Unseen War

As part of my trip last week, I picked up (from a used book store, no less) and read Randy Alcorn's Edge of Eternity. It is an allegory of sorts, a cross between Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan and The Pilgrim's Regress by C.S. Lewis.

It was a good and powerful book, one of those that makes you sit and think - a great deal - after you read it.

It follows the story of Nick Seagrave, a business man who suddenly wakes up somewhere he does not recognize. He discovers that he is on a road, The Red Road, with other travelers, all on their way from the City of Erebus to the City of Charis. It chronicles his backslidings, his meeting with the Woodsman who helps him bridge the Chasm, and once the Woodsman carries him across the Chasm, the trials and tribulations as he travels onward. Eventually, he arrives at Charis, where meeting Elyon (who is the Woodsman and Christ) he is sent back to his life back in this world to serve until such time as he called again.

The part that sat deeply with me (the part I'll write about today, anyway) involved Seagrave as he looks over a field. He suddenly realizes it is a field of battle, with two sets of warriors intensely struggling against each other:

"The plain suddenly became an immense battlefield, full of great gladiators, with eyes of fire, lifting their swords against other warriors, these with cold shark eyes. The warriors of both sides seemed to be of the same stock, as if it was a civil war - the gray city of the east versus the bright city of the west. Some troops fought on the ground, some above it, as if the air had an invisible floor. Sparks flew off their swords and lightning bolts pierced the sky. Swords clashed against shields, and thunderclaps exploded. Even at a distance the noise was almost unbearable.

People, some of whom I'd just seen, walked on the ground underneath the great combatants. Now they appeared translucent, almost invisible. Most of them stepped casually, unguardedly, apparently unaware of the battle raging above and around them. One man was out on the battlefield in his underwear, lying on a recliner, sipping a soda. I laughed, but when I saw a huge warrior with a mace raised over him, I turned away, cringing as I hear a sickening crunch." (pp.73-74)

Seagrave will see this battle in brief time and time again, a sort of bifocal view of the universe, the seen and the unseen.

This passage above, as well as the concept, spoke deeply to me as I hurtled home on the airplane Wednesday night. It speaks of the unseen battle that rages around us over our eternal destiny, even as well blythely continue on without a clue. Paul in 2nd Corinthians speaks of the fact that though we walk in the flesh, "we do not war according to the flesh (10:3), and to the Ephesians he states that "...we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12).

But how often and in how many ways do I wander about this battlefield either uncaring, unaware, or just testing my luck? If I truly grasped the nature of the battle and the nature of the stakes involved - at least on a regular basis - shouldn't this change how I think and what I do? We would consider it an extreme act of foolishness if an individual randomly juggled hand grenades assuming that just because the pin was not pulled it would never go off - but when I, without thinking, allow things into my life which are maybe questionable and certainly not God glorifying, am I not doing the same thing? When I put myself on the precipice, do I grasp that sometimes the cliff crumbles?

God help me - indeed, God help us all - to remember every day the stakes that we are dealing in our own lives and the lives of others.