Will this maddening war ever end? It depends on which war you are talking about.

Have you ever heard of Operation Fortitude during WW2? Months before the massive Normandy invasion, the Allied forces used plastic blow-up dummy tanks filled with air and deceptive radio reports fooling the German Army into believing that they were going to invade Europe either through Norway or the far north-eastern part of France. The Allies’ objective was to distract the Nazi’s war machine by keeping them from engaging at the real front of action which was to be on the Normandy beaches in the central part of northern France. The goal was clear, if the Allies could get the Germans to focus their attention somewhere else than where the real battle was to be fought, the Allies would be able to gain the upper hand on establishing a beachhead on the sands of Normandy.

After the bloody battles of the Second World War were finally over, it was reported that Operation Fortitude was incredibly successful; so much so that when the official invasion of Normandy began, the German high command thought the reports of actual combat movements toward Normandy was nothing more than diversionary tactics. So to the Germans, the real war seemed fake, while the fake war seemed real.

So the question for us, is what is our real war? And are we being fooled in fighting battles of insignificance? Scripture makes it clear that we are daily being lied to by our enemy, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians‬ ‭6:12‬) And because our enemy is steeped in deceit, we must be constantly asking ourselves, “What war is Satan trying to keep us out of?”

A good place to start is our fascination with the silly and the mundane. One writer has said, “We have such little time here, and now we have to invent methods to murder it like the Mad Hatter. Pass it, use it, fill it, with flapdoodle and fornication. We have been presented with phony challenges, new frontiers; flat and fake ways to kill an afternoon.” Pascal calls this the tyranny of diversion. 

Our focus has been hi-jacked. 

But playing around with the silly and mundane, lands empty on the human psyche after a while, so we need to convince ourselves we have cataclysmic and desperately important issues to tackle. Indulging in folly and fantasy only lasts so long, so after the fun fades, we start chasing windmills like Don Quixote. We need to feel significant, we need to be the heroes of our own story. So we invent crises after crises to fight. We believe ourselves to be fully able to fix the many troubling problems of the world, and if we work hard enough we can usher in a golden age of utopian bliss. So we get serious, we get busy: let’s rid the world of COVID, completely eradicate it like we did the flu virus…oh…wait, we didn’t do that. But nonetheless, until we do we cannot rest, we cannot quit, we need to demand compliance from all. It is humanity’s war to win.

So let’s pretend that we can actually win, what’s next?

Well, we have to stay busy, more giants to slay. Look down the list, there is always something to fight for. Global warming is next in line, gender equality can’t be ignored, of course, LGBTQ rights will never abate because after a man becomes a woman, he may want to be a horse, and then a non-binary alien from the planet Zob, we must fight for his rights to be want he wants to be. (But who is actually stopping him, or her, or it?). Equity and reparations are still sitting in the hopper, destroying prejudice in the hearts of hillbillies must be tackled, (good luck with that), exterminate the bed bugs in New York’s sleazy hotels, and then when all else is accomplished we still have to “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” But what if I sing off-key? Re-education camp for you buddy!

We have battles to fight, and wars to win, so we better get busy!

In my humble and often unwanted opinion, all of these items are plastic blow-up tanks and fake radio messages meant to get us away from fighting the real war. Diversion, diversion, diversion. People around the world are martialling all their time and treasure to destroy these windmills of deception. 

So if this is deception, what is the real war? Where are the true battle lines to be drawn? Well, I get my front-line news from a source that has been around a long time. And I must say, the reporters who post the articles have never once steered me wrong or have used deception or deceit to get my attention; they have constantly been faithful to give the facts as they are reporting on what is really going on in this world. Here is what I have learned:

1. Bombs and missiles against mankind have been aimed at us for thousands of years now, and are soon to be released. Listen to Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” Wrath is going to rain down on us, but for now, we have been warned and it is being held back. Wait, wait, wait. So does this mean God is the real enemy we are fighting? No, you have it backward, listen to the next news report… 
2. We are the enemy God is trying to wake up and win over before the real fighting begins. First listen to Romans 5:10, “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” And earlier in the same news story, the reporter says the way he is trying get our attention is through patience and kindness “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”
3. Why, pray tell, is wrath our lot? Because the verdict has been rendered, listen to the court documents that are engraved in the heavenly halls of justice: “And this is the verdict: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” (John 3:19) So God is trying to get our attention to our plight. Deuteronomy 20:10-12 describes how God wages war, and if you notice he is still on part one of his battle strategy: “When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it. And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you. But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.”

If you read closely, we, all of mankind, are up against the army of the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so far this battle has not been fought with bombs and tanks, but the blood of Jesus. He is the peace emissary. Listen to this news report, “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.” (‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭5:18-19‬)

God wants you to accept his terms of peace. To humble your heart, and accept his rule. It is as simple as that. Listen to Colossians 1:12-14, “giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” But notice, before we are rescued, we are bound. We are part of the kingdom of darkness, the ones who use deception and lies to keep us on their team wearing the black uniforms of the enemy.

If we can be diverted by all these other issues like COVID, LGBTQ, world peace, we will never see our need for Jesus. Because once we have Jesus, the importance of these other battles we are fighting will lose their grip on us. We will realize they are diversionary, that God himself is actually working out the major details of each one of those issues.

Yes, you are important, you are loved. Not important because you can fix the world, but important because the one who made the world wants you as his. When you have God, all of these other issues become secondary, some even become silly, as Galatians 6:14-16 declares:

“As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world has been crucified, and the world’s interest in me has also died. It doesn’t matter whether we have been circumcised or not. What counts is whether we have been transformed into a new creation. May God’s peace and mercy be upon all who live by this principle; they are the new people of God.”

What counts, what really matters, is whether we have been transformed into a new creation. That is where the battle is actually raging.