I need to apologize to anyone anxiously awaiting my fourth acronym, because there’s little in it that I can share with you: it’s highly personal. But perhaps that’s the point of this post anyway…

This series of posts outlines “step 3” of  my own personal defense strategy. Steps 1 and 2 are the most important and involve prayer and meditation on scripture (the Bible). Step 3 involves reference to reason, compiled and memorized while the going was good

MAWF

During many years of living as a born-again Christian, I’ve encountered certain aspects of life which make clear to me that there is a spirit world all around us. Of course, to the skeptic and the atheist among you this is nonsense, and evidence only that I have at least a few screws loose and need counselling and mind-bending drugs. But this post isn’t addressed to the unbeliever, or to the one who is determined not to notice God.

Over those many years, and I think before I was a believer, I realized I was not alone. And I’ve realized that not only is there a God who fills and inhabits me and all things, but that there are other entities, other forces at work, not only in the world around me, but in my own life and in my own mind. They can even be in the physical objects and events that cross my path (no I don’t mean that objects have life in them). These entities war against me and against my faith. And very often the results of those forces working in my life are specific to me. By that I mean that they seem tailored to my weaknesses, my proclivities, my individuality and the things I am susceptible to, and they may not affect other people with different personalities and weaknesses.

Am I suffering from paranoia? If you want to explain everything in terms of natural processes that’s up to you, but coincidence is far too improbable on some occasions to be a satisfactory explanation for me.

So acronym 4 concerns the things which affect me negatively. How does this relate to faith, you may well ask? Well, put simply, if the Bible is right about malevolent forces and beings around us, then it is also likely to be true in its portrayal of a God of goodness and love. The negatives prove the positive, and evil proves the existence of good. If there is no God, our view of evil is an invention and entirely subjective, so that Hitler was no more “wrong” than we are. Contrary to the shallow arguments of the likes of Richard Dawkins, the Bible has very good explanations for suffering, and suffering can actually be used to argue the existence of a loving God. I covered this in a series of posts I wrote a few years ago, titled “Why Do We Suffer?” But please also refer to my disclaimer at the end of part one of this series.

In my view, it may not necessarily be just the malevolent spirits which are initializing negative actions and outcomes in my life. I must be clear that I’m not talking of any “Yin-Yang” type of understanding.

My fourth acronym spells “MAWF”. Two of these letters represent relationships with other people. One, “M” stands for “Murphy’s Law”, otherwise known as “Sod’s Law”, or “bad luck” I wrote an entire post on Murphy’s Law:

https://nickyfisher.com/2012/03/26/toast-murphys-law-and-the-bible/

The “F” in my acronym is just too secret to share with you to any degree-I could damage someone’s faith by sharing something so negative, which in my case supports my faith. And no, it’s not the four-letter word.

So while I don’t want to hurt or offend anyone’s faith, I’m just suggesting that perhaps you may see in your own life how the negatives prove the positive-that there really is a God-the God described by the Bible.

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• APOLOGETICS