Author’s Note: This final article is deeply influenced by When Helping Hurts, Becoming Whole, and A Field Guide to Becoming Whole. The identification of demonic forces as one of five interacting causes of material poverty comes from the Chalmers Center’s framework. What follows is my reflection on how it applies at the Medford Gospel Mission. [1]
In the first five articles, we examined four root causes of poverty.
We considered false gods and erroneous stories of change. Every person looks to something to save them, satisfy them, or make life whole. When we trust created things to do what only God can do, those false gods shape our hopes and our direction.
We considered broken people. Sin has fractured our relationships with God, ourselves, others, and creation. That brokenness is not unique to people experiencing homelessness. It is the universal human condition.
We considered destructive formative practices. People are shaped not only by what they believe, but also by what they repeatedly do. Our habits can form us toward greater wholeness or deeper bondage.
And we considered broken systems. People live within families, communities, institutions, and economies that can either support human flourishing or work against it.
These roots are deeply connected. False stories shape people. Broken people develop destructive practices. Broken people also build broken systems, and those systems shape people in return.
But none of this happens in a spiritually neutral world.
That brings us to the fifth and final root cause of poverty: demonic forces.
This World Is Not Spiritually Neutral
After almost thirty years of walking alongside people experiencing homelessness, I have learned to be suspicious of any explanation that claims to explain everything.
Homelessness cannot honestly be reduced to addiction, mental illness, a lack of housing, personal choices, broken systems, or any other single cause. And we can make the same mistake if we try to explain poverty while ignoring the spiritual world altogether.
Scripture tells us that we have an enemy. Satan is an adversary who seeks someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8), a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). Paul reminds us that our struggle is not ultimately against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces of evil (Ephesians 6:12).
This does not mean every hardship, illness, temptation, or destructive choice is the direct result of a demon. It does not equate addiction or mental illness with demonic possession. Nor does it remove personal responsibility, erase trauma, excuse brokenness, or make practical help unnecessary.
It means that evil is deeper and more personal than the modern Western world often admits. People sin and are sinned against. Bodies and minds suffer. Systems become broken. Destructive practices take hold. In the middle of all this, Satan works to deceive, divide, accuse, tempt, enslave, and destroy.
The enemy delights in everything that keeps image bearers from living as God created them to live: bondage, shame, isolation, despair, and death.
Jesus said that the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but that he came so people might have life abundantly (John 10:10). Demonic forces seek the ruin of human beings because they rebel against God and despise those who bear his image.
Two Mistakes We Must Avoid
When we talk about demonic forces, we can fall into one of two errors.
The first is to ignore them. We may believe in Satan while serving as though spiritual opposition has nothing to do with everyday life. We can rely on programs, housing, treatment, employment, and human expertise as though material tools alone can make a person whole.
These things can be good and necessary. But none can reconcile a person to God or deliver someone from darkness. If our approach has no meaningful place for prayer, Scripture, repentance, worship, the local church, and the power of Christ, it is too small.
The second error is to become preoccupied with demonic activity, labeling every struggle an attack or using spiritual language to avoid listening, discipleship, accountability, treatment, and practical care.
Scripture calls us to be watchful, not sensational. Biblical spiritual warfare is not built on fear or fascination with darkness. It is built on confidence in Jesus Christ.
The Enemy Attacks Everyone Involved
It would be a serious mistake to speak as though demonic forces target only people experiencing poverty, the enemy attacks everyone involved.
For a person in crisis, he may reinforce the lies that change is impossible, that shame defines who they are, or that God has abandoned them. For someone beginning to grow, he may use temptation, fear, conflict, or discouragement to pull them back toward familiar bondage.
And for those who are trying to help, he may work through pride, exhaustion, division, or the belief that we change people. For churches, he may use fear, judgment, or comfort to keep God’s people at a distance from their neighbors. For donors, he may tempt them to trust money or see people mainly as problems, statistics, or inspiring stories.
And for the Mission, he may tempt us to trust our programs, protect our reputation, celebrate visible results more than quiet faithfulness, or separate compassionate service from the gospel that gives it meaning.
An old illustration attributed to Philadelphia pastor Donald Grey Barnhouse asks what a city might look like if Satan took control. Most of us would imagine violence, disorder, and closed churches.
Barnhouse pictured something more unsettling: The bars would be closed. Pornography would disappear. The streets would be clean, people polite, children respectful, and the churches full every Sunday—“where Christ is not preached.” [2]
The point is not that moral behavior is bad. The point is that outward order is not the same as spiritual restoration. Satan is content for people to be moral, comfortable, successful, and religious as long as they remain separated from Christ.
That warning applies to Christian ministry. A ministry can be active and admired while losing sight of Christ. We can provide things that genuinely help while forgetting that none of them can reconcile a person to God. Only Christ can do that.
The enemy does not need every ministry to close its doors. If he can keep us busy while we forget our dependence on Christ, he has accomplished something far more subtle. That is why spiritual warfare belongs in the ordinary life of ministry.
How Do We Attack This Root?
We begin by remembering that Jesus Christ has won the decisive victory. Satan and Jesus are not equal powers. Christ disarmed the powers of darkness (Colossians 2:15) and brought his people into his kingdom (Colossians 1:13–14).
Satan is a defeated enemy, but not yet a removed one. Christ has already won the decisive victory, and the day is coming when the devil will be finally judged and destroyed. So we neither fear him nor ignore him. We remain watchful because he is active, and confident because his end is certain.
Our confidence is not in our ability to identify every spiritual attack. It is in the crucified and risen King.
At the Medford Gospel Mission, prayer is part of the real work. We pray for those who enter our doors, for wisdom to understand what lies beneath the surface, and for protection over everyone involved.
We also speak truth. People need to know who God is, who they are, what sin has done, and what Christ has accomplished.
The enemy says, “You will never change,” but anyone in Christ is a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). He says, “Your past is your identity,” but there is no condemnation for those in Christ (Romans 8:1). He says, “You are alone,” but the gospel brings us into God’s family (Ephesians 2:19).
We attack this root through life together. The enemy works through isolation, but God gathers people into a body. People need brothers and sisters who will worship with them, pray for them, speak truth, bear their burdens, and keep walking with them. That is why the local church is essential to the Mission’s work.
We attack this root through ordinary obedience. Spiritual warfare happens when someone tells the truth instead of hiding, prays instead of escaping, forgives instead of holding on to bitterness, asks for help instead of isolating, serves instead of taking, and worships God instead of returning to a false savior.
Much of spiritual warfare is less dramatic than people imagine. It is the long obedience of ordinary Christians who refuse the enemy’s lies and keep placing their lives beneath the truth of Christ.
We put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:10–18). We do not attack or shame people. We resist the enemy by living faithfully under the lordship of Jesus Christ.
Christ Is Lord Over Every Root
This brings us to the end of the Attacking the Roots series.
Food, shelter, housing, treatment, counseling, employment, and practical assistance matter. Compassion requires us to care about immediate suffering. But compassion must also be willing to go deeper.
Poverty has roots in false gods and erroneous stories of change, broken people, destructive formative practices, broken systems, and demonic forces. These roots twist around one another, reinforcing brokenness in ways that are difficult to separate. That is why there is no simple blueprint that solves every problem for every person.
And that is why our hope cannot rest in a blueprint.
Our hope rests in Jesus Christ.
He exposes false gods and gives us a better story of change. He reconciles broken people to God and begins restoring their relationships. He gives his Spirit and teaches us new practices. He gathers us into a new community and teaches us to build systems shaped by truth, dignity, responsibility, and love. And he has defeated the powers of darkness.
At the Medford Gospel Mission, we do not believe we can fix people. We believe people are image bearers of God whose dignity remains even in the deepest hardship. None of us is whole apart from grace, and no life is beyond the restoring power of Jesus Christ.
So we provide relief when it is needed. We walk with people toward restoration, equipping them as they grow into mature men and women of God. We speak the truth with compassion. We cultivate prayer, discipleship, community, responsibility, work, worship, and hope. And we connect people to the local church.
And we remain watchful, because the roots are deep and the enemy is real.
But we do not live in fear.
The darkness is real, but it is not ultimate.
Jesus Christ is Lord.
And by his grace, he is making all things new (Revelation 21:5).
Root Causes of Poverty
- False gods and erroneous stories of change
- Broken people
- Destructive formative practices
- Broken systems
- Demonic forces
Sources
[1] Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts; Brian Fikkert and Kelly M. Kapic, Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the American Dream, especially pp. 181–182; Brian Fikkert and Kelly M. Kapic, A Field Guide to Becoming Whole, especially pp. 135–139; and the Chalmers Center, “The Five Causes of Poverty—Part 5: Demonic Forces,” June 20, 2022.
[2] Michael Horton, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2008), 15, recounting an illustration attributed to Donald Grey Barnhouse.
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