Sowing doubt

“Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the public.” — a memo from a tobacco executive in 1969, outlining the smoking industry’s marketing strategy to suppress the then-growing body of evidence linking smoking to cancer.

They generated attack after attack to put in doubt what the studies increasingly found. If they didn’t sow doubt, they would lose clients.

Similarly, the devil’s main product is doubt. He will launch attack after attack against your faith. His goal? To keep his clients. To keep you out of prayer. To keep you discouraged. Don’t fall prey to him. Pray with faith.

* Adapted from Goldacre, Ben, Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks. Faber & Faber: New York, 2010. p. 109

Don’t cry if you won’t fight

Muhammad XII surrendered the grandiose castle complex of La Alhambra in Granada, Spain, without much of a fight in 1491. Built on a hill on three sides, this last outpost of Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula could have withstood siege indefinitely. But it is told that Ferdinand and Isabella sweetened a bloodless surrender offering untold riches to the sultan.

As he slowly left La Alhambra on his horse, Muhammad cried at thought of nearly 800 years of glorious Muslim reign in Spain coming to an end. His mother reproached him: “Don’t cry like a woman for that which you wouldn’t fight like a man.”

Christianity calls for us to fight. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers… — Eph. 6:12 KJV. We are not to sell out or otherwise surrender easily. If we have a price, the devil will buy us out.

Fight in such a way that you show you really intend to establish and maintain the glories of God’s kingdom.