I've been re-reading a set of books I really enjoy, "The Chronicles of Amber" by Roger Zelazny. Book Five is called The Hand of Oberon. In this set of books, there is a black highway leading from the Courts of Chaos straight to the Amber. (If this doesn't make sense, don't worry.)

The current king is making plans with his family and friends on how to defeat the hordes that are marching up the road. "Why don't we take the war to them. We've got an army that can stomp them flat." Thats a paraphrase, by the way. Eric doesn't think so. Yes, he's got the armies. But, he realizes theres another problem.

The enemy of the moment is not as important as our own inner weakness. If this is not mended we are already defeated, though no foreign conqueror stands within our walls.

Yes, this is true. It is not the outward threats that are the greatest, but the inner ones. On a national level, we are threatened by terrorism. Yet, the greatest defeat we suffered was at the hands of people we allowed into our country. Now, we are much more vigilant. We argue and bicker amongst ourselves on many levels: national politics, local eminent domain, families, and ourselves. Whose the best leader? Republicans? Democrats? Does the city have the right to seize private property for public interest? Who does the dishes and picks up the kids?

What do I do know? Should I be doing this? Another book I read was part of the Enemy Mine set, by Barry Longyear. One of the races he created was small and weak. They're path to self-defense lay in misdirecting enemies towards each other, and away from them. 'Ensure that the stronger enemies wear themselves out fighting each other, and leave us alone' type philosophy. But, what if you only had one enemy? How do you deal with him? You divide him against himself. "You want to cross this line. If you do, I'll break every bone in your body. Now you don't want to cross that line. And yet, you still do." The lone enemy was then divided against himself.

We have many enemies in life. Yet, as was stated above, we must deal with our own inner weakness before the outer enemy can be dealt with. In the case of Amber, it was the road that needed to be dealt with. So we destroy this particular army, yet leave the Black Road. The enemies from the Courts of Chaos just raise another one, and another one, and another one. We will wear ourselves out fighting the same battles over and over and over.

What we need to do is remove the Black Road from our lives. For each of us, it is probably something different. But, we need to do more than remove something. That only creates a vacuum. And a vacuum must be filled with something. I, for one, prefer to chose what fills that vacuum than to let random chance, or worse yet, my enemy, decide what goes there.

Many people quit smoking, only to gain weight. You have to fill that vacuum somehow. Jesus said that if a demon is cast out, it goes and looks around, then comes back to check out its original host. If that host is still empty, it returns with seven more worse than itself. That host needs to fill that place with the Holy Spirit.

Here's another analogy: Ever have someone tell you NOT to think about chocolate cake? Do you know how to succeed in this? Think about something else. Reading. Work. Writing. Blogging. Play a game. Play with you children. Trying to NOT do something is hard. Try to do SOMETHING in its stead.

Most of us have a BlackRoad that the enemy uses to assault us. We need to deal with that road to keep the enemy at bay.