Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:

  "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 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." (ESV)

This is a profound section of Scripture, with implications I can hardly grasp. The world in which we live has one reality that we see and one we do not.

Consider that history written in books records only man-made causation, but that the complete view of history—God’s view—includes unseen causes we can only imagine. Perhaps a country went to war, not because a leader objectively analyzed costs and benefits, but rather because he awoke grumpy from a sleepless night due to a bout of indigestion. Maybe the devil did make him do it.

In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis imagined the unseen world in the form of a Satanic tempter and his nephew. Lewis never pretended that the book was theology but rather an interesting thought experiment about the consequences of taking the unseen world seriously.

When something bad happens to us—an auto accident, perhaps—we ponder the events putting us precisely at the wrong place at the wrong time. At such moments, the theological import of Ephesians 6 is close at hand.

If we forget that the non-material spiritual world influences us, focusing only on our material one, we are no different than non-believers around us (Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City).

Of course, acknowledging the non-material world quickly forces us to wrestle with the problem of evil—why evil exists and whose fault it is. But that problem doesn’t go away if we focus only on the material world. Others more articulate than I have tried to explain—or explain away—the tension between believing ina good omnipotent God and the existence of pain and suffering.

At Food for the Hungry (FH), we humbly acknowledge that we cannot “solve” the philosophical problem of evil either. But we know that the same Bible that instructs us about the existence of the unseen world also tells us to alleviate suffering in the world we can see. Our behavior towards the poor and weak among us is one of the best indications of the health of another unseen world—our inner-self. I’m honored to work among people who acknowledge both worlds, who take seriously their obligation to make the material one better for others.

Will you join us in our work?