Geese and Satan and How to Fight Them

This morning, I watched a video that demonstrated how geese ward off other creatures: through intimidation. The video noted that geese aren't physically powerful. If it came to a fight between a goose and almost any other creature, the goose would almost certainly lose. But the goose prevents most fights by either running away from it or, more often, by scaring others away. Because of this, the video pointed out that the first thing you need in order to fend off an attacking goose is the resolve to stand and fight it.

This reminds me of Satan. Satan is, physically, very weak, and he's not terribly strong spiritually either. If it can down to a battle of wills between Satan and virtually any other person, the other person would probably when. Actually, the other person would definitely win. Satan cannot force anyone to do anything against their will, thus anyone's will (at least as far as their own soul is concerned) is always stronger than his. Because we are so much stronger than Satan, our best tactic against him is to develop the resolve to stand and fight.

Of course, Satan differs from geese in some rather serious ways. While geese try to scare their adversaries off, Satan tries to defeat us using stealth and subtlety, thus, when we stand against him, we have to stand vigilantly as well as courageously. In order to fend Satan off, we have to notice it when he's attacking us.

This is easier said than done, but it's virtually the only thing keeping us from defeating him. We have to keep an eye out for Satan's attacks, and we need to be ready defend ourselves against him. If we can identify his attacks, we can resist him. Like a goose, he knows that he cannot win a head-on fight, which is why we need to give him one.

Against both geese and Satan, our best defense is to have the resolve to stand against them, no matter how subtle, how intimidating, or how relentless their attacks. These are battles that we can win. In fact, they're battles we can only lose by not having enough resolve and wisdom to fight them.