Glorious War

I feel like I might have sent or implied a wrong message in my last blog post. I blogged about how conflict isn't always the right answer, and while I did include a small caveat to my blog post (as I usually do), I think I may have advocated peace a little too strongly, or rather, I may have advocated a potentially unhealthy degree of peace. Naturally, peace is good when you can get it, but when the stakes are high enough and the conflict can't be peacefully resolved, it is important to go to war.

Satan is not peaceful, and he cannot be entirely avoided. That leaves us with few options. As much as I would like to have Satan as a tough coach or personal trainer, I have to acknowledge that he is what he is: my immortal enemy, immortal both in that I cannot kill him and in that he is attacking my immortal soul. Granted, that still doesn't mean that I need to hate him, and I still think that hatred is toxic and should be discouraged for our own sakes, no matter how deserving the subject of our hatred is. But even if I don't hate Satan or anyone else, I still need to fight against him and his many minions as hard as I possibly can. I can't be a pacifist and still win the war for my soul, let alone anyone else's. Satan is invading my mind and heart and those of countless other people, and we need to drive him out. That means engaging in spiritual conflict. We must join, and fight valiantly in, this "glorious war."

I call it a "glorious war" for two reasons. One, it matches the tagline of the game I played yesterday. The opportunity for symmetry here is too good to pass up. And two, this war is all about glory. It's not that fighting in this war will earn us martial glory or anything silly like that, but the result of this conflict will determine which Kingdom of Glory we end up in after the war ends. Those are the stakes Satan is fighting for; he is trying to keep as many people as possible from achieving Celestial Glory. To that end, he uses against us every tactic he can think of, and we need to fight back just as fiercely in order to successfully defend our own souls and the souls of those we love.

As Elder Holland has said, "We are at war." We cannot escape it, and we must not ignore it. Satan is attacking us. We must fight back, if only to defend ourselves. Our souls and the souls of countless others depend on our valiant engagement in this spiritual conflict. So, though I would greatly prefer peace, I must admit that we have to go to war, because the "magnificent peace" I hope for can only be achieved through victory in this "glorious war."