Day 3: Encounter With Our Enemy

We said there are three primary encounters we must face in solitude: An encounter with our self (and our pain), an encounter with our enemy, and an encounter with our God.

Up next on the docket is an encounter with our enemy.

In Matthew 4, we read a story of Jesus in the eremos. In verse 1, we read, “then Jesus was led by the Spirit” — meaning, this whole story is at God’s initiative — “to be tempted by the devil” — which can be translated, “For the purpose of being tempted by the devil.”

Do you find this story confusing? Why would the Spirit lead Jesus into solitude to be tempted by the devil?

For years, this made no sense to me. But the story clicked for me when I realized I had the whole thing backwards: The eremos isn’t the place of weakness. It’s the place of strength.

Now, this is not how most of us think about solitude — as the place we go to draw on God’s power to defeat the devil — but it is how the early followers of Jesus thought about solitude.

When you go into solitude, you encounter what they call “the three enemies of the soul.” Which were kind of like an unholy trinity at war with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The three enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We encounter the world — when we get a little distance from the noise of the world, we begin to realize just how many of the norms of our sinful society we have come to accept, how compromised our heart is, how we’ve lost our convictions. We encounter the flesh — the bent, warped desires in our own heart and body itself, all come up. And we encounter the devil — as demonic thoughts assault our mind.

The desert fathers and mothers offer this insight, based on the story of Jesus in Matthew 4. They point out that Jesus’ fight with the devil is not like a scene out of a Marvel movie; rather, it’s a quiet conversation in his mind between the truth of Scripture and the lies of the evil one. They saw the fight with the three enemies of the soul as primarily a war in our mind with evil thoughts.

But to get victory over the three enemies of the soul, we - like Jesus - have to go into solitude.

But this is not easy. As long as we stay tethered to our world of “diversion” — all the noise, crowds, entertainment, and doom scrolling that keep us from ever facing the dark underbelly in our own souls — we remain in bondage and never get free.

This is why the three enemies — all three, the world itself, the flesh, and especially the devil — do everything they can to keep us away from the eremos.

I call it “the resistance.” Ruth Haley Barton writes: “The practices of solitude and silence are radical because they challenge us on every level of our existence … All the forces of evil band together to prevent our knowing God in this way, because it brings to an end the dominion of those powers in our lives.”

If and when you attempt to go into the eremos, you will feel the resistance. But if you follow the Spirit into the quiet place, if you face whatever comes and draw on God’s power to fight evil, within and without, you will discover that on the other side of the struggle is freedom.

If you pay attention, you’ll start to notice that people who spend a lot of time in solitude are some of the most calm, tranquil, and joyful people you know. They just radiate this inner peace. But it’s a peace that was won by struggle.

Many people abandon solitude long before it does its work of liberation. The task is to persevere until the voice of the enemy is defeated by the voice of God.

Listen to Luke’s ending to the story: “And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.”

I believe this is the call of Jesus upon our generation: To go into solitude and come back in the power of the Spirit, free to set others free.