitarian regimes, and many other battles.  Sometimes we forget that our fight is not against flesh and blood but principalities and powers in the spiritual realm, so we forget that our strength comes from our weakness and choose to fight the world’s way.  In the end, it’s still the same war, declared at the beginning of time, a war between grace and corruption.

The great news is, we already know how the battle ends.  Jesus, the messiah, the offspring of the woman, came, suffered, and died.  His heel was bruised.  He rose again, crushing the head of the serpent and winning the war.  He is coming again, not to re-kill the serpent, but to set up his enduring and everlasting kingdom here on earth.  To set everything right again.  The war will be over.

For now though, be strengthened in whatever your daily fight is.  While we live on this earth between the already and the not yet, we know how the story ends.  All the attacks that we endure today are the last shrieks and desperate attacks from a defeated enemy that knows he is defeated.  This is not a movie, and the book is not better.  Jesus is coming.  He will end the war, and all that is wrong will be set right.  Every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus is Lord (Romans 14:11).  The great thing is, we don’t just have to watch.  We get to fight!

~ Aaron Butzin

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