I'll start by indulging you in a little Greek history: Around 1180 BC, a great Greek army, led by King Agamemnon, is said to have attacked Troy, an ancient city believed to have been located in present-day Turkey.
As with most wars, which often start over seemingly trivial matters, a woman was at the center of this one. Yes, a woman.
The abduction of Helen, wife of King Menelaus of Sparta, by a Trojan prince named Paris, set in motion what would later be known as the Trojan War.
According to ancient Greek tradition, the Greeks laid siege to Troy for ten years. The walls of Troy were so fortified that sheer brute force and will couldn't bring them down, even in the face of a massive Greek army.
As the war dragged on, the Greeks started to realize that they were not going to win by raw strength alone. They were going to need a strategy to get behind those walls.
And so their creative minds, which they decided to employ after ten years, God knows why, came up with a clever idea.
An idea so strange that it sounds like fiction. And perhaps it was. But that's how the ancient story goes.
So, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, came up with the idea of creating a hollow wooden horse and having some of the best Greek warriors hide inside it, while the rest of the Greek army faked a retreat.
The horse would be left behind as an offering to the goddess Athena, supposedly to ensure the safe return of the Greek army back home.
And the Trojans were tricked.
They really thought this was a gift. And they also really thought the Greek army had actually retreated.
So they dragged this huge wooden horse into the city, full of grown men squeezed together for hours. It must not have smelled good in there, you can imagine.
The rest is history. Of course, this small group of warriors inside the hollow horse, once inside the city, broke out at a quiet hour of the night and opened the gates for the returning Greek army, which proceeded to sack the city, killing many of its inhabitants and enslaving others.
A city whose walls had held strong for ten years was defeated by a hollow wooden horse. A horse which they brought inside as a gift.
The fall of Troy started from within, not without.
And we're like Troy
We're like Troy. Troy was not defeated by the multitude of the Greek army outside its walls. It was defeated by an enemy working from within.
And throughout history, we have seen this pattern repeated time and time again.
Caesar conquered vast lands, and yet he was assassinated by those closest to him.
Samson in the Bible killed thousands of Philistines, and yet he was deceived by Delilah, which consequently led to his captivity.
David conquered Jerusalem from the Jebusites, who believed the city was impenetrable. They were so confident in its defenses that they even said:
You shall not come in here; but the blind and the lame will repel you.
- 2 Samuel 5:6
Until David's men found a way into the city, via a water shaft.
History is littered with so many of these examples.
And it's even more relevant to us today, much more than it was then. Many of us live in this world as victims, grieving and complaining about the unfairness and misfortunes of life.
Practically, it appears as though the bad things happening to us are the enemy. They're so powerful that we can't resist them. We justify our defeats by blaming the forces at work outside of us.
And it's not that we're making up these forces. They really exist. The resistance is real. Life can be hard.
But not every man falls as a result of the forces that attack him from outside. Sometimes, men cave because of the enemies they have within, fighting against them.
These enemies could be negative emotions, evil thoughts, doubts, wrong information and advice, internal passions and lusts... the list is endless.
As much as the fall appears natural, it was induced by something that started from within.
In a way, this is encouraging because, as much as we can't control the world outside, we can control ourselves. We can dictate the state of our souls within.
And that is much more empowering.
Because, like Troy, we don't always capitulate because we couldn't resist some external force. Sometimes, we cave because the enemy found his way inside us.
And this reminds me of the words of Jesus:
Your enemies will be right in your own household!
- Matthew 10:36
So next time, before you look outside to blame everything that surrounds you, first look within.
Your greatest enemy may be within.
