Dragons Can Be Beaten

Neil Gaiman, paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton, once wrote, "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

This is a large part of why I love fantastical stories. In such stories, heroes face overwhelming odds and terrible opposition, and they still win. Like those heroes, we too face overwhelming opposition, and like those heroes, we too can win.

On rare occasions, I sing "The Impossible Dream (The Quest)" from Man of La Mancha, and I relate that dream and the rest of the lyrics to our mortal struggle, "To dream the impossible dream [of perfection and exaltation, and] to fight the unbeatable foe [Satan]." I justified the term "unbeatable" here because, while we can drive Satan back, we can't stop him for good. We can't kill him. We can't permanently shut him up. No matter how many times we drive him off, he keeps coming back. Through his sheer relentlessness, he is unbeatable, yet that's not quite true. Satan is beatable. The only problem is that we have to keep beating him, over and over again, for our entire lives and maybe then some. Sure, Satan is immortal, but so (in a sense) are we. Our immortal souls can endure just as long as Satan can, and if we keep fighting, we will ultimately reach a destination that is far beyond his reach. We can beat him by making it back to our home instead of letting him drag us down to his.

We can ultimately defeat Satan, and we can defeat him in our day-to-day battles as well. He may be invulnerable, but he's not unbeatable. We don't have to kill him in order to defeat him; we just need to make sure we don't let him defeat us. We not fighting to the death; we're fighting to the spiritual death, and that's a battle that Satan has already lost. Spiritual death is separation from God. Satan has already died, spiritually. We just need to make sure that we don't do the same. That's easier said than done, but it's still possible.

Satan can be beaten. It just takes an epic, heroic effort.