Spiritual warfare is inevitable for Christians, and one of the ways it makes itself evident is in what is currently called the culture wars. Each side tends to demonize the other and think that the other side epitomizes the evil tendencies in our time and in our socio-political life. But the great pitfall of engaging in such wars is that the focus may shift from the spiritual prize to the flesh-and-blood enemy, and the conflict may shift from fighting in the spirit to fighting in the flesh. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” Paul writes in Ephesians 6:12.

The funny thing about the darkness and the light, the flesh and the spirit, is that all human beings have both of them. To paraphrase Alexander Solzhenitsyn, it would be nice to separate the good people from the bad. But it's not so easy because the line dividing good from evil cuts not through the sides of the culture wars, but through the heart of every human being.