Evil
EVIL
Evil Is Self-Destructive
Psalm 1:1-6; John 3:20; 1 Peter 3:9-13
Evil entangles every situation, for evil is against the nature of reality. Therefore, to try to straighten out a situation by an evil is only to entangle it the more. Therefore, evil is not only evil; it is stupid. Somebody has suggested that the word evil is the word live spelled backward. It is: evil is the will to live put into reverse; it is life turning against itself. “Human nature is allergic to evil. Evil is the way” human nature is not made to work. In evil, life desires to gain freedom, but gains only the freedom to destroy itself. It runs away from salvation! It revolts against life!
Abundant Living
(Week 27, Thursday)
Sin Has No Future
Psalm 1:3-6
All evil is a parasite upon the good. You have to throw enough good around evil to keep it going. When it is pure “Beast,” it is pure blight. It has no future. It is not-the-way.
The Way
(Week 3, Tuesday)
Is the Christian Way the Natural Way?
Luke 15:17-24
If evil were the natural, how could you with justice be punished for living according to nature? That would be most unfair. But you are punished whenever you take sin into your life. The fact is that sin and its punishment are one and the same thing. By its very nature, sin is disruptive; that disruption is the punishment. You don’t have to punish a cancer for being a cancer; cancer is its own punishment. You don’t have to punish the eye for having sand in it; sand in it is punishment. The word evil is the word live spelled backwards. It is life attempting to live against itself. . . . It is an attempt to live against the nature of reality and get away with it. It is an attempt at the impossible. The result is inevitable—breakdown and frustration.
The Way
(Week 4, Wednesday)
The Only Sickness Is Homesickness
Psalm 139:7-12
Sin and evil are intrusions, aberrations, things for which we are not made. They are foreign bodies in the personality of humanity, and set up festering places exactly as a foreign body does in the physical.
The Way
(Week 5, Tuesday)
Matthew 5:43-48
Remember the three levels of life and decide which one you are going to live on. (a) The level of life where you return evil for good—the demonic level. (b) The level where you return evil for evil—the human, legal level. (c) The level where you return good for evil—the Christian level, the divine level.
You become born of the qualities you give out. If you give evil for good, then you become evil, you become the thing you give out. If you give evil for evil, you become a tit-for-tat person, legalistic, unlovely, and unloved. If you give out good for evil, then you are born of the good, you become good.
The Way
(Week 16, Monday)
You Can Use Suffering
Philippians 1:12-14; 2 Timothy 3:10-12
The Way recognizes that some diseases can be gotten rid of now, but some will have to await the final cure in the resurrection. The Way would abolish all evil of the body and mind, but there is a residue that must await the final cure. The mortal frame breaks down finally in a mortal world; we are not constructed to be eternally here.
But the Way offers this possibility for the residue that cannot now be remedied: You can use it. You can take it up into the purpose of your life and make it contribute to the rest of life. There is no pain, no suffering, no frustration, and no disappointment that cannot be cured or taken up and used for higher ends. In either case, you have a way out. You are relieved of it or enriched by it. You are not nonplussed; the Christian never is. Christians always have a way out. We are never stymied, for if we can’t do this, we can do that, both equally good in the final result. The Way always has a way.
The Way
(Week 34, Monday)
Life Is Determined More by Reactions
Romans 8:35-39
Life is determined perhaps more by reactions than by actions. Life comes to you without your acting; it forces situations upon you without your asking or your acting. It is then that the reaction counts. You can react in self-pity and in frustration; or you can react with confidence and courage and make the evil thing make you better. Its origin may be evil, but by the time it gets through you its destination is good; you have turned evil into good.
The Way
(Week 34, Tuesday)
1 Corinthians 15:36-44
God heals through the final cure—the resurrection. Some diseases must await the final cure in the resurrection. We live in a mortal world, a world where physical death is a fact. It is a beneficent fact, for if we didn’t pass away and make room for the next generation, the earth would be so crowded that there wouldn’t be any but “Standing Room Only.” But we are on the way to a world of immortality where decay will not invade. Here it does invade, by the very nature of things. The body must break down sometime. Just as the soul must die to live, so the body must die to live.
The Way
(Week 38, Wednesday)
The Way Is the Way to Simplicity
Matthew 16:5-12
Evil is always complex, roundabout, tangled. Goodness is always a reduction of life to simplicity. Lies are roundabout, complicated. Truth is straightforward and uncomplicated. If you lie, you have to have a good memory; you have to remember each time what you have said. But if you speak the truth, then you don’t have to remember what you have said; you simply tell the truth each time. All great discoveries are a reduction from complexity to simplicity.
The Way
(Week 42, Sunday)
Convincing Witness
Acts 14:1-3
Evil has met its match, has been defeated, and now we face no evil that hasn’t the footprint of the Son of God on its neck.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 8, Tuesday)
Life Is Reduced to Simplicity
Titus 3:3-6
Under the Spirit’s cleansing, all unnatural evil is taken out of us, and we are supernaturally natural. Life is reduced to simplicity. Evil is very complex; the good is simple. The universe is against one and backs the other.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 18, Friday)
Our Supreme Weakness: Prayerlessness
Ephesians 6:13-18
So we harness evil itself to our purposes and use it. That possibility gives us inner steadiness of heart. Of one prominent and dynamic minister it was said: “He always talks as if he held four aces in his hand.” Christians can face life with supreme confidence, knowing that we have resources to meet anything—literally, anything—for God works in everything—good, bad, and indifferent—and makes it work for good. Life may deal you a very bad hand, but you know that you can turn all evil into a good. You are in complete mastery.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 22, Saturday)
The Earth Came to Help
John 14:27-31
The idea that evil is strong is pure illusion. It talks big and blusters; it has to, for it knows that at the center it is weak. The superiority complex of evil is the inverse side of its inferiority complex; it asserts outwardly, for it sinks inwardly. But virtue doesn’t have to assert anything loudly; it can wait for the revelation of the nature of reality. It therefore has a basic poise. . . .
Every evil is swallowed up sooner or later. The universe is not built for lies, dishonesties, or selfishness. It is built for truth, honesty, and unselfishness. The earth swallows up evil; look at history, and believe! The earth sustains good; look at history, and believe!
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 45, Sunday)
One of Those Half-Conversions
Genesis 27:41-45
If a person is critical of others, usually it is because that person is unconsciously critical of himself or herself. The people who are always complaining of others are simply externalizing their out-of-sortness with themselves. The pay-off of evil is that you have to live with an evil self.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 11, Monday)
He Who Treads Softly Goes Far
Romans 12:19-21
How [are we] to overcome resentments and hate[?] . . .
Alan W. Watts says very pertinently: “Our attitude toward evil must be free from hatred. . . . Satan rejoices when he succeeds in inspiring us with diabolical feelings to himself. . . . A continual denunciation of evil and its agents merely encourages its growth in the world—a truth sufficiently revealed in the Gospels, but to which we remain persistently blind” (Behold the Spirit [New York: Vintage Books, 1972], 205; quoting Nicolas Berdyaev, Freedom and the Spirit [1935], 182).
The only way to overcome evil is with good, hate by love, the world by a cross. It works. And nothing else will work.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 27, Sunday)
Galatians 5:22-24
There is an exquisite story in the Gospels that [in my opinion] got into the canon because they couldn’t keep it out. It fits the mind of Christ.
The two methods of dealing with sin are seen in the account of the woman taken in adultery—stones and sympathy. The scribes and Pharisees felt that the way to deal with sin was moral and physical stoning: moral stones of disapproving aloofness and scorn, and physical stones where the case allowed. The evildoers would be corrected by criticism. Jesus took the opposite method. He dealt with evil by sympathy for the evildoer. But sympathy in the original sense (sym = “with” and pathy = “suffering”), a suffering with the evil doer. As he was hungry in the hunger of the hungry, so he felt sinful in the sinner. He projected himself into the inner life of the sinner and became so one with the person that he was one with the sin. That is what it means when it says that he bore “our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet 2:24).
This identification with the sin and shame of the sinner comes out in the account here when the religious leaders dragged the woman taken in adultery into the midst of the crowd and said, “Moses has commanded us in the Law to stone such creatures; but what do you say?” (John 8:5 Moffatt). They felt he would say something different. And he did! His eyes followed the eyes of the woman toward the dust. She was inwardly crumpled with shame, and he shared shame with her. The eyes of the rest were upon the woman in self-righteous disapproval. Jesus suffered with the woman, yet disapproved of her sin.
He began to write with his finger in the dust. What was he tracing? I think something like this: “God loves you.” So out of the dust came the message of God’s redeeming love. If we are in the dust, then in that very dust God writes redemption. God identifies with us at our lowest place of need. If you are in hell, then Christ is in hell with you—“He descended into hell” (Apostles’ Creed)—and Christ is there to get you out. The fact is that Christ holds the keys to death and hell. He has unlocked both and walked out of both to freedom. The door is open!
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 34, Sunday)
Destroyed by No Mortal Blade
Luke 17:20-21
Evil has the seeds of its own destruction within it; for evil is an attempt to live against the nature of things, against eeality. Evil is not only bad, it is silly, for it is an attempt to live life in a way life is not made to work.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 49, Tuesday)
Acts 5:1-5
It is the ten righteous people who spare Sodoms, ancient and modern. The people of fidelity are the ones who hold together the situation long enough for the people of infidelity to practice their infidelity within that situation. Take them out and make evil pure evil, and it will destroy itself. For all evil is a parasite upon the good.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 27, Wednesday)
Bitter to Digest
Romans 6:12-14, 23
[Evil] “will taste sweet as honey, but it will be bitter to digest” (Rev 10:9 Moffatt). Evil has an initially sweet taste; then it is bitter to digest. The system is not made for it, cannot assimilate it. To lie, to steal, to commit adultery, to get revenge on enemies, to criticize others: all these are sweet to the taste, but they are bitter to digest. The soul rejects them, for the soul and evil are allergic to each other.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 50, Saturday)
Evil a Parasite upon the Good
Hebrews 12:1-2
Goodness and love are stronger than evil and hate. Evil and hate seem strong, and they are, in the beginning. But they have nothing behind them, nothing except the force of the evildoer and the hater. The universe doesn’t back them, sustain them, or further them. They are alone in a world of moral qualities. Therefore all evil and hate are doomed to self-destruction. For they have within them the seeds of their own destruction. A target practice by the military has an interesting method of disposal of shots that miss the target. If they don’t hit the target, they explode of their own accord. That is what evil and hate do. Give them enough rope, and they will hang themselves. No situation can stay together with evil and hate at its center. There is no cement in sin. You have to throw enough good around evil, enough love around hate, to keep them going. All evil is a parasite upon good; all hate is a parasite upon love. Make evil pure evil, and it will destroy itself. Make hate pure hate, and it will destroy itself. Therefore goodness and love will wear down all evil and hate.
Mastery
(Week 26, Friday)
Evil a Parasite upon the Good
1 John 3:4-8
[In response to a statement of hopelessness], “The only way to keep evil going is to throw enough good around it to make it work. For evil is an attempt to live life against itself, and it cannot be done. So evil is not only bad, it is stupid.” I challenge you to build a society on absolute dishonesty, no one would trust another; on absolute impurity, it would rot; on absolute selfishness, no one would think in terms of others; on absolute hate, it would be so divisive, so centrifugal, it would not hold together.
Then what conclusion must I come to? This: that every dishonest person is a parasite upon the honesty of some honest person whose honesty holds together that situation long enough for the person to be dishonest in it. Every impure person is a parasite upon the purity of some good person whose purity holds together that situation long enough for the person to be impure in it. Every selfish person is a parasite upon the unselfishness of some unselfish person whose unselfishness holds together that situation long enough for the person to be selfish in it. And every person of hate is a parasite upon the love of some loving person whose love holds together that situation long enough for the person to be hateful in it.
The universe is not built for the success of evil; evil sooner or later destroys itself.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 8, Thursday)
Some Questions Jesus Raises in His Body
Luke 28:18-23
How far can evil go in a world of this kind? How far can force go? How far can lies and clever manipulation go? How far can you cover up the designs of evil in the cloak of good and religion? The answer is that evil can go a long, long way; it can put the Son of God, the Creator of creation, on a wooden cross, wood that he created. That’s a long, long way. How far can force go? It can nail the Creator’s hands upon the cross. And it can lift it up for all to see what force can do. How far can lies and clever manipulation go? It can twist the truth of him who was the Truth and make it into a falsehood and can thus crucify him on misquotations. How far can evil designs be wrapped in the cloak of religion and good? It can go a long way; it can make evil seem good. They crucified Jesus in the name of God, his Father. They made it appear that they were protecting the sacred name of God. “You have heard his blasphemy!” (Mark 14:64) they cried. Evil, force, lies, perverted religion can go a long way in a world of this kind.
They can do these things today and tomorrow, but the third day? No! For Jesus gathers all these questions in his body and answers them in his resurrected body and spirit the third day!
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 16, Friday)
Debate Ends and Dedication Begins
Matthew 28:2-4
Evil is self-defeating. The universe is not made for the triumph of evil. Force can go a long way; it can fill the earth with wars and devastation. But force is now shown to be bankrupt, shown on a world scale. God is saying to humanity, “You have used force through the ages to settle your disputes, now I’ll let you see force.” And God uncovered the heart of an atom. When we saw it we turned pale, for God also said, “But if you use it again, both sides will be ruined irretrievably.” That is the utter bankruptcy of a method, the end of the Rake’s progress: Use it again and everybody concerned is ruined. This took two thousand years of experimentation to prove itself. But Jesus exposed the impotence of force; when in the presence of the Resurrected One, “the guards trembled and became like dead men” (Matt 28:4). The custodians of force were helpless in the presence of this new power. People wouldn’t take that embodied answer, so two thousand years of agony and pain have ensued, and the great fear is over our heads and in our hearts. God has two hands. We wouldn’t take the answer from the hand of grace, so we have to take it from the hand of judgment.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 16, Saturday)