Peter Kreeft Explains Satan's Real Limits | Spiritual Warfare

[00:00:00]Methra asked this question and it's absolutely fascinating and it's about you don't understand what Satan can do.

[00:00:09]It's fascinating. So I want to have this conversation with Dr. Peter Creef. Let's get into it.

[00:00:17]>> Are there things in your marriage and in your fatherhood that you regret having done poorly that you wish you have done?

[00:00:23]>> Oh, of course. Of course. Always taking the easy way out. Fantasizing. Thinking of alternatives. That's good.

[00:00:29]>> Opening the mind to temptations. Yes. Of course, we all have that.

[00:00:34]>> Of course.

[00:00:34]>> That's beautiful. Thanks. I remember someone saying to me recently that it's Satan doesn't even need to get us to commit serious sin. He just needs to get us fantasizing.

[00:00:43]>> Yeah.

[00:00:44]>> Cuz when you fantasize, you're not here.

[00:00:47]>> Yeah. Well, uh somewhere else says that uh uh God does not let Satan touch two things. your spiritual intellect and the freedom of your will. But he lets Satan touch everything else including your imagination, >> including your passions and including sometimes bodily things.

[00:01:07]>> Mhm.

[00:01:07]>> But those are the two castle key.

[00:01:10]>> That's fascinating. The idea is of imagining fantasizing not even just about like lustful things but like imagine I was fantasizing about I don't know going on a vacation and getting that to fantasizing about doing something that is completely so far away but if you're always thinking about it maybe that is taking away from you spending time with God maybe >> that he can't get into. And it's interesting that we keep falling for it.

[00:01:38]>> Yes.

[00:01:38]>> Because every time we fall for it, we're disappointed.

[00:01:42]>> That is the incredible thing. We're insane.

[00:01:45]>> Uh I I like to use the image of the the Godfather versus the Father. Uh God the Father makes you an offer you can refuse. The Godfather makes you an offer you can't refuse.

[00:01:56]So he gives you only one hand. God gives you two.

[00:02:00]And every time you make a moral choice, God says, "In my right hand is what you know is the secret of all joy." Namely, say to me, "Your will be done because I'm perfect and I'm love."

[00:02:11]>> Yeah.

[00:02:12]>> "And in my left hand is the secret of all misery. Say no to me >> because I'm the secret of all joy and all love."

[00:02:19]>> Wow.

[00:02:19]>> Uh and that's the difference between good and evil. Now, which will use this time? Your right hand, my right hand, or my left hand? And our reply to him is, [sighs and gasps] "Well, God, you know, I should choose the right hand, but the left hand is awfully tempting. Let me try it. Maybe it'll work this time. It's never worked before."

[00:02:35]>> Yeah.

[00:02:36]>> Yeah, man. We think that we could do things on our own. We think that this world and all the things it has to offer is just going to make us I don't even know. It's going to fulfill our desires, but it doesn't. It doesn't. It leaves us more unsatisfied, filled with anxiety, fear, filled with a purposeless life.

[00:02:59]It's nothing, nothing at all will satisfy besides Jesus.

[00:03:03]>> Be miserable in the end, but maybe it'll work this time. Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and thinking it'll work this time.

[00:03:14]>> Yeah.

[00:03:15]>> Yeah.

[00:03:15]>> As I've heard you say, putting the car back on the road expecting it to run.

[00:03:19]>> We're nuts. That's original sin. Um, fortunately, God has great love for his severely brain damaged children.

[00:03:27]>> Severely [laughter] brain damaged children is put >> the e taking the easy way out.

[00:03:33]>> Yeah. John Paul II said, "Whatever promises to be a shortcut to happiness leads nowhere." What advice do you have for for men and women watching this?

[00:03:42]Maybe they're married and uh they know that they do that.

[00:03:46]>> Forget about happiness. There are more important things.

[00:03:50]goodness, truth, and beauty.

[00:03:52]Forget about happiness and you'll get it. Worry about happiness and you'll become a spiritual hypochondriac. You'll lose it.

[00:03:59]>> Wow.

[00:03:59]>> You'll worry yourself sick.

[00:04:03]All the saints, they say these two apparently very different and apparently even contradictory things. Uh number one, life is hard. Uh and suffering is necessary and suffering is blessed and it's the kisses of God. Uh, number two, don't worry about anything. God loves you. Stop worrying. Easier said than done.

[00:04:24]>> Easier.

[00:04:25]>> Yep. Philippians 4:6, don't worry about anything, but instead pray about everything. Then you will experience God's peace. But it's hard. So hard. You worry about good things. You worry about bad things. You worry about the things in the future. But that alone causes you not to have any peace.

[00:04:46]>> Then done. Indeed, especially because I I believe I must be some something [snorts] Irish about me. I believe in Murphy's law. No, if anything can go wrong, it will.

[00:04:55]>> Yeah.

[00:04:57]>> Tolken once described himself as a u uh a temperamental pessimist and a convinced optimist.

[00:05:06]>> Uhhuh.

[00:05:08]>> Temperamental pessimist.

[00:05:10]>> That's me, too. I I expect the worst and I hope for the best. and what I believe is too good to be true and what I feel is too bad to be true.

[00:05:20]>> How was your wife uh healing to you? How how was your relationship with her? How did that help you? To say grow in holiness sounds too cliche, but you know what I mean when I say it kind of like heals you. It makes you more of who you should have been but weren't.

[00:05:33]>> She was strong. She was strong willed.

[00:05:35]She was stubborn. She knew when she was right, and most of the time she was. Uh, and so that's that's basically what CS Lewis's wife did to him in a grief observed, you know, stopped him up short. This is reality. Stop dreaming.

[00:05:50]>> My wife's a strong woman. I think your your wife, Maria, would have liked my wife.

[00:05:54]>> Yeah.

[00:05:55]>> She's stubborn.

[00:05:56]>> Yeah.

[00:05:56]>> But she's softening as she grows. It's beautiful to see.

[00:05:59]>> Well, that's what God does to us. We're meat. And he has to toughen up the meat by softening it.

[00:06:05]>> By tenderizing us.

[00:06:06]>> Tenderizing.

[00:06:07]>> What's your opinion of Pope Leo? I think he's what the church needs. The Holy Spirit is apparently what the church needs. And he's a [sighs and gasps] a peacemaker. He's not a an extremist in any way. And he's going to heal the divisions, I hope.

[00:06:22]>> What divisions do you see needing healing?

[00:06:26]>> Well, [sighs and gasps] the worst of of the left and the worst of the right are not just extremists, but but stubborn extremists.

[00:06:35]Uh, [sighs] the conservative always has a temptation to [sighs and gasps] ignore people's happiness and people's feelings and people's vulnerabilities and needs. And the liberal always has a a temptation to ignore objective truth, especially inconvenient truths.

[00:06:57]>> Great point. and truth and love or or or dogma and compassion are two necessary things in the church. Uh take what is probably the most divisive of all issues. The one that that is the most uncompromising homosexuality.

[00:07:14]The church says two things about homosexuality. Number one, it is the wrong thing. It is not God's plan. It is it is simply wrong in itself. Number two, we must love all sinners. We are all sinners. We must love homosexuals much more than we do and we must love homosexuality much less than we do. And that's a hard combination.

[00:07:36]>> But the church is equally adamant about both.

[00:07:38]>> Yeah. How how does the Catholic Church in her social teaching and moral teaching transcend the left right divide that we talked about?

[00:07:45]>> Always has, always will. From Jesus' time, the Pharisees were the were the right and the Sadducees were the left.

[00:07:52]And he said the Sadducees were wrong. So were the Pharisees in different ways.

[00:07:57]Chester says somewhere there's only one angle at which you can stand upright but there's always at least two different angles at which you can fall.

[00:08:04]>> Aquinus says not something like well maybe like that when he talks about beauty. I think he talks about physical appearance and how easily it is to become ugly >> right you just move the eye up an inch or the no nose over here or you break >> that's very similar to a kind of scientific argument for the existence of God. Uh [sighs and gasps] the windows of opportunity for a beautiful universe, a universe that that is is fit for human habitation are so tiny that it's almost impossible that we exist.

[00:08:37]>> It's it's the anthropic principle is part of it. In order for human life to develop, uh thousands of almost impossible coincidences has to happen.

[00:08:47]If the temperature of the primeval fireball uh a millionth of a second uh after the act of creation were uh a millionth of a degree hotter or colder, you'd never have carbon and therefore you wouldn't have life.

[00:09:01]>> If the sun were a little farther away or a little closer, we'd either burn up or freeze. If the cosmic rays hadn't bombarded the slime pools at such such and such an angle, the hemoglobin molecule could not have evolved and we wouldn't have mammals. [sighs] So, we've crept in through an an enormous number of tiny windows and that's beauty.

[00:09:23]>> Shout out to Matt Frad and the entire video will be in the description below.

[00:09:28]But man, God perfectly placed every single thing exactly where it needed to be so that we can trust in him. Nothing is on accident. Everything is by design.

[00:09:42]But anyway guys, I encourage you to hit the like button and subscribe if you haven't. And always remember guys, Jesus loves