Satan

Mar 3:26 And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand, but hath an end.
Alternative: And if adversity rouses action up against itself and is minimized, it cannot last but it has a purpose.

In the standard translation, this line seems to just rephrase other versus about kingdoms and houses divided, but it does much more than that.

First, it brings in the new concept, of "rousing people to action." The term translated as "rise up" is anistêmi (anistemi), which means "to make stand up," and "to raise up." If we understand that "satan" means "adversity," the verse sudden is discussing adversity forcing people to rise up and make a stand.

Next and most importantly, it introduces the idea of telos, that is, purpose. The term so often translation as "end" in the Gospels is actually " from telos, which means "performance," "result," "product," "outcome," "end," "achievement," "attainment," "goal," and "state of completion." In other words, it doesn't mean the "termination" of something but the consummation of something. When Christ talks about "the end of the world. it is closer in meaning to "the completion of the world or "result of the world."

In this verse, Christ is simply telling us the purpose of adversity. He is explaining that problems and suffering serve a purpose. Adversity cannot eliminate itself (Mar 3:23 discussed here). Nor is adversity caused by some war between the gods (a pagan view that unfortunately touches many versions of Christianity) . Adversity is subject to God's will as a "house" within his kingdom (Mar 3:25 discussed here).

Instead, adversity wakes up opposition in us against it. It exists to call us to action. Though the ideas seem at first similar to the words in the previous verses, the idea of adversity "rising up" against itself is added here, not to deny that it happens but to explain its purpose. In the previous verses, Christ describes the impossibility of adversity ejecting itself or dividing itself. However, those similar words are changed here.

This opposition to adversity ends up dividing or minimizing it. In the process, we learn and grow. This make each individual problem temporary, and adversity as a whole cannot stop us. This is the purpose of adversity.

Our Inner Demons

What does Christ mean when he describes people as houses in which in which an unclean spirit dwells (Mat 12:44 ). "Spirit" is from pneuma, which means "blast," "wind," "breath," "the breath of life," and "divine inspiration." If we define is simply as "conscious thoughts," we humans can be easily seen as house of "spirits," that is, a conglomerate of conflicting thoughts.

In Mat 12:43 Christ describes our minds as a home for thoughts, both good thoughts and bad thoughts. We can try to throw out our bad thought, but unless something better takes their place, our minds are an "empty house," and the bad thought will simply return and multiply (Mat 12:44). In the battle against our inner demons, we have to fill the house of our mind with something else, something better. A person who believes in nothing will fall for any thing.

Christ discusses these inner demons when he says (Mar 3:27) "No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house."

If our awareness is strong, we can protect our private fief of interior mental territory. However, if our conscious mind is enslaved by worthless habits, dominated by thoughts tied to our "bellies" and not our hearts , our personal demons. Once our conscious mind is bound, our house can be spoiled. In Christ system, the heart (relationships, feeling) must direct the mind, not the belly (physical desires). A pure heart allows the mind to see God.

Just take a step back from the traditional translation of the Gospels for a moment and ask yourself: what was Christ really doing when he was going around casting our demons? Was there are these possessed people wandering around back then or what his world more like our own: inhabited by a lot of people tortured by their own inner demons, their addictions, the lack of self control, the depression and so on? What we call a mental disorder today was just called a "demon" in his time.

Thinking in terms of people fighting their "inner demons" is a lot more useful than today's framework psycho-babble and alphabet soup of illusive mental disorders. Much of psychology has always been the type of magical thinking that says that if we give something a name, we understand it. We have found that drugs can affect the mind and the "demons" that inflict it, but what does this tell us really? I prefer to think that we do not understand the invisible realm of the mind, the nature of our consciousness, and our spirit. Psychology is just our pretending that we do.

Personalizing all demons as free floating evil disembodied characters with names and histories ala The Exorcist is just as problematic. First, leads to the excuse, "The devil made me do it." Next, it leads us to imagine a spiritual realm, whose characters, natures, and motivations we cannot understand. Whatever demons are, pretending that we understand the world of spirit in that sense is just an other form of self-deception.

However, thinking about our inner demons as an external force is valuable. As Christ says, a house divided against itself cannot stand. If the enemy is us, who do we fight? How can we fight ourselves? Instead, Christ says we must think of ourselves as the "strong one" who must defend ourselves against these outside forces. We can can get tied up by them, but we can still fight and get free. This view allows us to fight back, and, more importantly, seek the help of God in our fight.

The Authority of Christ

For Christ, his authority over physical disease and mental disorders is identical. In line with his general teaching, both forms of disability arise from a natural, if spiritual cause. In the modern era, we may see nature as solely materialistic, but Christ's view was that the physical was only what was apparent while the spiritual is what hidden. During Christ's era, people accepted that they couldn't see everything that was happening in nature. Today, we know about atoms and DNA, which were once hidden, but despite describing most of nature as "dark matter," and "dark energy," most materialists refuse to acknowledge that most of nature is still hidden, especially that there is "dark information" encoded in nature that we cannot see. By Christ's definition, that unseen or "dark information" is the essence of spirit.

While all of the world is temporary, the spiritual, that is, the underlying information that drives the universe and all life, is what persists over time. Matter and energy is rearranged, but rules, the knowledge, and the message persists and grows over time.

Christ's authority over people's disabilities and inner demons comes from the Holy Spirit, which has access to this underlying information. Part of that information, however, is the idea that adversity is part of the natural world and cannot be eliminated if the earth is to serve its purpose.

For Christ, the concept of adversity persists eternally even though individual instances of adversity come and go. An individual adversary, say a thief might be stopped by another adversary, say a competing thief, but this does not destroy the nature of adversity itself. This anthropomorphizing of adversity takes us away from what Christ is trying to explain about what is really going on in the universe.

Satan, Demons, and Life's Adversity

The Personalization of Evil

One Nation Under God

The Purpose of Adversity

Our Inner Demons

The Authority of Christ