The Front Line

When defining the basics of warfare, we must first understand these three things: the war zones, the front line, and the fighter. Let’s begin with the war zones. Just as in conventional warfare, the war zone is the theatre or arena where the conflict is taking place. St Philotheos of Sinai, a monk who lived in the 9th century at the monastery at the location where Moses received the Ten Commandments, points out that this unseen battle is different from conventional war in that in physical war, there is typically a proclamation of war. Unseen warfare does not have this luxury, making spiritual warfare that much more challenging: 

But this noetic (spiritual) warfare lacks one feature possessed by visible warfare: declaration of hostilities. Suddenly, with no warning, the enemy attacks the inmost heart, sets an ambush there, and kills the soul through sin.

For the average person the war zones are not seen as there is no obvious battle happening. Everyday life just marches on. Once a person starts to wake up and see there is a war being waged for their soul, one starts to realize that the war zones are literally everywhere the person happens to be. This includes but is not limited to: urban areas, the country side, city streets, parks, the workplace, classrooms and schools, coffee shops, driving in a car, movie theatres, concerts and events, grocery stores, church, the home and the bedroom. 

These are the traditional theatres of war. In the modern era there is a new war zone that has never existed before in all of history. This is the new digital war zone. With advances in modern science and technology, electricity has been harnessed and radio waves have been filled with transmissions. All this activity is unseen and is now embedded in our lives through electromagnetism, radio waves and computer coding. It is presented stealthily as access to knowledge and information; however, these computers and screens, which are everywhere and, in all man-made things, are not benign, but are the new battleground. All the conventional or traditional war zones listed above are affected and influenced by this new digital plane or dimension. 

So, with the advent of the computer, the internet and the smart phone, which is a little computer in everyone’s pocket, the war zones are everywhere, putting the fighter perpetually under siege more than ever before.