What do the powers-that-be in our secular society resist acknowledging?
Angels, spirits, principalities, powers, gods, Satan— these, along with all other spiritual realities, are the unmentionables of our culture. The dominant materialistic worldview has absolutely no place for them. These archaic relics of a superstitious past are unspeakable because modern secularism simply has no categories, no vocabulary, no presuppositions by which to discern what it was in the actual experiences of people that brought these words to speech. And it has massive resistance even to thinking about these phenomena, having fought so long and hard to rid itself of every vestige of transcendence.1Here is someone else who has begun to frankly talk:
To a degree far beyond current recognition, the myth of materialism has served as such an integrating agent for modern society, but it has been an integration bought at the cost of what is most human, most aesthetic, and most meaningful in life.2
Having repressed the spiritual so long, however, we no longer have ready access to it. The wells of the spirit have run dry. We can scarcely rediscover in a few generations what it has taken the race millennia to learn by costly trial and error. So we find ourselves returning to the ancient traditions, searching for wisdom wherever it may be found. We do not capitulate to the past and its superstitions, but bring all the gifts our race has acquired along the way as aids in recovering the lost language of our souls.3
How much will we allow ourselves to see? to hear? to understand?
Does Satan Exist? (Amazing Polly: Dec 3, 2019, Time: 28:43) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsWIPv4TZzQ
Where are we experiencing evil disguised as the divine? Where are we experiencing the divine perceived by everyone as evil? How can we discern the difference? The struggle is most redemptive when if one enters it fully committed to discovering and doing the will of God to the very limit; that is, to seeking the creative transformation latent in the situation in which one finds oneself at any given moment. It is the “satanic” aspect of God’s will— justice, mercy, and truth misperceived as evil by the Powers That Be— that constitutes the threat and, simultaneously, the effectiveness of nonviolent civil disobedience.4---------------------/
1. Wink, Walter. Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence: 2 (Powers, Vol 2) (Kindle Locations 129-133). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.
2. Ibid. , (Kindle Locations 144-146). (Bold emphasis added.)
3. Wink, Walter; Collected Readings, (pp. 64-65). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.
4. Wink, Walter. Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence: 2 (Powers, Vol 2) (Kindle Locations 909-913). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.
