How do we deal with evil?
Over time people have tried various approaches.
People have tried to ignore evil. If it does not affect them directly, it is easier to ignore it. See no evil. Hear no evil.
People have tried to reframe evil. “It’s really not that bad,’ they say. “It’s all in how you look at it.”
Some people become immune to evil by transposing it into entertainment. They can sit in movies or their own homes and watch people kill and torture others without batting an eyelash. Sometimes they even cheer while the unthinkable is happening.
Children grow up with toy guns and sabers in their hands. They pretend early their friends are the “bad guys.” They pretend to shoot them.
Children who grow up in violent homes where they were regularly assaulted for being “bad” learn violence is how you handle “bad” people.
Children who grow up being taught certain groups of people are evil know no better. If everyone in their family and all their friends believed it, they think it must be true.
For some, fantasy and fact become blurred. They grow up to be killers in real life. They believe they were taking out bad guys.
War really cements the two sides of good and evil. It depends which side you are on as to who you label as good and who you label as evil.
Evil is not so easily categorized.
Satan’s ways have many, many shades of grey. It is not always easy to spot evil until it is really hard core evil.
Evil cannot be easily contained. You cut off the head of the snake one place and it will go underground and grow another head and reappear somewhere else.
Satan’s real goal is turning good people into bad people. He convinces them that to defeat him, they need to act just like the ones they are trying to defeat.
Fire with fire. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. Many lives lost resulting in many more lives lost.
Violence is rampant across the world. Some days evil seems to have won.
But evil will never have the last word. God will. Not only did God talk about how to deal with evil, He demonstrated what to do.
In my next post, I will talk about God’s Path to Peace. You may think His Way is not possible except in Heaven.
But Jesus prayed to God,
“Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven!”
Matthew 6:10
For with God nothing shall be impossible!
Luke 1:27
