Most Christians readily attribute the evils in our world to the enemy of our souls. They wholeheartedly blame him for the destruction of families, the racism, the political division, etc. that are so rampant among us. But in reality, most of these wrongs against people are perpetrated by other people. And since God created us all to be free moral agents, are we correct in blaming the enemy for the evil we inflict upon one another? And if he is culpable, how does he influence even the ostensibly strongest among us to execute his sinister agenda? Can he force us to act on his behalf?

Christians are taught that we are born with the adamic nature because of the first couple’s sin in the Garden of Eden. In essence, the adamic nature simply is, at a minimum, mankind’s predisposition to yield to the enemy’s temptation just as Adam and Eve did. Note that the enemy did not attempt to force Eve to eat the forbidden fruit; instead, he persuaded her to do so by affecting how she viewed the fruit. And ever since the Adam and Eve experience in the Garden, he has been taking advantage of people’s perception (their interpretation of what we experience through our senses such as sight and hearing) in order to ultimately influence their actions.  

Not Just Any Old God Will Do seeks to demonstrate through anecdotes that neither man’s adamic nature nor the spirit world has changed since biblical times. God is still God; the enemy of our souls is still our archenemy who seeks to destroy us; and the manner in which spiritual warfare is prosecuted is fundamentally the same. To illustrate this point, the book compares a few biblical stories with modern events in the United States. Through these stories, it illustrates that in biblical times as well as in today’s world, the common window of opportunity the enemy exploited in orchestrating the downfall of the people was, and still is, their perception.

The power of perception is extraordinary. The course of our lives is largely determined by our “everyday” decisions which are often informed by our perception of ourselves, of others, and of God. The totality of these perceptions ultimately determines our perspective, the lens through which we view ourselves as well as the world around us. You see, our perception is tantamount to our reality, and rational people tend to make decisions based on reality as they see it. Therefore, to the degree that the enemy of our souls can distort our perception, he can influence our perspective which in turn drives our thoughts and our actions. To a great degree, social ills such as racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia all emanate from a fundamentally flawed perspective as it relates to other people.

Through anthropomorphism, this book reflects how the enemy of our souls can use one’s perception to influence his thinking and behavior. A multitude of marriages and other relationships between two individuals have been ruined simply because the enemy was able to distort the perception on one or even both sides of the relationship. This book also demonstrates that the enemy can exploit the collective perception of groups of people to advance his cause against us. As an example, it delineates how he distorted the perception of the leaders of ancient Israel in orchestrating the transformation of the nation of Israel from a theocracy to a monarchy and compares that to his ongoing efforts to destroy democracy in America by coloring the perception of large segments of Americans, including some national leaders, in a way that causes them to seemingly abandon their values and norms.

Most responsible people do not intend to be on the wrong side of important issues. Realizing this, the enemy understands that to accomplish his agenda against us, his challenge is to adversely affect how we interpret what we see and/or hear.  By distorting our perception of ourselves, he leaves many of us with an acute lack of self-awareness which engenders an inherent bias within that causes us to rationalize or externalize faults in us that we would excoriate in others. On the other hand, many are influenced to have a flawed perception of God which causes them to settle for only a superficial relationship with him, and this leads to them building a belief system based upon various banal platitudes regarding him. Subsequently, when God does not fulfill the unrealistic expectations that stem from their unfounded beliefs, they become disillusioned with him. At this point, they may continue to maintain their church affiliations and they may go through the motions of Christianity, but their relationship with God is often broken.

Not Just Any Old God Will Do challenges us to resist the enemy’s efforts to corrupt our perception of ourselves, of others, and of God inasmuch as the healthier our perception is the healthier our relationships will be.