A couple of summers ago, my kids and I were swimming in a lake. Well, my kids had been swimming. I had been standing, supervising, and enjoying time with my family (and wondering what was beneath the surface that I couldn’t see—lakes are creepy). Everything was going, ahem, swimmingly until we all got out of the water.
My kids were fine. But they took one look at me and screamed because I was covered in small creatures—leeches. I don’t know if you’ve ever had leeches all over you. I grew up in the country, so this wasn’t my first rodeo. But still, it’s not a pleasant surprise. As water creatures go, leeches aren’t particularly dangerous. But they are obnoxious: You have to remove them one by one.
Why was I the target of these tiny blood-sucking water worms? Because I was being lazy.
You see if I had been actually swimming, like my kids were, moving from point A to point B, the leeches would have left me alone. They simply aren’t fast enough to swim along and latch on to people. But since I stood there, soaking in that lake, I made for an easy target.
There’s an analogy there, I think, for what it means to live in the world but not of the world. Culture is like the water we swim in: If we soak in it long enough, we’ll absorb its thinking and values without even knowing it. Before long, we’ve got “spiritual leeches”—sinful, even demonic, ways of thinking—attached to us and slowly sucking the life out of us.
If that sounds gross to you, I think it should. Which is part of the trouble with spiritual leeches. We don’t recognize them as the disgusting things they are.
So what’s the solution? What does it mean to “keep moving” in our war against spiritual leeches? The Apostle Paul would tell us that we need to be filled with the Spirit. When we’re filled with the Spirit, we’re engaging in spiritual warfare—against spiritual leeches and any other little buggers that come our way.
To engage in spiritual warfare, we need armor for the battle. When Paul taught about spiritual warfare in his letter to the Ephesians, the first piece of armor Paul picked up was the belt of truth (Ephesians 6:13). A belt might not be the first item you think of when defeating leeches, but go with me here.
In Paul’s day, a belt did more than secure your pants. All of the imagery of Ephesians 6, after all (drawn from Isaiah 11:4–5 and 59:17), is related to warfare. Paul is painting a picture of a warrior preparing for battle, not outfitting someone on their way to the golf course. And the belt of the warrior’s armor actually protected the midsection, the most vulnerable and exposed part of the body. Paul is saying, in essence, that we have to surround our vulnerable parts with the truth of God’s Word.
In the Garden of Eden, Satan’s first line of attack was about truth: “Did God actually say …?” and he’s been repeating that lie ever since (Genesis 3:1). The human quest is one for truth. Unfortunately, that quest often leaves us feeling completely lost.
Many determine truth by their internal moral compass, doing whatever feels right in the moment. The trouble is, what feels right and what is right don’t always align. Adam and Eve felt like listening to Satan was right. But Satan was lying to them. They weren’t following the truth; they were marching after a lie.
If we don’t have a firm foundation of God’s Word, we open the door to all manner of “leeches,” little lies that culture sends our way that just stick. For most people in the church, I’d say our problem isn’t that we outright reject God’s Word but rather that we’ve failed to learn what it says. We don’t train ourselves to know and recognize the truth.
When we engage with culture, we have to get serious about helping one another see and navigate the world through the lens of Scripture. This is especially important for parents, who need to train their kids to see their world through the lens of Scripture so they can surround themselves with the belt of truth.
This doesn’t mean we should only listen to K-Love or watch Christian television. I listen to and watch “secular” stuff, too. But as a parent, I take time to discuss what I’m watching with my kids.
I’ll ask questions like, “Was this glorifying? What does this present as our primary problem, and what does it point to as the primary savior?”
Recently, I did this for the Barbie movie and the Taylor Swift ERAS tour. (To which you might say, “Pastor, I’m questioning your entertainment choices.” To which I might say, “I have three daughters. Back off.”) But we asked questions like these:
- How does Taylor Swift see the world? What does she think is important?
- What does the Barbie movie say is wrong with the world? What’s the solution?
- What do these movies and entertainers get right? Where does the Bible present a different truth?
You may think that’s too overbearing as a parent, but see, I know the schemes of the Enemy. He presents falsehood in creative, fun, lighthearted, whimsical corruptions of truth. But every one of those corruptions is a spiritual leech, angling to attach itself to us.
This sort of thing isn’t just for parents, either. We all need to encourage each other to think with biblical categories. After all, social media companies and other media giants are constantly trying to feed us their narratives. They aren’t usually trying to make us more like Jesus. They want our attention and our money. So why would we just let them lead us around without thinking about where we’re headed? Why let them attach their ideas, like leeches, onto our immobile bodies and minds?
The good news in all of this is that although our Enemy is clever and strong, we don’t have to fear any of his schemes. He may be more creative and clever than us. But we have something he doesn’t—God’s Word. And when we put on the belt of truth, reminding ourselves of what God has said, then we’re gliding along the waters of culture, untouched by any of the creatures out there.
Photo Credit: SWN Design
Pastor J.D. completed his Ph.D. in Theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Chick-fil-A, serves as a Council member for The Gospel Coalition, and recently served as the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor J.D. and his wife Veronica are raising four awesome kids.
"Editor's Note: Pastor JD Greear's "Ask the Pastor" column regularly appears at Christianity.com, providing biblical, relatable, and reliable answers to your everyday questions about faith and life. Email him your questions at [email protected]."
