Few activities refresh my soul quite like a hike in the woods. Today I took some time to stroll familiar territory that never gets old.

Spiders, though important to the balance of nature, were plentiful. This fellow here was one scary looking dude.

The creeks were almost dry but I did find a few spots where the water bubbled up and flowed a bit over and down the rocks.

Found a shed from a small buck, too.

My love affair with trees continues, at every point in their life cycle.

Found the skeleton of this deer. He and I like the same locations.

Introduction: It is hard to overestimate the importance of C.S. Lewis. His book The Screwtape Letters is masterful. In short, it’s about how Satan mentors other devils (Wormwood in particular) to dupe foolish humanity into spiritual and intellectual torpor.

I read an article recently by James White. It was his commentary on a recent survey. The topic? What people believe about good and evil, God and Satan, and angels.

The bottom line up front is this: People are revealing their cognitive dissonance.

Here’s the article below:

In case you haven’t read about it, the devil doesn’t exist. Recent polling by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has found that while seven in 10 U.S. adults believe in angels, when it comes to fallen ones – like the devil – it drops to 56%. A recent Gallup report found similar results with only 58% believing, down from 71% just two decades ago.   To be sure, belief in almost every other “spiritual” category is down as well: belief in God has dropped from 90% in 2001 to 74% in 2023; heaven from 83% to 69%; angels from 79% to 57%; and hell from 71% to 59%.

But dropping to 58% belief, it’s the devil that’s faring the worst.    And he’s quite happy about it.   In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ masterful fictional account of a senior devil, Screwtape, mentoring a younger devil, Wormwood, he notes the following in the preface:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.

Later in the work, Screwtape writes the following to Wormwood:

I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, it to conceal ourselves…. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism…. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics.

Then Lewis, writing in his normally prescient way, adds these words from Screwtape’s pen:

If once we can produce our perfect work – the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits” – then the end of the war is in sight.

And that is precisely what the diminishing belief in Satan, and the increasing belief in all things paranormal,   … is achieving.

Question: See the cognitive dissonance? People know intuitively that we are both material and spiritual, but they still ingest the lies of the enemy of their souls. They try to convince themselves of what they know is a lie.

A Plea for Men of Issachar: In 1 Chronicles 12:32 God reveals that there were some wise men who knew the Lord and the Lord’s principles in a land of confusion: “Of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do, 200 chiefs, and all their kinsmen under their command.”

They were men who understood two things: 1) the times and 2) what the people should do.

Their wisdom was not a hope in secular humanism. Their wisdom was not in materialism. It was biblical; it was godly wisdom.

May the Lord be pleased to raise up wise courageous servants who understand the times and can and will lead people into Godly thinking and Godly ways. Because the costs of accepting mindless entertainment, sentimental seeker-friendly pep talks, and drivel rather than biblical doctrine have exacted profound tolls.

When we pulled into Momo & Granddaddy’s home the full magnolia tree was the first thing I always saw. The picture above is not the actual tree but it resembles it. Roots were often massive and often surfaced. The grass did not grow much underneath. The broad deep green leaves of the magnolia abosrbed the sunlight. If the weather was cool I found cones underneath. If warm, there were cream-colored flowers on the branches, white flowers pungent when I smelled them. (When I smelled magnolias I did not forget them. Like honeysuckle on hot summer days I don’t think I would ever want to forget that sweet smell.)

Today as I drove to my apartment where I am away from family due to being in the military, I passed a general’s manicured grounds. The estate was replete with oaks, dogwoods, and magnolias. And suddenly I was a boy again–climbing the magnolia at Momo and Granddaddy’s place, where the garden was twenty meters east of the tree, directly behind the house, and Grandaddy’s corn grew in rows, as did the butterbeans, okra, squash, and tomatoes. His gray gloves were draped over the backporch handrail, and his pronged hoe lay propped at an angle beside his work boots and straw hat.

Inside the door, Momo fried fatback in a black cast iron skillet and she and Granddaddy had us sit around the formica table and hold hands and pray before we ate the best food I’ve ever tasted. I did not know it then, but I was being fed–not just prayers of amazing grandparents, not just butterbeans and peas and Vidalia onions from the soil just outside the backdoor, not just love from women and men who’d survived the Great Depression and known life without electricity, but I was being fed my deepest riches.

The magnolia, the garden, the garden tools, the smell of my beloved Momo when she hugged us and we believed that all would be well because she was there, and my soulmate Granddaddy, with his arthritic hands and black Scofield Study Bible, and the way he’d laugh, and they way he’d eat cereal before he went to bed in his blue pajamas–it was all there. All of it. Richness but not in dollars. In impact and in love.

To you, dear ones, I will never be able to repay you sufficiently. You were precious. Like the corn and tomatoes and the countless hours in which you worked literal and spiritual soils, you reaped impacts. You still live in me, in us, in those you reached. I can never see a magnolia, or touch a hoe or rake, or eat fatback at a buffet, and not remember that all things were sweeter, richer, and better with you. Words won’t reach high enough to tell how much I miss you. Even the magnolia in spring, cluttered in white, fails. But you did not fail. No, you were precious. And you reached heaven.

Introduction: I was blessed to have a father who instilled in me a love of travel. One of the most powerful and lasting memories I have is of a trip where he took me and others to Africa. We traveled to Kenya and parts of Tanzania. We saw the lions hunt on the safari. We saw zebras chased and gazelles chased and all were taken down by the rulers–the lions.

Literary Connection: I know of few short story writers who excel Ernest Hemingway. In his short stories, he is simply magnificent. I was reading a lot of Hemingway in the years before and after Dad took us to Africa. And if you know anything of Hemingway’s short stories, more than a few are filled with scenes from Africa that involve men and women, courage and cowardice, lions and prey. All play parts in the masterful fiction of Hemingway. When I read of lions in Scripture and in literary fiction, the scenes from my times in Africa burn brightly in my imagination. When you see blood of safari animals smeared on the visage and mane of majestic lions, and you see the puissance of the mighty and see the sweat on their muscular shoulders, you feel your finitude. You feel a “Zero at the Bone,” as Dickinson referenced when we cross a serpent.

Biblical Connection to Psalm 57: This week I am camping out in Psalm 57 and studying each phrase and image in it in order to teach it to my fellow Christian pilgrims Sunday at church. And in verse 4 of this poem from David, he writes, “My soul is in the midst of lions; I lie down amid fiery beasts–the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords” (Psalm 57:4 ESV).

My mind naturally tracks with figurative language; literature comes naturally to me. I don’t struggle to view the world via a literary lens like some do. Most people I know struggle with literature; it’s too “gray” for them, they tell me. Geometry and mathematics are their lenses for viewing. Hey, so be it. I wish that God had also given me that way of seeing, but alas, that didn’t happen. Words are my way; Euclid remains a mystery to me, in most ways.

But the imagery here in v. 4 is of the heart of the man (David) being “in the midst of lions.” And those lions are people. Their teeth are “spears and arrows.” Leonine imagery to depict human violence and terror. People’s tongues David calls “sharp swords.”

Takeaway & the Big Picture: So often in Christian Scripture, leonine imagery is used. Daniel is cast into a den of lions (Daniel 6). Satan prowls around like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8). Paul is rescued from the lion’s mouth (2 Timothy 4:17). Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Revelation 5:5).

David pictured it. Paul experienced it. Daniel experienced it. Peter wrote of it. But Jesus faced it (the ultimate adversary/lion) and overcame him/it. You see, the reason the gospel is good news is because the greatest Lion was not in Babylon threatening Daniel; it was not Demas and Alexander and false brethren of the apostle Paul; it was not enemies of David, wicked men like Saul. Satan is a great lion seeking to devour God’s people.

But Satan is not the greatest lion. The greatest Lion is the one who crushed the serpent’s head, the one whose word is a sword, the one who laid down his life in order that he might take it up again three days later, and he is good, and terrible, and righteous, and he is the conqueror, the Alpha and Omega, and he bids you welcome. He is the Lion to watch.

Rode the steel horse with Carrie Jane for a couple of hours, stopped in for some Mexican food in the hills, and, well, it was all just about perfect.

Came home and saw some of the critters browsing early in the day under full sun and with a slight breeze.

Crossed the lake and it was smooth and inviting.

Was able earlier in the day to serve as the chaplain for the WWII Observance, too, and spoke with four WWII veterans from the branches of service, several of whom fought at Normandy, Utah Beach, and the Battle of the Bulge. One even helped liberate Buchenwald. Each time I speak with men of this caliber I am humbled and grateful. My cup today was full. Thankful.

Introduction: It has been said that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” I appreciate that insight. Speaking truth is a dangerous undertaking. It is much easier to just go along to get along or to seek distraction endlessly. We have substituted entertainment and distraction for depth of meaning. The means of entertainment are endless. As Neil Postman wrote, we are amusing ourselves to death. Critical thinking is about as common as an Apatosaurus excelsus dinosaur in your town square.

Loss of Transcendence: This week I have been with fellow soldiers in the Midwest. One of the tasks I am able to do as a chaplain is equip soldiers with means of preventing, or at least reducing, suicide in the military. It is a tragedy how many Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen take their own lives. The military sees the statistics, professes to want to prevent suicides, but seems powerless oftentimes to reduce and/or eliminate suicide. Why? At the risk of being too reductionistic, I think it’s the loss of the transcendent.

Many soldiers don’t know who they are or why they are or why there is anything that matters because they deny the Author of life. That is, if you raise a generation to believe that they are only so much cosmic dust, it should not surprise us when suicide is an epidemic. Again, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

My Favorite Book: Like many other believers I read the Bible several times through a year. But my favorite book of the Bible has remained for many years the same: Ecclesiastes. Why? Well, it is literary in nature, that’s one reason. I relish literature and my mind naturally runs in literary grooves. But another reason is that Solomon’s Ecclesiastes is a masterful case study in meaning vs. meaninglessness. Solomon had it all, so to speak, at least in a worldly sense. He gained the whole world. He had looks, wealth, health, wine, women, and song. He was the envy of the world. He was wise, but he became oftentimes the fool.

Why? Because he lost, at least at times, the transcendent. He suppressed God. He wrote, in just one of his refrains, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11 ESV).

Perhaps his most well-known line is found in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “What has been done is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

The refrain of “under the sun” runs through Ecclesiastes. It’s the secular life. It’s life without God. It’s a life given over to entertainment. It’s a life of distraction. It’s a life of “Eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow we die” thinking (Luke 12:19-20).

Segue: When we abandon the transcendent, we lose. We cut ourselves off from the very source of wisdom. We deny the Author of life (Acts 3:15). We reveal ourselves to be living lives of hebel. That’s the Hebrew word for vanity or vapor or mere breath. We are here, but like a mist, a vapor that vanishes. No impact.

See why suicide is rampant in the ranks? Because we’ve lost the transcendent. But (and here’s where the danger of truth-telling surfaces), I don’t know that is that we have lost truth so much as we have suppressed it.

Solomon’s Wisdom: I return to the magnificent book of Ecclesiastes. When you study Solomon, you see a man of extremes: wisdom and folly; not just one wife but scores of wives, and concubines, too (1 Kings 11:3); mirth and madness. Here was a man who gained the whole world and arguably often lost his soul. He penned that even for him, “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing” (Ecclesiastes 1:8). He felt that all his accomplishments were just hebel, mere mists of nothingness, vapors. There was to be no remembrance of former things (Ecclesiastes 1:11). But he did not end this wonderful book with dourness. No, he summoned us back to the good news, the truth of redemption, the way back to transcendence:

Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 ESV)

Encouragement: I love teaching my fellow soldiers, absolutely love it. However, what would happen, I wonder, if we simply read and implemented Solomon’s book Ecclesiastes? What might happen if we equipped soldiers and civilians with the truth of God? What if we reintroduced them to the truth that gets so often excluded from discussion and replaced by groupthink and moralistic bromides? What if we allowed them to study the actual history of Solomon, a king and ruler, who lived to tell the tales about the costs–the devastating costs–of secularism? What if, in sum, we abandoned the age of folly and sought to be a people of wisdom?

Introduction: In a culture awash with bad news, horrors, and the profane, just a light piece to brag on an airport I love using: Indianapolis, Indiana’s. Why? Well, I left Atlanta’s airport early in the morning, and the best view of ATL’s airport is in the rear view mirror. ATL’s is a zoo that seems to bring out many folks who were raised on MTV, Skittles, and The Jerry Springer Show. One need only watch and marvel at the things you see in ATL’s airport.

Leaving ATL:

Welcome Aboard: This Southwest flight was on a pretty new 737. There were plenty of unoccupied seats and we passengers were able to spread out.

A gregarious friendly stewardess saw me in uniform and welcomed me aboard. Then she told me of her dad who was with 1st CAV in Vietnam from 1967-69, and of how he was killed while serving there during combat operations. I listened. She pulled out her cell phone and showed me pictures of her dad, an infantry officer and an O-4 (Major) when he was killed in combat. She talked of her dad, of her memories growing up on Ft. Benning and Ft. Hood. I listened. She was so genuine, grateful, and clearly still adored her dad.

Literary Tingles: I always smile when I look at the literature sign in the seat pocket in front of us when we are seated.

I pulled out my paperback of All the Pretty Horses that I’m reading for the umpteenth time. I love it that much and thought to myself, “Hey, literature time! I’m ready!” That tends to get some strange looks from the non-literary types nearby, so I smile.

Midwest from the Sky: Indiana came into view after I’d read for an hour-and-a-half. In my reading, I had been on horseback with John Grady Cole and been in a prison fight with Mexican thugs in McCarthy’s literary world.

Indianapolis’s Airport Doing Right by the Military: I was slated to meet my buddy at the USO in Indy’s airport. I had a few moments before he arrived, so I walked around the USO and out front, admiring the work that made this USO so welcoming. Plus, the veteran-volunteers were all friendly, welcoming me to patronize the free books, help myself to bottled water and coffee and beef jerky, and toiletries if I needed a new can of shaving cream, etc. It was all done well here with attention to detail.

Link-up with My Buddy: My buddy showed up about 20 minutes later. We hugged and immediately began catching up since last time. He was as witty as ever, and we laughed aloud so often that we got some stares from some recruits that were about to ship out to San Diego for their initial training. They were still in civilian attire and the boys still had long hair and they played on their cell phones, and my buddy and I chuckled at their wide-eyed nervousness and the way they huddled together as if comfort rested in numbers.

Indy, you guys do it right here, at least via your airport. Salute!

Introduction: I had a medical exam today as part of being a soldier. Had all my bloodwork examined recently; went through optometry and audiology, too. A familiar regimen to us military types. But when the nurse was talking with me today after she took my blood pressure and I was waiting for the physician’s assistant to come in and listen to my heart, the nurse shared with me that she was a committed reader. She showed me the new Kindle from which she reads regularly. She was so proud of it as she retrieved it from the side of her scrubs. It had a cover on it like the composition books we used to use in writing courses when I was young. I asked her a few questions, as she was so friendly.

     “So, what types of books do you read?”

     “I like dystopian stuff, apocalyptic stuff, especially the paranormal. I’m in a series that has seventy-five volumes, and I’m in volume seventy-two,” she said.

     “Seventy-five volumes? Wow!”

We went on like that for a while. I listened as she recorded my vitals and made notes in my medical records. And she told me of her fascination with those types of reading and how enthralled she was with it all. I could not offer much in terms of relating to it all. But it got me thinking about things I notice more and more nowadays. Specifically, we are awash in all-things-dystopian/apocalyptic/demonic.

More examples: I met with the physician’s assistant, and he listened to my heartbeat and made me inhale and exhale deeply, as the medical types invariably tell us to do, and he told me of my good and bad cholesterol levels, etc. And afterwards I called my wife to give her a kind of update on my health, and all that kind of thing. And I drove later to the gym to get in some PT on the treadmill and the weights. I listened to Dave Matthews and the Doobie Brothers and the Zac Brown Band on my playlist and watched the other soldiers in the gym while I jogged on the treadmill.

I was the only one I could see who was not tattooed. Most soldiers were covered in them. Many of the white soldiers were so tattooed that their skin was no longer white but blue, black, and green with ink. The patterns were often of serpents and swords or of blood or perhaps a phrase of Latin related to courage, sacrifice, strength, victory, and/or death. Several tattoos involved some variation of a cross. And I remembered the nurse from earlier and her fascination with dystopian/apocalyptic literature—replete with spiritual questions about invisible forces and the way warfare is manifested.

After I worked out, I went to the latrine to wash up some and towel off, so that I could go grab a bite to eat later on. On the way towards the door, I passed a soldier. I was raised not to stare at people, because that is impolite, as most would agree. But when I passed the soldier, he/she was “in transition” and covered with ink. I could not tell if it was a man trying to look like a woman, or if it was a woman trying to appear as a man. He/she had characteristics of both—broad shoulders like men, but a thin neck and cheekbones and a pretty face and skin like a woman.

And it hit me again: dystopia/apocalyptic/paranormal stuff; tattoos of spiritual warfare and symbolism; and physical surgeries that transfigure men and women into misshapen creatures contrary to the way they were born. There was a recurring theme. And, quite frankly, it affected me spiritually.

Direction: I tend to mull things over until I get a firm idea of what I think is true about them. For me, that comes by writing. I don’t really know what I think until I can write it clearly. Writing has a way of concretizing the abstract. And as I was studying later in the day and working on my lesson for class Sunday at church, I was in Matthew’s gospel, and I was studying the passages where Jesus casts out demons:

And as they were going away, behold, a demon-oppressed man who was mute was brought to him. And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke. And the crowds marveled, saying, “Never was anything like this seen in Israel.” But the Pharisees said, “He cast out demons by the prince of demons.” (Matthew 9:32-34 ESV)

And then in Matthew 15, a Canaanite woman begged Jesus to heal her daughter of the demon oppressing her:

And behold a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. (Matthew 15:22 ESV)

Just thinking: I got back to my place later and was about to continue studying and writing and preparing. And a recommendation came up on a list of movies I might be interested in. It was titled Cabinet of Curiosities. And can you guess what it is about? Seances, Satan, demons, and spiritual warfare.

I continued to try and think through what all I had seen in just one day—at the doctor’s office for my physical health assessment (PHA), at the gym and its sea of tattoos of daggers and serpents and soldiers whose gender I could not discern, and of how so much Scripture is filled with illustrations of demon oppression, possession, and spiritual warfare, and of how even the realms of darkness are under the feet of Christ.

Then I could not even escape this theme when I was on my computer, because Netflix was suggesting to me that I watch a series about seances, Satan, and spiritual warfare. At the very least, I would say that there is a spirit of warfare that is overt in our day, but you must have eyes to see it. And it is painful, at least to me, when we do see it.

Because if we are tender to it, our hearts will break for those bending their knees to the darkness. I don’t want that for myself, for my loved ones, or for much of anyone. I know that may sound like the sentiments of a schoolboy, of as of someone naïve or saccharine. But it is true. The darkness spoken of so often in Scripture (Ephesians 6:10-13, etc.) is real; it is spiritual and visceral, and it is not to be taken lightly.