Spiritual Warfare and the Dialectic Process: Sucking the Poison From the Snake Bite

“Spiritual Warfare isn’t something we do; it is something we are in.”

If I were to insult you, you would feel the sting immediately. If I were to embarrass you, you’d be the first to know. But if I were to deceive you…you might never know it. As painful as being insulted or embarrassed can be, at least you are aware of what is taking place. But deception can be deadly because you don’t realize you are being betrayed, misled, seduced or ensnared. Tragically, many go to their graves deceived, without ever being confronted by the truth. Wounds of this nature cut deeper, and take longer to heal.

As a general rule, we as a populace don’t want to be thought of as people that are deceived. After all, as Americans, it is embarrassing. We like to think that we lead the world, so the idea that we might have the wool pulled over our eyes is unthinkable. (Well…at least we don’t want to think about it.) But we have been deceived, and most of us don’t have a clue. This is of course no surprise to people in other countries who are free of our American propaganda machine, and therefore have a clearer perspective. But don’t feel too bad; a lot of them are deceived, too, so we are all in the same boat. We are in a war—a war for our hearts, minds and souls. Any student of strategy knows that war is deception at its very center, and it isn’t limited to your country of origin.

Or for that matter, your faith. This is a spiritual war, after all—THE spiritual war that was waged in the beginning, and has ravaged history since the Garden of Eden. It is true that the outcome of the war has been decided—we have already won because of the finished works of Jesus Christ; but there are still skirmishes being played out. We are still being shot at, and there are still casualties, and by and large we can handle that. We expect it. What we don’t want to deal with as Christians is the notion that we could be duped by anyone, least of all the Enemy—the concept would threaten our image of being the holy protectors of Truth. As a result, we have left ourselves vulnerable to attack. God promises that He will help us handle any problem we may face, but no problem can be handled until it is faced. Jesus wanted us to face this problem, and gave several warnings to that effect.

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Matthew 10:16.

“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Matthew 7:15.

“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Matthew 24:24.

Jesus is saying that the greatest danger for his followers will come from within the body of Christ, and will come in the form of deception. The warnings are there for our protection—remember, the term antichrist means not only ‘in opposition to Christ’, but also ‘a substitute for Christ’. It follows then that his (antichrist’s) supporters will think they are following Christ. If we are not up to speed on the method of deception that will be used, then we will be misled.

So who is this guy that wants to deceive us so badly? The first reference to the Enemy in Scripture is ‘nachash’ {naw khawsh}, or ‘serpent’ (Genesis 3:1). He is described as ‘more subtle than any beast of the field’. The root of this word is ‘to hiss or whisper a magic spell, divine [the verb, not the adjective], enchanter’—he is a seductive liar; the reigning expert when it comes to deception.

At the early part of the last century, a group of Transformational Marxists (collectively known as the Frankfurt School, many of whom were members of various occult societies) analyzed the sentence structures in this very passage in Genesis that nachash used to deceive Eve. From this Master Deceiver, they built a psychological warfare weapon designed to topple the West that, when followed, can have no other results but deception, confusion, oppression and moral decay; and they packaged it, wrapped it up, and called it the Salvation of the Masses. In its structure, it persuades people to reject traditional thinking, to discard all objectivity in truth and to justify the abandonment of all Godly principles in order to bring them under control. Their control. Nachash’s control. Unfortunately, we have not only been taken by this deception, but we have embraced it from top to bottom, and are actively using this process of deception in almost every area of our lives, including education, business training, anti drug campaigns, conflict resolution training, diversity training, leadership programs, and, yes, even church growth programs.

It goes by many names: Hegelian Dialectic, Diaprax, the Consensus Process, the the Delphi Method. It uses the most gentle of weapons: feelings. Everyone has them. They are a fierce motivator. They help us appreciate beauty. They enable us to empathize with people. They are at once fragile and frighteningly powerful. They can be used to heal, but the way they are used in this process is nothing short of diabolical: they are used to help you to deceive yourself.

The word ‘dialectic’ is defined as ‘the Hegelian process of change in which a concept or its realization passes over into and is preserved and fulfilled by its opposite’. Okay, I have no idea what that means. How is something ‘preserved and fulfilled by its opposite’? Well, another way of saying that is ‘development through the stages of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis in accordance with the laws of dialectical materialism’. Okay, I admit, that wasn’t much better. Let’s try to figure this out.

A thesis is a position. Antithesis must mean the opposite or the contrast of the position. Synthesis is a combination of different parts to make a whole, or a mixture. So the dialectic is when you take a position and a contrasting position and combine them to make a third way. In this case, it contrasts your intellect (thesis) and your feelings (antithesis) in order to transition you to a compromise. It pulls you away from your standard. This is what the serpent did. He convinced Eve that there was a way to have her 'forbidden fruit' and eat it too, but the end product was not Truth, it was death. It seemed like truth, but it missed the mark. (The word sin is an archery term, meaning ‘to miss the mark’; that means anything that is not a perfect bullseye.) It takes a human being from the Traditional factual absolute certainty of the Unchanging God to the confused, bound mind of the occult. It Transitions an individual from a lover of God’s Word into social-psychologist; a social creature into a Transformational Marxist, and does it all without them knowing it is happening.

FIRST CAUSE		THESIS (Position)	ANTITHESIS (Contrast)	SYNTHESIS (Compromise)
"Is" "God said" "Law"		THESIS (Position)	ANTITHESIS (Contrast)	SYNTHESIS (Compromise)
Thesis Stage	Cognitive Domain	1. Position	2. Negation	3. Determination
Antithesis Stage	Affective Domain	4. Definition	5. Conflict	6. Necessitation
Synthesis Stage	Psychomotor Domain	7. Realization	8. Mediation	9. Causation

The process first attacks the intellectual mind, then the emotional, and finally it can dictate your behavior. These are referred to as the Cognitive, the Affective and the Psychomotor Domains. The Thesis in the left column represents the Cognitive Domain; the Antithesis below it represents the Affective Domain; and the Synthesis below it represents the Psychomotor Domain. (Intellectual--Emotional--Actional) Each of these is then taken through Position, Contrast and Compromise.

Genesis 3:1-7a (NIV) ^“1Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The serpent enters into Thesis Interrogation by intoning, ‘Did God really say?’ and implying ‘It doesn’t make sense that you have all of these trees around and you must not eat from any tree in the garden. How does that make you feel?’ He is not asking her intellectual position on the matter; he is attempting to get her to use her feelings to question the validity of it. (The purpose of feelings is not evaluation, they are insufficient for that task. Feelings are a good warning system but a lousy troubleshooter.) Also, God never said ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden.’ That of course is absurd—the trees were placed there for the very purpose of eating, but he is trying to get Eve to question the authority, to mistrust God. He is asking for Eve’s Position [Phase 1] (First Cause) —He then attempts to control the Environment of the dialogue by producing the right to say “No” or to Negate [Phase 2] the First Cause. Instead of conforming to the Authority of God, he is suggesting that Eve could take that place herself. The implication seems harmless: ‘Can you look at this another way?’ The mere fact that he brought it up (through atonal implication) dictates that she ‘should be’ able to Determine [Phase 3] if there is another option. Now the authority is no longer God, it is Eve. Obedience is thus circumvented, because she is now her own authority. This completes the SYNTHESIS of the Cognitive Domain where cognition (awareness and judgment) is manipulated.

Eve now is asked to ‘explain that further’ or give a Definition of her position (thesis) [Phase 4] so as to avoid wrong information. This also feeds the ego; whenever a person is put into the role of ‘instructor’ there is a rise in the need for acceptance. She becomes eager to please the serpent with her explanation.

²The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, ³but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

If you compare her definition to what God told Adam in the previous chapter, you will find some subtle differences.

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, "you are free to ear from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

Her version is a little different. “God did say, ‘You must not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle (now ambiguous) of the garden, and you must not touch it’” (now dissatisfied because of feeling), She has done two things: 1) She has ever so slightly changed what God said. He named the tree; she only gave its current location, and 2)

By trying to ‘explain it a little further’ she actually expanded what was said to make it ‘seem’ easier to understand how important it is. But as soon as the words came out of her mouth, she has to face the internal Conflict [Phase 5] of her change and addition to what God said. (God never told her she couldn’t touch it-Eve has added this based upon her imperfect understanding) Now there exists a bit of chaos and ambiguity where before there was none. The declaration of the consequence: ‘or you will die.’ Necessitates [Phase 6] that she look at herself as ‘no longer subject to the Higher Authority’ since she has already abandoned what He has said. It has now become necessary to look for another answer or definition instead of relying on her preset standard; she ‘should’ be able to ‘think for herself’. This completes the SYNTHESIS of the Affective Domain where feelings are manipulated.

4"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

The serpent has invited Eve into ‘partnership’ (denotes equality of risk, reward, responsibility, and authority) with God by asking her to ‘consider the alternatives’. Eve comes to the Realization [Phase 7] that she can obtain great stature and that this is the only reason God didn’t want them to eat the fruit, because He knows she and her husband will be His equals.

⁶^"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom,"

Eve looks at the fruit and it ‘appears’ to be good for nutrition and she ‘desires’ to gain wisdom. Her decision is tainted by the fact that Adam is standing right there and he isn’t disagreeing with either her or the serpent, so she takes his silence as affirmation or agreement. Her ‘evaluation of the situation is tainted with the fear of the loss of approval’ from both Adam and the serpent. It is very ‘reasonable’ that the ‘most practical’ thing to do would be to eat it. She decides to Mediate [Phase 8] for herself. She is now struggling whether or not to obey the command of God (position), or to compromise what she knows is wrong for the sake of acceptance from Adam and the serpent (relationship). If she does disobey God, there is a payoff: it will fulfill her desire for wisdom, and her desire to be able to determine her own life. There is no indication that she touched the fruit, but if she did, she would have realized that she did not die, and it would seem to have confirmed the mistrust that the serpent implanted in her. So, ‘she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.' The act produces an effect or Causation [Phase 9]

⁷^"Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked;”

In the aftermath of verses10-13 we see the continuous process of justification of their sin (rebellion against First Cause). This completes the SYNTHESIS of the Psychomotor Domain where behavior is manipulated.

The dialectic teaches you to compromise your standard for your desires and for the sake of relationship. If you are positional, then relationship must take a back seat; if you are relational, then position takes a back seat. This creates cognitive dissonance (holding two contradictory concepts in the mind at once) and is the basis for brainwashing. Remember, all modern information we have about mind control has its roots in the occult. (The Nazis, who came from Germany’s occult Thule Society developed all their mind control techniques from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.) Truth is no longer dependable or even real; it becomes a perspective. It is relative to what you want, and shapes all data to fit whatever mold will justify your behavior, but at the cost of your rational mind.

The opposite of dialectic is didactic, which is defined as ‘designed or intended to teach’ or ‘to convey information or instruction’. It comes from an authority position, a foundation of Absolute Truth--truth that is true whether or not we believe it. Didactic reason analyzes what is known, and anything that is suspected must reconcile with what is known. That which is known is constantly tested to be sure that it is true. If we find something that we can demonstrate to be true over a period of time (such as gravity) it comes to be known as law. We know that gravity works. In the truest sense of the word, laws like this cannot be broken. The law of cause and effect is never untrue. Sometimes you can circumvent the effects of a law, but the law itself is not broken. (Bernouli’s Principle in an airplane foil does not nullify the law of gravity; it makes use of another law having to do with high pressure moving to low pressure. Remove that factor, and gravity takes over; the plane will crash.)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The term used is logos, which means a conception or idea; reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning, calculating; account, i.e. answer or explanation in reference to judgment. Quite a contrast to nachash, wouldn’t you say? God is the foundation of all things rational. He is the Standard; the fixed point of reference.

We all naturally gravitate toward the didactic system. We have done so because it makes the most sense and it produces the best results. The scientific method is based upon didactic reason. It is not something that carried a majority poll. In the didactic, truth governs desire; in the dialectic, desire governs truth.

Let’s compare these two systems. Think of a picket fence. Julie and Frank are two neighbors who are building their own picket fences. Julie uses a didactic method; Frank, a dialectic method. Julie has ‘master picket’, a template from which all of the slats will be cut. She traces the shape of the master onto the board and then cuts along the line. New board-same template traced again. Her fence looks gorgeous.

Frank, on the other hand, uses the previous picket to trace the next. Each new picket is not traced from a master copy, but from the one cut just before it. Any errors in the cutting or tracing get passed along and accumulate. Frank has the weirdest looking fence on the block. You can see the evolution of his pickets, starting out strait, thin and tall, and then ending up fatter and distorted, because he refused to reconcile the latter pickets to the original one.

We have a problem: we have been poisoned. Some say it was the apple (forbidden fruit) that was poisoned, but I have a feeling it is more like snake venom. Adam and Eve’s compromise was not liberating, it was condemning. When poison is introduced to the body there are only three options:

There are no other alternatives. There is no such thing as peaceful coexistence with poison. What method do we use to get us out of this jam? Do we follow nachash or Logos? Dialectic or Didactic?

When Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden, God promised a Deliverer, who would take our punishment upon Himself in order to reconcile us to the Father. Jesus’ favorite title for himself was ‘the Son of Man’, claiming the role of that kinsman redeemer (literally, ‘Adam’s son’ is Son of Man). That is God’s prescribed solution. The serpent has suggested to us that we try to make it better ourselves. So which one is better?

That was the choice of two brothers who made offerings to the Lord; Cain and Abel. Cain chose the solution by his own hand, the fruit of his own labor. Abel realized that he couldn’t do it by himself; that choosing his own way was his parents’ mistake. He realized that if salvation was to come, it would have to come from outside of himself—a sacrifice of an innocent Lamb. This was God’s plan. In the end, Abel’s offering was accepted and Cain’s was not.

In this war for our hearts and minds, that is the ultimate choice we must make. Who are we going to ally ourselves with? Will we choose nachash (the liar) so we can have our own way for the moment, but lose fellowship with God? Or will we accept the gift that Logos has offered freely, and be reconciled to God through His finished works? I suppose we don’t have to answer the question. We can leave the problem unsolved and do nothing, and the poison will eventually kill us. To some people, it is an acceptable cost. To others, submitting to Truth and living is better than submitting to Lies and dying.