HOW DO PEOPLE DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM OF EVIL?

“Evil, horror, death, that’s no problem. I just ignore it.”

This is probably the response of most people to this question but is that true?

Can evil be ignored?

Being our own Saviour

For most people Escape is the answer. Frenetic Activity is common. Long hours at work. Excessive time spent on Sports and Hobbies. Even Exercise can become the ‘Molech’ which consumes our days and lives. Busyness is an ‘Extreme Sport’.

Sex, Music Alcohol and Drugs, even Science and Technology can be consumed in such large quantities that we get the impression that we have beaten down evil or at least we are protected from it. Survivalism is a religious form of ‘preparing for evil’ using material things instead of spiritual ways.

Some people seek to confront evil in controlled ways. Video games turn everyday people into heroes who always vanquish evil (even if that means using methods that exceed any evil they had previously known). Video game ethics leave much to be desired.

Horror Sells

Actually, I think that people focus a great deal of their creative energy towards this question. They are faced with the horror of evil continually from the news media, movies and the obituary columns. Horror sells like sex does. Even the weather channel flashes horrors before us. How do we abide the presence of evil?

Some people confront evil in the presence of Horror itself. Horror movies/Slasher flix, Ultra-Violent movies and online sites cater to the desire to be in the presence of evil, feel it’s imitation of glory and then turn it off. But evil has no ‘off’ switch.

The ‘goosebumps’ of fear are an imitation of the presence of the Holy Spirit and the anointing which can sometimes be discerned by the electrifying feeling of goosebumps on our skin. Fear and evil are never the equivalent of God’s presence but for some people, it is their religious experience.

Renting a Saviour

Others try Religious or Spiritual responses to evil. This can take the form of a Mental Paradigm that accounts for evil and offers a (partial) solution for it such as Environmentalism. Concepts like global warming and anti-nuke militancy inspire activity, which masks the fact that nothing has really been done. But at least it shuts out all those other disturbing images of starving children and bombed civilians.

There is an innate need in us to Master Evil. We need to feel we have a handle on this amorphous thing, this Satan this Hitler this Kim Jong Un. This need will drive us into silliness if we are not careful about the response to evil we choose to make our own. By silliness, I am referring to Religion, of course.

We make a Covenant with a god in exchange for their remedy for evil. ‘I give you my soul and my worship and obedience in exchange for your salvation’. Deliver us from evil!

Once this covenant is made it becomes our part to defend the doctrine of our god from all attack (or questions). Anything that denies our religion becomes, by definition, evil. This is the position of a fanatic.

We enlist in the Army of our god and we become a danger to the truth – if our god doesn’t turn out to be the truth. One of the greatest lies that is spun in this quest to address evil is that evil or unethical means can be used to accomplish a good end – the defeat of evil. That is not how it works.

It Does Not Work that Way

In Physics, an opposite action is required to stop a moving object. A similar or parallel action increases the motion of that object. It does not defeat its progress.

The same is true in the spiritual realm of good and evil. Evil or unLoving Actions will never solve the question of evil. They only increase the amount of evil. Love is stronger than death the Bible tells us (Song of Solomon 8:6). A greater and opposite force is required to defeat evil.

Beware the god you choose to defeat evil for you. It might be darkness disguised as light.

(Or just silliness disguised as sense.)

God defines Himself to us as Love. Notice that it is not Power or Ferocity or even Doctrine by which God reveals Himself. Our temptations have been to confront evil with greater evil power or with the intensity of our active opposition or even with our doctrinal ‘knowledge’ of truth or technology. The true God YHWH denies these avenues in favour of Love.

Love is the antithesis of evil therefore it is the only force sufficient to successfully oppose evil. Evil denies, steals, kills, spoils and attacks. Love gives, restores, revives, heals and suffers/allows.

Suffering is the key. Only by allowing/suffering evil to enter into Himself, could Jesus separate evil from us. Until that separation was accomplished there was no way to defeat evil with out destroying humanity along with it. Evil had entered into us through fear. It had become part of us. In order to defeat evil Jesus had to let evil become part of him without becoming formed into that evil. Evil actions bind evil to us. Jesus could only act in Love if He was going to finally deal with evil and keep it separate from Himself.

Evil doesn’t suffer, it causes suffering. Only love is strong enough to suffer on behalf of it’s beloved, thereby destroying evil. It is Love that answers the question of evil. Love is the force that can separate evil from its beloved and take it into Hell and destroy it there with the revelation of God’s Glory. Jesus did that.

Love is the answer to evil. Nothing else can destroy evil without also destroying us.