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IT’S A FAMILIAR enough image. A person is uncertain about what to do, mentally and emotionally being pulled in two competing directions. On one shoulder sits an angel, telling her to follow her conscience and do what’s right. On the other sits a devil, whispering, “Just do what you want! Forget about what everyone else says.” Only one side can win the argument. And the moment she chooses a side, poof! The other disappears in a puff of smoke.
So should we choose A or B? Go left or right?
If only it were that simple.
Let’s update the picture a bit. In today’s world of global media and marketing, we’re not pulled in two directions but many. Individuals, organizations, and corporations vie for our attention, pitching ideas and products at us from all directions. Underneath the pitches are motives that may be good or bad but are often hard to know for certain. And in the midst of all this, we have to decide what to do or believe, which way to go, which voices to heed. Wisdom says we need to be discerning. We can’t — indeed, we shouldn’t! — believe everything we hear. But with so many voices clamoring in our ears, it’s enough to make you dizzy.
In many ways, John’s social world was probably much simpler. That’s not to say that the world itself as a whole was less complex, but he could scarcely have imagined the electronic communication, social media, and information overload that is now the very air we breathe. Still, even in John’s day, the need for discernment was no less real. John’s community had already been split by theological controversy; people had been left anxious and confused by false teaching. In the wake of that painful debacle, John offers his readers some loving pastoral advice at the beginning of chapter 4 of his letter:
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1, NIV)
Throughout chapter 3, John tried to help his readers come to terms with the confusion of having other members of the community try to lead them astray with their heretical ideas and apparently questionable lifestyle. He’s made strong distinctions between the righteous and the sinful, those who love and those who hate, the children of God and the children of the devil. Who really belongs to the truth? Who truly abides in God? As we’ve seen, John ends chapter 3 by pointing to the Holy Spirit:
The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us. (1 John 3:24)
John may be saying that it’s the Spirit who animates our obedience to the command of Jesus to love. He may mean that the Spirit can reassure us internally when our hearts are filled with doubt and self-condemnation. And he may be saying both; the apostle is certainly capable of double entendre.
Having mentioned the Holy Spirit, though, he seems obliged at the beginning of chapter 4 to warn about other spirits. Indeed, he advises his readers to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” It’s the only place in either John’s letters or his gospel that he refers to “spirits” in the plural.
Some of us may read this as being about spiritual warfare of the kind that appears in apocalyptic Christian fiction, complete with people being possessed by demons. But that’s not necessarily what he’s saying. The Greek word for “spirit” has a broad range of meaning. English-speakers, for example, may borrow the German word Zeitgeist — which literally means, “spirit of the time” — to talk about the general intellectual or moral climate of a particular culture in a particular season.
Thus, the people who tried to push their heretical beliefs on others, and then left the community when they couldn’t, may have come to their beliefs “honestly,” if I can say it that way. They weren’t necessarily possessed by demons; they were possessed by the ideas, philosophies, and trends of their day, in a way that unfortunately compromised the gospel and their way of life. John characterizes them as “false prophets” because of their attempts to mislead others with their teaching. They may claim to have a word from God, or claim to speak by the inspiration of God’s Spirit; that’s the “prophet” part. But just because they make such claims doesn’t mean it’s true; that the “false” part. And as we’ll see in the coming verses, he will suggest again that they are antichrists, those who stand in opposition to the truth about Jesus whether they realize it or not.
AS I’VE SAID before, I get a bit nervous about how people will use texts like these to bolster their own sense of self-righteousness, and conversely, to demonize others. Unless we choose to hole up in a cave somewhere — a cave where there’s no cell service — all of us will continue to be bombarded by ideas and values from every side. We might try to simplify things by creating our own media echo chambers, but that runs the risk of ignoring the ways in which false teaching, misinformation, and fake news is propounded from every direction too.
Still, we can’t just throw our hands up in the air and abandon the pursuit of wisdom and discernment. We can’t believe everything we hear, nor can we assume that what we choose to hear is completely accurate or free from bias or ulterior motive. We need to test, examine, interrogate the spirits of the age — including the ones we’ve internalized ourselves.
That sounds pretty daunting, doesn’t it? But John will give his readers a bit of a helping hand in the next couple of verses.