The Devil’s War on Silence
by Dan Burke Tuesday, October 01, 2013 7:03 PM Comments (73)
There are key strategies of indirect attack that the enemy of our souls
uses to significantly disrupt our spiritual progress. One is the
corruption of human sexuality. As the analogy of holy spousal love is
one of the most effective in understanding divine intimacy, the enemy
desires to corrupt human sexuality in order to further obscure what it
means to understand the possibilities of union with God.
Similarly, there is another indirect attack that wreaks havoc on the
soul’s ability grow in intimacy with God — noise. In our culture, noise
is everywhere. Day after day, our peace is invaded by television screens
at gas pumps screaming ads and programming at us, music in stores, and
thousands of television, internet and radio encounters that pump this
poison into our souls.
Recently, I spent some time with a relative who appears to be
spiritually dead. Her daily routine looks something like this: Rise,
turn on the TV and get ready. Leave the TV on until daily activities
take her from home — time to get in the car and turn on the radio to
listen to music or talk radio or to make phone calls. Once back home,
turn on the TV again until it is time to go to sleep (or sleep with it
on). When I asked if she ever allowed for silence (as she reports that
she prays often and is “spiritual”), she guffawed as if I were
suggesting she enjoy a bowl of dry oatmeal.
I wish this were different with some of my Catholic friends (who I am
sure I will be in trouble with once they read this). I am thinking of
one, in particular, who is faithful and who does have a desire to know
the Lord. However, she can’t seem to make the time (or exercise the
will) to incorporate silence into her life in order to listen, hear and
learn the voice of God. She will complain from time to time that she
never seems to hear from God, but any suggestion of the need to
cultivate silence is met with an irritated glance.
Sometimes we are simply afraid to stop and listen. Coming out of a
disastrous youth myself, I had a great deal of emotional pain to deal
with. My own thought life was out of control, and once any emotional
event invaded my life, those thoughts often ran a torturous course
throughout the coming hours, days and nights. Many people suffer these
same challenges, such that silence becomes a threat. It becomes a place
where we are confronted with those things that God desires to heal — a
healing we often resist. For me, the enemy tormented me through the sins
of others, then I compounded these sins with my own, and then the
master musician of deception proposed a solution that I took hook, line
and sinker — noise, distraction, and lots of it. With no silence in my
life, I couldn’t hear God’s voice calling and leading me out of the
pain. Cycle complete.
Here’s an insightful rant from C.S. Lewis, through the character of the senior demon in his masterpiece, The Screwtape Letters:
Those who understand the realities of how God works and speaks to us
know that silence is critical for the health of our souls and to develop
any degree of intimacy with God. We must cultivate times of silence
daily if we are to learn to hear his voice. If the Lord seems a mere
distant reality to you, maybe it’s because the enemy has sucked you into
his plan of noisy distraction. He is working overtime to ensure that
God’s voice never makes it past the noise you have allowed into your
life: the noise of busy-ness, the noise of entertainment, the noise of
news, the noise of music (even Christian music), and even the noise of a
prayer life limited to vocal prayer (yup).
So maybe it is time to choose to face the silence, even if it means a
bit of spiritual surgery. I have never met anyone who has taken this
challenge and has regretted it.
We must be still to know that God is, and to find the healing and
fulfillment that can only come through a living relationship with him.
Ironically, it is when we are surrounded by silence that we can hear the
most.
Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/dan-burke/the-devils-war-on-silence#ixzz2hCYiOAN5
