The Full Armor

Inspired by and taken from “The Magnificent Defeat” by Frederick Buechner
Which armor are you putting on?  Is it the armor for the war between flesh and flesh, or between flesh and the spiritual forces of evil.

The armor used for Flesh vs. Flesh wars is not the whole armor of God but, rather, the whole armor of man, because this is man’s war against other men.  In such a war perhaps you wear something like this:

• Gird you loins with wisdom, the sad wisdom of the world which knows that dog eats dog, that the gods help those who help themselves and charity begins at home.
• Put on the breastplate of self-confidence because if you have no faith in yourself, if you cannot trust to your own wits, then you will never get anywhere.
• Let your feet by shod with the gospel of success – the good news that you can get just about anything in this world if you want it badly enough and are willing to fight for it.
• Above all, take the shield of security because in a perilous world where anything can happen, security is perhaps what you need more than anything else – the security of money in the bank, or a college degree, or some basic skill that you can always fall back on.
• And take the helmet of attractiveness or personality and the sword of wit

People are always criticizing the advertising business for its implied promise that the one who gets the best job or the prettiest girl is the one who wears the right clothes or uses the right toothpaste or drinks the right brand of vodka.  But the fact of the matter is that although this is by no means a happy truth about our society, it is nonetheless very often not far from being true… In the war of conquest, that is to say, in the war that we all wage for a place in the sun, it is the armor of man rather than the armor of God that will serve you best; and although I can’t value that armor as highly as some would value it, I also cannot mock it because the armor of man serves its purpose all too well, and because I wear some of it myself, and so do you.   – Fredrick Buechner