I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!— 2 I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, 6 being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.

2 Corinthians 10:1-6

Everybody has a worldview. Even if you don’t know what a worldview is. In simple, non-technical terms, your worldview is how you see and interpret the world around you and in you. A definition from the New Oxford American Dictionary says it is a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world. Your worldview is a creature of your mind. What you think and what you believe about the world around you and about yourself.

Spiritual warfare is, to a large extent, though not totally, a thing of the mind. The Principalities and Powers who war against us do it largely through our minds, both individually and collectively. Every culture has a dominant worldview. In the United States, that worldview used to be primarily a Biblical worldview. Although not all of the founding people were born-again Christians, they virtually all believed that God created the world and that he would judge the world. That was a major component of our founding worldview. That worldview has greatly diminished and seems to be the dominant worldview in America no longer.

How you think of yourself

A more personal dimension of our worldview is how we think of ourselves. According to various surveys that have been done in the past few years, most Christians don’t think of themselves in terms of a Biblical worldview. This is a major battlefield in the spiritual warfare in which we are engaged. I would venture that most of those Christians who do not hold a Biblical worldview toward themselves are battling some strongholds that keep them in sin. Those strongholds are largely in their minds. I don’t mean they are crazy or out of their minds, but I mean that either world-think or demon-think dominates their thinking.

World-think and demon-think

Scripture says that we are battling with the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world and the devil are external to ourselves. The flesh is something we carry around with us. The world is not referring here to the physical world, but the world system in which we live, including government, human institutions, philosophies, and other human constructs in which humans live separate from God. The devil is Satan and his demons. Both the world and the devil play mind games with us.

At the personal level, have you, as a Christian, found yourself thinking things like you are no good because you haven’t done enough to amount to anything (gaining worth from performance), or you are of no worth because people have said negative things about you (living for a reputation), or you may be a Christian, but you are a bad Christian, and God doesn’t really love you because you sin, you are a sinner (gaining worth from perfectionism). These are all lies for a Christian, and you should not believe them.

What is the truth? You are a saint, a holy one, who sometimes sins because God has declared you a saint, not because your performance earns that appellation. Your worth or identity comes from what Christ has done for you, not from what you have done to earn his favor. Your identity comes from what God says about you, not from what other people say about you. You are in Christ. Demons have a field day whispering untruths in the ears of believers who don’t really know the word of God and what God says about them. It is a mind battle. If you believe the devil instead of God, you wind up with a stronghold that will keep pulling you into sin. You must live in the truth of God’s word.

The Solution to personal demon-think

James gives us the battle plan to defeat these pesky attacks.

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

James 4:7-8

In this case, submitted to God involves admitting that you have believed falsehood, asking for forgiveness, and renouncing the falsehood. Resisting the devil involves agreeing with the truth of God’s word and verbally declaring it to be true. Telling the devil that you are a child of God and that he has nothing to do with you. The result is that he must flee And take his lies with him. To maintain your freedom in Christ, be sure to soak yourself in God’s word as it applies to this point of attack from the devil.

This is demon-think, thinking the things that the devil tells you rather than the things God’s word tells you. We must renew our minds with God’s word and give ourselves to God as a living sacrifice.

World-think

World-think is not so personal and comes out of the world system in which we live. It is a more broad worldview issue. The current battle we are waging in the United States and some other parts of the world is against what I generally refer to as Cultural Marxism. It has several expressions that focus on specific parts of the culture, like Critical Race Theory (CRT), expressed in the Black Lives Matter corporate position. It is being taught in our government, our schools, and major corporations under the guise of diversity training through Human Resources departments. Unfortunately, many churches have fallen victim to this false teaching that does not approach justice from a Biblical perspective but a Marxist perspective. This doctrine violates Biblical doctrines of God, man, sin, and last things. The original sin of CRT is “whiteness.” White people are oppressors and therefore racist. It is something a white person can never be rid of. There is no redemption from whiteness.

Color of the skin or ethnic identity is never a sin in Scripture. These things are, in fact, a demonstration of God’s work in creation. The gospel brings the forgiveness of sins and entry to the kingdom of God. All people who are in the kingdom of God are one in Christ. The Biblical admonition is to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” Unity is the natural state of the body of Christ. What disrupts unity is sin and calls for repentance.

I don’t want to detail this false worldview, but I want to point out that this is a source of spiritual battle. I believe that these ideas are referred to by Paul as “doctrines of demons.” They are ideas that penetrate our culture and are originated and energized by demonic forces.

Paul admonishes us to renew our minds and be transformed from world-think. The kingdom of God is generally the opposite of the world’s way of understanding reality. In the kingdom of God, the greatest is the servant. In the world, the greatest is the lord or boss. Greatness is defined with opposing characteristics. We are to think thoughts after the mind of God and not the world. This is a major tactic of spiritual warfare against the world.

The church has a task to speak gospel truth into this worldly maze of falsehood and bring life where there is only death. All forms of Cultural Marxism end in death even though they claim to usher in a contemporary utopia of “equity” where everyone gets the same reward. People with power lose it, and people without it gain it. All this does is turn the tables. The supposedly oppressed becomes the oppressor and vice versa.

Both world-think and demon-think are thoughts implanted by either a demon directly or through the worldview that pervades our environment. Both are thoughts that are to be brought captive to Christ.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,

2 Corinthians 10:5

We have other weapons to use in spiritual warfare, but the weapon of a renewed mind is often overlooked. Renewing our minds with the word of God will both keep us personally free of strongholds that capture us to sin and free from the kind of thinking that neuters God’s church and makes it powerless. We must speak the truth to ourselves and to the devil who is a liar and a deceiver, and the church must speak the truth about the greater worldview that also stands against the gospel. Truth is our greatest weapon. Speak the truth in love fiercely.

If you are unfamiliar with Critical Race Theory and other expressions of Cultural Marxism, there are several excellent videos on YouTube. I particularly want to mention those of Voddie Baucham. In particular, I recommend his video on Cultural Marxism. There are several other fine sermons/lectures by Voddie that it would be good for you to view. No surprise, one of the most direct videos to address this subject appears to have been removed from YouTube.