"The Real War"

In Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Captain Phoebus was surprised to be called upon to help Judge Claude Frollo rid Paris of gypsies. In his surprise, Captain Phoebus asked, "I was summoned from the wars to capture fortune-tellers and palm readers?" at which Frollo gestured down at the city and responded, "The real war, captain, is what you see before you."

Frollo was partly right. From our mortal perspective, the physical world can seem far more real than the spiritual world, yet, from an eternal perspective, the physical world lasts only for a brief moment on the eternal timeline. The battle for souls began before the physical world was created, and it'll last until after the world as we know it ceases to exist. If the gypsies really were threatening the souls of the denizens of Paris, as Frollo believed they were, that would be at least as great a concern as a physical war. Physical wars primarily destroy bodies, which we are all going to lose and regain anyway. The spiritual war can have much longer-lasting effects.

Of course, Phoebus was partly right, too, but not for the reasons he thought. No war is purely physical. In addition to the physical damage wars cause, they can also cause tremendous emotional, psychological, and spiritual harm. If the gypsies truly were harmless, as Captain Phoebus suspected, then it would be much more important for him to stop the physical wars than it would be to stop the gypsies.

But for most of us, our day-to-day lives don't involve physical battles. Instead, we fight spiritual battles that are just as real as battles in the physical world. We regularly fight in the war for souls, and regardless of Captain Phoebus' opinions, it is of vital importance that we will win it.