Begin
Silence, Stillness, and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading
“Our Father in heaven,
may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need
and forgive us our sins,
as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation
but rescue us from the evil one” Matthew 6:9-13
Devotional
Evil is a problem. It’s even hard to define. We first see in Genesis 3 where evil, depicted as a snake, is lurking in God’s good world. We are not told where it came from, other than to guess that it has something to do with humans’ free will, part of the image of God conferred upon us. In Isaiah and Ezekiel some Christians think that their descriptions of the Kings of Babylon and Tyre are also descriptions of fallen angels who, by way of their pride, became Satan and demonic forces. However these passage do not say this directly. It must further be noted that evil has not been created by God. Yet evil exists and any modern denial of the existence of evil leaves us impotent to deal with what is wreaks on the world.
The
Bible gives us two intertwined sources of evil:
1.
human free will when exercised against God and people
2. a
beyond human force that exists seemingly on its own in a quasi-personal
way.
The first is easy to understand.
Billions of people wanting to be their own God obviously ends up
in the worst kind of evil throughout history.
The second is harder to understand.
Two
illustrations come to my mind which do not fully explain evil, satan and
demonic powers, but they help me practically.
I sometimes picture evil
as the combined sin of certain groups of people (a family,
corporation, ideology or nation) taking on a life and identity of their
own where the whole becomes way bigger and more powerful than the sum of
the individual parts. (kind
of like in the movies when robots join forces to become anti-human they
become more powerful than the sum of their individual beings and
therefore an evil force).
Another way to picture evil is the force fitting of a God given
good into a slot where that good is not intended to fit.
(sort of like force fitting a puzzle piece into a place it just
doesn’t fit.
It’s a good puzzle piece but when forced where it doesn’t
belong it becomes broken and also breaks other puzzle pieces around it)
With
these two pictures of evil in mind I can then pray “deliver us from
evil” in a very practical way.
I can pray, Lord keep me alert to “group think” that cuts
corners and engages in practices that denigrate You and others.
Lord deliver me from the evil of the racist frat house, or from
the evil of the (you name it).
Lord, keep me connected to your family, your Body, the place
where you are present and where I can be rescued from the evil one. I
can also learn to be sensitive to my attempt to force fit what I think
is good into a place that is, well, a force fit, where someone will be
hurt and where doing so will wreck a good endeavor of God.
Question to Consider
How have you unwittingly found yourself participating in evil by being co-opted into an environment where anti-God practices have been the norm? Or, have you ever tried to force fit an obvious good only to find your effort to be harmful?
Prayer “Lord, deliver me from evil. Deliver me from the evil of trying to force my way or of being sucked into what the world calls normal, even normative, but is in reality a path to the pit of hell. And Lord deliver me from the grip of the evil one. Actually Lord, you have done so already, 2,000 years ago on the cross. Indeed I have been set free! Give my now the courage to live freely, free from the grip of all that would pull me away from “life that is truly life” in your good world. Amen"
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