Deliver Us from (the) Evil (One)

Wrestling with Evil

I have to admit from the outset that I struggled mightily with the topic of this sermon. I told you that I had difficulties with the last topic about temptation and testing. I remarked about how I had once glossed over the difference between God testing but not tempting us. Well, that was an oversight at the time.

But I think that oversight revealed something about me that is telling. I, as a pastor and teacher of the Christian faith, have a difficulty, one common to many pastors and teachers. I have a big problem when it comes to this little four letter word, “evil.” Evil is one of those words that just hits us in the gut with a visceral reaction. Sometimes we see something, some headline in the paper, some breaking news story, and we just know in our hearts—and our guts—that this act or that act was truly evil.

But what IS evil? How do we define it? And then, what do we do with it? Where did it come from? Is it always going to be with us? These are some of the questions that keep people up at night. And these are the questions that sometimes get people to take matters into their own hands and fight against what they perceive as evil.

But there is a problem, right there in that last sentence, isn’t there. Some folks take matters into their own hands and fight against “what they perceive” as evil. For many, evil is merely in the eyes of the beholder.

Going back in history about twenty years, on one brisk September 11th morning, many of us watched in horror as planes crashed into the twin towers, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. That day, over three thousand souls were lost in short order. It was an attack against our country and our values and it was evil. That’s what we said about it—and I absolutely think that that is true.

But half way around the world, there were those that thought that what happened was not evil. In fact, there were those that thought that the September 11th attacks were a good and noble thing. AND, they thought that the September 11th attacks were a step in combatting a great evil, an evil that had stepped in their part of the world too much and wanted to spread their evil ways to others.

What do we do with a dilemma like this? Is evil merely culturally relative? Is a true definition of evil only ever to be found in the eyes of the beholder? From what I just described, one would think that the answer is yes. Because in almost any war, any crusade, any conflict with moral dimensions, there is a seeming clash between good and evil, between righteous and unrighteous, and between the forces of light and darkness.

At least that’s how we paint it, from our perspective as humans. We humans are quick to categorize people. We are either innocent victims or we are the oppressor and evil. We think in binary categories almost exclusively. In our public discourse there is no room for shades of gray. It needs to be black and white or else we can’t process it.

The Faith Stance of Evil

But what does our Christian faith teach us about evil? How are people who seek to follow after Jesus Christ supposed to define evil? How are we to respond, react, and overcome evil?

These are very good questions and they require deep dives into Scripture and theology, something that I just don’t have the time to do in just one message. But today I want to give you some outlines, some pointers, and some suggestions for further thoughts and study you might ponder as we move forward.

First, we need to define what evil is from a Christian perspective. Here is a definition from the Lexham Theological Wordbook. According to this resource, evil is:

Acts, intentions, or forces that are morally or spiritually corrupt, wicked, or harmful, and are in opposition to principles of goodness and righteousness. As a theological concept, evil refers to the presence or manifestation of moral or spiritual corruption, wickedness, or malevolence in opposition to God's will and the principles of goodness, righteousness, and holiness as revealed in Scripture and Christian tradition.

I like this definition for several reasons. First, it recognizes the nuances that I find lacking in much of our discussions of evil today. Evil not only encompasses things that are done, that is, acts of evil. No, it also goes to our heart with evil intentions. And those acts and intentions are corrupt, evil, wicked, harmful, and in opposition to goodness. And, ultimately all of this is in relation and defined by God and God’s revelation in Scripture and Jesus Christ.

We believe that God is good and all the time, God is good. So when we want to look at goodness, we look for things that are godly. By contrast, those things that are not good, are by definition evil. If righteousness is good, then unrighteousness is evil. If compassion is good, then hard-heartedness is evil. If generosity is good, then greed is evil. I think you get the picture.

But by defining evil in such a way, we run into problems, don’t we. Not everyone believes in God. Not everyone is a Christian. Not everyone believes that acts we would label unrighteous are such.

And this is the struggle we find all throughout the pages of Scripture. This is the tension we find ourselves living in as people not of the world but sent into the world as heralds of the king.

We are called to proclaim not just a new Lord, Jesus. Not just a new kingdom, the Kingdom of God. No. We are called to proclaim a new way of being human. A new way of looking at good and evil. And a new way of dealing with evil. But I’ll come back to that in a moment.

First, we need to talk about the elephant in the room. Ok, not an elephant…more like the chief demon in the room. We need to talk about the Devil. If you remember last week I told you that the simplistic “the Devil made me do it” response was inadequate. That it was you that made you sin, not Satan.

But this week, I want to nuance this a bit more. As Scripture clearly shows, there are dark spiritual powers out there that are personal. But, if you read carefully through the Bible, you do not find a great deal of definition or information about them.

The demons and their Lord Satan, the Devil, Beelzebub, and other names get mention in the Bible, it’s true. But overwhelmingly in the context of how they interact with Jesus, and eventually, in the book of Revelation, how they will be defeated in the end.

So, with all of that background let us turn towards a few of our passages of Scripture for the day to see how we might be delivered from evil

Evil or Evil One

Conflict over the translation in the LP. Evil or Evil one

both are good translations and it is possible that both contain truth

Walk through the Scriptures