By Emily Lewis
When I was in high school my dad introduced a new figurine to our mantelpiece nativity set. It was a sinister looking red dragon that perched atop the porcelain stable, grimacing down at the farm animals as if waiting to snatch away the infant Jesus. This was, of course, a reference to the account of that event in Revelation 12, and my three brothers were thrilled to have some much needed grit added back to a story that had been made innocuous by the retelling.
My father was making a larger statement, one he made countless times during our formative years, to lend meaning to both the decisions and the tragedies of our existence. He always told us, "Life is war."
My grandfather and RWI founder, Ralph Winter, wrote, "Once Satan is in the picture—if we believe he is—no amount or kind of harsh or heartless evil should be unexpected. When we reinstate his existence as an evil intelligence loose in God’s creation, only then do a lot of things become clear and reasonable. Suffering, in a perverse way, starts to make sense." Whether making sense of things this way is new to you, or a concept you've grown up with, I invite you to explore it further on our Warfare Worldview page.
