“The devil is a great intellectual.”

Eugene Peterson:

It is the devil’s own work to take the stories Jesus told (and the many other stories that provide so much of the content of our Scriptures) and distill them down to a truth or a moral that we can then use without bothering with the way we use them- unconnected from the people whose names we know or the local conditions in which we have responsibilities, apart from what we know about Jesus, who tells the story. The devil is a great intellectual. He loves getting us to discuss ideas about God. He does some of his best work when he gets us so deeply involved with ideas about God that we are hardly aware that while we are reading or talking about God, God is actually present with us, and the people whom he has placed in our lives to love are right there in front of us…

In order to respond rightly to this voice, this Word-made-flesh voice, we must listen and answer in our actual neighborhoods while eating meals of tuna casserole and spinach salad in the company of people who know us and whose names we know: our spouses and children, friends and fellow workers, just for a start. Nothing in general. Nobody anonymous. No disembodied or unvoiced words.

– “Sir, Let it Alone,” a sermon from Habakkuk 3 and Luke 13 in the wonderful collection of Peterson’s sermons, As Kingfishers Catch Fire.