We have faced some significant and overt spiritual battles over the past few years. One of those battles involved us actually rebuking a demonic presence we perceived was oppressing our family. Upon our rebuke, the issues IMMEDIATELY (and I can't emphasize that word enough) stopped. Needless to say, for me - someone who is not very attuned to the immaterial/spiritual aspect of Christianity, that was a wake up call. It really got me thinking of the ubiquity of demons, principalities, powers, etc. 

One of the big questions I had is whether or not evil spirits are able to hear our thoughts. Such an answer would be important for two reasons. First, if they can't hear our thoughts, then praying in my head, while useful and important to speak with my heavenly Father, is not a direct rebuke and confrontation of the evil spirit in my midst. To do battle, then, I should speak audibly. Second, if evil spirits cannot read my mind, then that may influence what I want to say out loud. There may be some fears and weaknesses I don't want to verbalize, which they could use to their advantage were they to know. ​

I grew up saturated in Western religious thought, which is something I didn't realize until relatively recently. But of course a fish doesn't realize she's in water until she's taken out, right? I only began to realize my bent when I started researching Eastern Orthodoxy prior to our move to Romania. I then realized how much of our beliefs are simply taken at face value, without ever exploring their foundations. One aspect of Western thought which was highlighted most significantly by a comparison to Orthodoxy is the juridical nature of our doctrines. Western thought is extremely juridical - which means it's very logical and law-like. You can tell you're immersed in that type of thinking if what I just said sounds like a positive to you, as that statement has little to no value in and of itself. In fact, there are a number of downsides to being juridical.

Bludgeoning with Peace and Purity
When news came out about Ravi Zacharias and his sexual predation, I was devastated, but not surprised. It's always heartbreaking to find out that someone you hold in high esteem is guilty of heinous evil, but history, experience, and my Christian worldview move me to expect that such things will occur. As Dr. Clay Jones says, these things aren't inhuman, they're what humans do. The state of humanity is not rainbows and butterflies, it's sin and wickedness. Without transformation and a community of accountability, sin has a tendency to work itself out to its final, hideous form of exploitation and destruction. 

​Ethics has always fascinated me. While morality seems very clear to a large extent, it's easy to find conundrums and paradoxes when you look for them. I have no doubt in my mind that gray will always exist, but I also believe that we tend to do a bad job reflecting on morality. We often invoke mystery too easily, or we land on the side of whatever our moral preferences are in our given culture. I think we can often do better than either giving up or caving in to self-interest. ​

There are two things I particularly love about Reformed theology: its ability to drive one towards humility, and its emphasis on upholding the importance of doctrine. First, Reformed theology is perfectly equipped to drive one to humility through its doctrine - doctrine which demands introspection. The Reformed are well known for using the saying, "There but for the grace of God, go I." Due to the strong doctrine of total depravity, God's grace, and an understanding that our hearts are wicked and deceitful, Reformed believers have no grounds to be shocked when the most godly leader in the world falls, and no grounds to think that anyone is above any sin, even and especially oneself. There is a fear and trembling that Reformed doctrines should produce in our daily living, as well as a converse wonder and awe at the beautiful and extravagant grace of God. Reformed doctrines ought to drive us to humility..

Second, Reformed doctrines are equipped to drive us towards holding doctrine in high esteem. If humanity's problem is a looking to self and a forcing of God into the dark recesses of one's heart and mind, then the knowledge - the true and accurate knowledge of God and his son Jesus Christ, revealed in the Word, through the Spirit, ought to be core to our conversion and continued sanctification. Reformed faith should drive us to seek the knowledge of God in our theology, because right theology ought to cause us to become more and more conformed to the image of Jesus, who is the perfect image of God.  ​

My life feels like a series of pendulum swings. As I learn more and as I attempt to empathize with views I don't initially hold, I find myself being flung between extremes of belief until time levels me out somewhere closer to the middle. One of these back-and-forths has been on the issue of "Pascal's Wager." For those unfamiliar with this idea, Pascal basically said that when one looks at the choice of becoming a Christian or not, they are wiser to choose Christianity even if it seems like it is less probable. So long as Christianity is potentially true, one should choose to believe in Christ. Why? Because if you do believe in Christ and turn out to be wrong, you've lost nothing. However, if you don't believe and it ends up being true, then you lose eternity. If Buddhism is true and I don't believe in it in this life, I'll eventually arrive at bliss. But if Christianity is true and I fail to believe, I'm damned forever. 

I initially thought Pascal's wager was brilliant. It made perfect sense to me. You should obviously see that in the risk/reward analysis, it is way better to believe in Christianity. However, after some years, Pascal's Wager left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. As I thought about it more and as I listened to atheists speak more (rather than just listening to my Christian community), I recognized several problems I had with Pascal's Wager, at least as most Christians were using it.  

1) It emphasized intellectual assent without consideration of Lordship theology and assent of actions.
​2) It didn't narrow one's choice down to Christianity, as there are other religions which have eternal judgment as a possibility from which one would want to escape.
3) It emphasized potential risk while dismissing (or not accounting for) probability. For example, a large bird could drop a heavy stone on my head from hundreds of feet and kill me, yet I don't, and won't, walk around with a helmet knowing there is a huge consequence should the event occur. The probability of its occurrence is practically zero. Falling out of bed is another example, as it kills about 450 people in the U.S. each year and injures close to 2 million, yet most of us take minimal precautions. 

Photo by  Matteo Fantuzzi  on  Scopio​

​If God is good, and if God created a world which he identified as good, then how did evil come to be? In our minds the moral universe is a closed system. If the input is perfect and there is no other force outside of the input, then the result should not be of a different character.

I recently wrestled with the question of how perfect moral agents (i.e. Adam and Eve) could sin. I have also taken a look at various theodicies as to why God may allow evil. But after a recent conversation with a friend, I realized that there is still a glaring aspect of the problem of evil which I haven't addressed. I may have thought through the moral motivations of Adam and Eve to sin or the motivations for God allowing evil, but how is evil philosophically possible in the first place? In this article I want to go beyond the exploration of the human and divine nature, and instead look at a proposed explanation for the metaphysical possibility of evil in a world whose source is morally perfect.