Dear friend,
I want to tell you something tonight that the Church has been too polite to say clearly for a very long time.
The devil does not look like what they showed you in pictures.
He does not have horns. He does not carry a pitchfork. He does not appear in a red suit with a pointed tail and announce himself as the enemy of everything you love. That version of the devil is almost harmless because nobody is fooled by it. Nobody invites something that looks like a monster into their home, their church, their country, or their heart.
The version that actually works looks nothing like that.
And after fifty years with the Church — fifty years of watching him operate up close, in real congregations, in real families, in real nations — I want to tell you what he actually looks like.
Because I believe if you can see him clearly you will recognize him in places you have been missing him entirely.
He looks reasonable.
That is the first thing. The version of the devil that has done the most damage in my lifetime has never looked extreme. He has never looked obviously wrong. He has looked like the sensible position. The moderate view. The thing that reasonable people believe when they have thought carefully about something and arrived at a conclusion that requires them to give up very little.
In Second Corinthians chapter 11 verse 14 Paul wrote something that I want you to read very carefully.
Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
An angel of light.
Not a monster. Not something obviously dark and threatening. Something that looks luminous. Something that looks enlightened. Something that looks like the reasonable, modern, thoughtful position compared to the old fashioned, embarrassing, unsophisticated thing you used to believe.
That is the face he wears most effectively. Not darkness. Light. Or something that looks enough like light that you do not notice the difference until you have been standing in it for years and wonder why everything around you has gone cold.
He looks tolerant.
This is the version that has done the most damage inside the Church specifically.
The tolerance that sounds like love but requires you to call nothing wrong. The open mindedness that sounds like wisdom but requires you to treat every position as equally valid including the ones that are destroying people. The kindness that sounds like Christ but has quietly removed the cross from the centre of the conversation because the cross is divisive and divisive things make people uncomfortable.
I have watched this version of the devil empty more churches than outright persecution ever could. Because persecution makes people dig in. Comfort makes people drift. And the tolerance that asks you to give up a little truth at a time — just this one thing, just this one accommodation, just this one silence on just this one subject — is so gradual that most people do not notice they have given up everything until the day they look around and realize there is nothing left to stand on.
In Revelation chapter 3 Jesus described the church at Laodicea. He said they were neither hot nor cold. And He said something that should make every comfortable Christian in America sit very still for a moment.
He said because you are lukewarm I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
Not embrace you warmly for your moderation. Spit you out.
The devil's greatest achievement inside the American Church has not been to make Christians wicked. It has been to make them lukewarm. Comfortable. Careful. Inoffensive. Thoroughly pleasant and completely useless.
He looks educated.
This is the version that operates in the institutions. In the universities and the media and the cultural spaces where the language is sophisticated and the arguments are carefully constructed and anyone who disagrees is not called evil — they are called uneducated. Unsophisticated. On the wrong side of history.
I have been with the Church for fifty years. I have watched institution after institution — seminaries, denominations, publishing houses, Christian universities — go through the same process. Slowly. Over decades. The language of faith stays. The content changes. The words remain but the meaning hollows out until the shell looks exactly like the original and contains nothing that resembles it.
In First Timothy chapter 4 Paul warned about teachings that come from deceiving spirits. He called them doctrines of demons. Not obviously demonic doctrines. Doctrines that deceive. That look like something they are not. That enter through the respectable door and rearrange the furniture so slowly that nobody notices until the house belongs to someone else entirely.
He looks safe.
This is perhaps the most important thing I want to say tonight.
The version of the devil that has done the most damage to this country in my lifetime has not looked threatening. He has looked safe. He has looked like the path of least resistance. The thing you choose when you want to avoid conflict and preserve your comfort and keep everyone around you from being upset with you.
He looks like staying quiet when you should speak. He looks like changing the subject when the truth makes people uncomfortable. He looks like the small daily decision to protect yourself rather than stand for something that will cost you something.
He looks like the cowardice I wrote about a few weeks ago. Dressed in the clothes of wisdom. Sitting in your pew every Sunday looking exactly like a faithful Christian and having quietly decided that faith is something you keep entirely to yourself because the world outside the church has made it clear that visible faith is embarrassing.
That is not safety. That is the most effective trap he has ever built. Because it does not feel like a trap. It feels like prudence.
I want to tell you why I am writing this tonight.
Because I believe we are in a moment that requires Christians to see clearly. Not just about the world but about the specific forces operating inside the Church and inside their own hearts that have been working against clarity for a long time.
The man at the centre of this political moment has been opposed by enemies on every side. That part gets talked about. What gets talked about less is the opposition that has come from within. From people who use the right language and attend the right services and have decided that opposing this particular man is the sophisticated, reasonable, enlightened position.
I believe that opposition has a face I recognize from fifty years of watching it operate. And I wrote all of it down in They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. Not just the political opposition. The spiritual pattern underneath it. The specific way that opposition to God's purposes has always dressed itself in the language of reasonableness and tolerance and education and safety.
Read it this week. It will help you see what you are looking at more clearly than almost anything else I have written. You may find it by clicking on the image below:
Alternatively, you may find it here: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
I want to close with something simple.
The devil is not hiding. He never has been. He is operating openly in the places that feel safest. In the institutions and the conversations and the silences that seem most reasonable.
The protection against him is not sophistication. It is not education or political awareness or even good theology in the abstract.
It is what it has always been.
In Ephesians chapter 6 Paul described the full armor of God. Not the comfortable armor. The full armor. The belt of truth. The breastplate of righteousness. The shield of faith. The sword of the Spirit which is the word of God.
Every single piece of that armor requires you to actually believe something. To actually stand somewhere. To actually hold something up against something else and say this is true and that is not.
The devil cannot operate effectively against someone who has put on the full armor. He can only operate effectively against someone who has decided that the armor is too heavy to wear in polite company.
Put it on, friend. All of it. Tonight.
God bless you. I mean that more than usual this evening.
With you in prayer always,
Father Thomas
This week I want you to do three things:
One. Read Revelation chapter 3 verses 14 through 22 this week. The letter to the church at Laodicea. Read it as if it were written to your specific congregation. Ask yourself honestly which parts apply. Let it be uncomfortable. Discomfort is how armor gets put on.
Two. Read Ephesians chapter 6 verses 10 through 18. The full armor of God. Read each piece slowly. Ask yourself which pieces you are actually wearing and which ones you have left at home because they are too heavy for polite company.
Three. Read They Tried To Stop Him this week: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
I wrote it partly to help people see the face of the opposition clearly — not just the political face but the spiritual one underneath it. I think it will change how you look at what is happening.