Not ignorant of his schemes
The devil's-eye view
Paul gives a reason for refusing to stay naive: so that no advantage would be gained over us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes. The word for schemes means designs, stratagems, the calculated tactics of an intelligent opponent. The enemy does not attack at random; he has a strategy, tailored and patient, and Paul says we ought to know it.
The twentieth-century writer C.S. Lewis dramatized this idea unforgettably in The Screwtape Letters, imagining the correspondence of a senior devil coaching a junior tempter on how to ruin a single human soul. The brilliance of the conceit is the reversal of perspective: by looking at temptation from the enemy's side, we suddenly see his tactics laid bare — the small distractions, the flattering lies, the patient erosion we had never noticed working on us.
That is the aim of this stage, in the spirit Paul commends: to study the strategy so we are no longer outwitted by it. This is not morbid fascination with evil, which is its own trap, but the clear-eyed reconnaissance of a soldier who wants to recognize the enemy's moves before they land. To name a tactic is to disarm much of its power, for most of the enemy's schemes work only in the dark of our ignorance.
“That no advantage may be gained over us by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes.”
— Paul, to the Corinthians — 2 Corinthians 2:11 (WEB)
Study the enemy's strategy soberly — knowing his tactics well enough to recognize them — so that no advantage is gained over you through ignorance.
“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as wheat.”
What blinds us is not the tactic itself but our certainty that no tactic is at work — we read an engineered pull as a passing mood, a borrowed thought as our own. The interior work is to undertake the sober reconnaissance Paul commends: learning the schemes well enough to recognize them, steering between the naivety that sees no strategy and the morbid fascination that gives the dark too much attention, while the eyes stay fixed on Christ.
This week, begin learning your enemy's particular tactics against you: notice the recurring patterns by which you are pulled from God, and name them plainly, since naming a scheme disarms much of its power.
His whole advantage depends on going unrecognized; an unnamed tactic passes for your own thinking, and where he cannot keep you naive he tries to make you obsessed with him instead. Name a scheme soberly while fixing your eyes on Christ, and you have already stripped it of most of its power.
The enemy gains most of his advantages through our ignorance. A tactic we cannot name works on us freely, in the dark, mistaken for our own thoughts or moods or circumstances. Paul's antidote is knowledge: we are not to be ignorant of his schemes, but to study the strategy arrayed against us until we can recognize it at work.
There is a discipline here between two errors. We can be naive, refusing to believe there is any strategy at all — easy prey. Or we can become morbidly fascinated with the demonic, which is its own snare and gives the enemy far too much attention. The wise path is sober reconnaissance: knowing the tactics well enough to spot them, while keeping our eyes fixed on Christ. Consider which error you tend toward — the naivety that denies the schemes, or the fascination that obsesses over them — and what it would mean to simply, soberly, know your enemy.
- Do I tend toward naivety about the enemy, or fascination with him?
- What recurring tactic pulls me from God that I have never named?
- How can I study the strategy while keeping my eyes on Christ?
Lord, the enemy gains advantage through my ignorance, working tactics I never name. Let me not be ignorant of his schemes. Teach me to recognize his moves soberly, neither naive nor obsessed, with my eyes fixed steadily on you. Amen.