Choose Wisely
Remember. Evil is a con job wanting you to give up in despair.
Evil doesn’t always look bad.
Evil entices by making promises it will later gleefully break.
Evil lies and justifies and accuses the righteous for what evil routinely does.
Evil plays good people for fools and our only reliable defense is to stay close to God.
Don’t fight evil.
Turn evil over to God.
The following passage is helpful if you want to better understand the power struggle between good and evil, God and satan, and how men choose sides.
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”
[Minor observation: The ancestors of these Jewish scribes and Pharisees once were slaves in Egypt. Later their nation became slaves to the Assyrians and Babylonians respectively. At the time of this exchange with Jesus they are under the boot of the Romans. This means their statement above is a lie and they know it. They created this phony national history to try and hold on to their personal power. This will lead them later to set up Jesus’s execution by the Romans.]
Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”
They answered him, “Abraham is our father.”
Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.”
They said to him, “We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father—even God.”
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.
Which one of you convicts me of sin?
If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?
Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”
John 8:31-47 (ESV)
God does not create or use evil ever.
This is a faith statement meaning that I will trust Scripture on this point and not default to my own feelings. Of course at times it is easy to blame God for the bad in life, but this is exactly what evil wants me to do — to blame what is actually the only essence of goodness and holiness in the universe. Evil is really evil.
As I have written in earlier posts God is love and one of the attributes of love is a respect for the Beloved. This means we have free wills to choose. This opens up the possibility for evil to exist and sadly many choose to go that direction because they were promised power and life. In the end they will obtain neither.
So here we are.
We have been born into a world where evil exists and for a limited time is running wild.
Accept this is not new.
Yes, it’s a mess right now but one day Evil will come to its end.
…and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Revelation 20:10 (ESV)
Let’s choose wisely.