Satan's useful idiots

Satan’s Useful Idiots

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By Pastor David Cox

Summary: Satan’s useful idiots is a blog post on how some Christians are useful to Satan’s purposes, yet they are idiots as far as furthering the kingdom of God.

I have come across the phrase “useful idiots” in my wandering in books and news. As I understand the phrase, it is used of people in an opposing position, yet being the enemy, they mess up things on their own side, and therefore they are useful to “us” even though they would seem to not know what they are doing or how they are harming their side of things.

How these people affect our church

I consider my church as a living organism, the body of Christ. Only those people in my church that are saved are really members of the body of Christ.

Let me go on a rabbit trail here for a minute. IF, and that is a big if, IF a person is truly saved, then some things will happen in their life spiritually. It is not my duty, as their pastor, to make them love Christ, nor to put “spiritual hunger” in their bowels. If they are truly saved, then that should happen. They should hunger for being around and communing with other Christians of like faith. I cannot know whether they are really saved or not, (nor do I know if anybody is saved or not, I just observe. In my own salvation, I do know that I am saved.)

But these useful people (saved or not) to Satan enter God’s church, and they do some things that destroy the church of Jesus Christ. They fight, they are contentious, they grumble, complaint, and generally do everything they can to make the church a distasteful place for all. While they are first in line to be pampered and use the church, they are last in line to clean it, to work on maintenance, or give tithes and offerings.

While I fully know what these people are, usually they claim to be saved and can explain to you the plan of salvation and say they have done that. To find spiritual fruit in their lives is a miracle. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, charity, blessing others, giving to others, all that kind of fruit is just never there in their lives nor will they allow it. As a pastor, knowing what kind of people they are, I still treat them as I would any other brother or sister because they profess Christ. I preach to their sins more than I would other good Christians. But I allow them to be recognized fully as brethren, even though in my heart, I would have to give God a bad report in their case (Hebreos 13:17 pastors… must give an account).

Useful Idiots Damage the other members

What these carnal Christians do is to inflict problems on other members of the church. What they say and do actually is aggressively evil. Spiritually other Christians are hurt by their mouths, slander, gossip, and evil speaking. True Christians or spiritual Christians have to learn to ignore these people and follow Christ and not be swayed in their following of Christ by supposed Christians with a wicked tongue. Most mature Christians do these albeit with a lot of struggling of their own to overcome such people.

But the real damage of these people’s mouths is simply to young Christians and to hearers who attend church and listen but haven’t made a decision for Christ yet. These groups of unstable and tender people often leave the church because of such tongue wagging.

Useful Idiots Damage the Testimony of Christ

Besides the damage these useful people do in word and deed, they also damage the testimony of Christ, the church, and the individual members of the church. Unsaved people see what these useful idiots do and think that the entire church is like these people. They do not see Christ living in the church’s members, but rather Satan coming out. What others do not see is mature Christianity, because, for every good Christian, there is a “useful idiot” that shines his putrid lifestyle ten times stronger than the Christians there.

By their immature lifestyles, they cause people in general (outside of the understanding of a true Christian) to see all Christians as idiots. That is the association that Satan wants to portray as the Church of Jesus.

Note: By my calling them “idiots,” I do not mean to belittle them, although that is exactly what the term is doing in other contexts. These are problem people, but not like good Christians who have problems. These people who cause problems for others and are not looking to solve their problems or other people’s problems. They simply are causing problems for the church and Christ.

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