Engage, Don’t Demonize

I had lunch with a good friend this week, and we lamented the demonization today of almost every public figure by some group or other public figure.

Since I’ve written two novels about demons and spiritual warfare, with the second, Nation On The Edge, set in Washington, D.C. with demons lying to our country’s leaders, and since I also tend to succumb to the temptation to disparage those with whom I don’t agree on policies, I thought I better write this post to myself, as much as to others.

I absolutely believe that Evil exists and that demons are real. I’ve studied scripture and the writings of gifted theologians on spiritual warfare, and my conclusions are available to you for free. Just send me an email at parker@parkerhudson.com, and I’ll forward a PDF Summary to you.

The key points are that spiritual warfare is not between demons and angels. That war was fought long ago, and the demons lost, which is why they inhabit the Earth. No, spiritual warfare is between us as believers and those same demons for the eternal souls of our family members and everyone else. We’re not observers—we are the combatants, using for weapons our prayers, our words (speaking God’s revealed Truth), and our actions. So buckle up and get serious. This is your battle and mine for the souls of the next generation.

And that’s an important point about demons’ true motivation and goals. The demons are focused on using any levers they can to keep humans confused, prideful, and believing that they don’t need a Savior, so that they will spend eternity estranged from God.

Demons don’t care about whether people or policies are Republican or Democratic, per se—they just want to mislead as many people as they can about God’s intent for His creation, and then also sow strife, discord and hate between people so that His Truth rarely sees the light of day. And God’s all-important Salvation message is then buried under our pride, lies and mistrust, from the highest levels of government to the family living room.

Let me be clear: I do believe that there are totally possessed evil leaders in the world today who think it’s acceptable to control, repress and take from others using violence and even war. Those are clearly evil leaders.

But I also don’t think there are leaders like that in our country, and we do great harm to our nation and to our future when we equate them.

I do believe that many leaders in our country are misled and harm us when they act on the lies they are told—hence my novel, Nation On The Edge. But the important distinction is that they are misled, not evil. As Paul says in Ephesians 6, our battle is not with flesh and blood, but with the demonic spirits and their lies.

As a conservative/libertarian Christian I believe that America’s uniqueness derives from the protection of our God-given individual freedoms and from our emphasis on personal responsibility and initiative. And these same freedoms also create the best environment in which to share God’s truths with others, without restriction. So it’s natural for me to disagree with leaders who push for more and bigger government, socialism, or identity politics, all of which tend to suppress individual free expression. From my lived experience for 78 years, those policies also happen to be wrong, and never work as the seemingly attractive underlying lies try to persuade us.

But I have to be careful. If I make the jump to believe that those who promote these policies are evil, beyond the pale, and trying to destroy our country, then they become the demonic enemy, not to be reasoned with, but rather to be ignored, mocked, or totally destroyed. And anything else they say or do must then be equally as evil, and should be opposed without further thought.

Interestingly, this characterization of policy differences as Good vs Evil is also a neat trick that makes my life simpler, because by invoking it I amabsolved of the responsibility to fully research the issue and to create a winning argument for the opposite course of action. If I can dismiss these ideas and actions by simply calling their advocates names, then that saves me a lot of time, thought and work. But it’s ultimately selfish, actually aids the demonic forces to keep others trapped in their lies, and won’t ever change anything.

I really dislike much of President Trump’s personal behavior and seeming focus on himself. And I disagree with him on several major policy issues, like across-the-board tariffs and refusing to tackle the entitlements which are bloating our national debt, pushing up interest rates.

But I don’t think he is evil, and I give him high marks for many other policy decisions which I think are exactly what we need. So it depresses me when those on the other side dismiss anything and everything he does as, well, a whole raft of adjectives that essentially mean evil and deranged. For them, nothing he can do can possibly be correct or good policy. Everything is a product of his evil intent to destroy our nation. Really?

My personal challenge is not to fall into the same trap and similarly label as evil or crazy those who want open borders, fewer police, more government regulation, or more spending. Because, again, if I go there as a lazy cop-out, then I won’t have to do the work to make an effective counter argument.

Our country has several real, huge problems which will never be solved by name calling from the sidelines, but only by coming together in the middle to enact real solutions. Among these are:

Workable Immigration Reform to include the Dreamers, Work Permits, and Whom to actually Deport/Invite

Border Security

Reducing the National Debt significantly and soon

Entitlements like Social Security and Medicare which will soon be bankrupt

A “next war” focused, complete and expensive Military Upfit

The Higher Education Industry and its Financing through Student Loans

Mideast Peace

An “all of the above” Energy Policy

Simplified Tax Reform

Russian Aggression and Rebuilding Ukraine

Common sense Climate Policy

The War on Drugs

Affirmative Action Gerrymandering

The last point is both a goal and a potential big step toward achieving the larger goal of ending our habit of demonizing each other. As I’ve written before, the unintended consequence of Affirmative Action is that in an attempt to achieve some sort of racial balance we now have almost 100% legally gerrymandered districts; we’ve created districts that are only either majority Red or majority Blue, and making it easy and almost mandatory to portray the other side as despicable/crazy/the enemy.

We should go back to making Congressional Districts out of a logical group of geographic counties. Or, worst case, a split-county district should look like a circle or a rectangle, not a spider. That way politicians will have to learn how to appeal to a wider range of local constituents of all persuasions, and how to build a centrist consensus to get elected, before they go to Washington. Hopefully that experience will then make them more effective as they craft national laws nearer the center for how we should live together.

Here’s a suggestion. Find one or more policy areas which you feel passionate about and learn all you can about it.  Artificial Intelligence apps make it really easy to do so. Or you can look over to the right of this post and scroll to the Categories and Tags, and there you’ll find over a hundred posts on all sorts of subjects, typically with several references for further investigation. If we agree or disagree on a subject, pen a productive Comment, or send me an email.  We’ll engage.

Some of our political leaders are wrong about some or even many of their policies and actions. But they are not the enemy. They are deceived by the real enemy. Keep that in mind and engage, don’t demonize.