Start Here to Understand Evil
Don’t let temptation suck you in.
The theology of evil begins with the authority of Scripture. Evil’s nature is oily. It wants to deceive. To do this it shape shifts. It wants to win your trust by filling your appetite or ambition to have more than you earn or deserve. It offers the secret path to wealth and power. What it gets in rerun is a convert; someone who will help it distort reality and confuse others.
Through recorded history there has been a word claiming God as its source. It explains the nature of good and evil. A distractor from this simple idea is to flood the world with many scriptures or writings that claim authority. It’s easy to find the true from all the false in this way. What book is most attacked? What book is banned from education? In other words, what book is it that something out there doesn’t want you to read? Another way to understand the power of the Bible is to see how it changes the lives toward goodness for those who read it and do what it tells them — like forgive others.
Accepting the Bible as being the best authority for how to navigate life is like learning to fly by instruments. Instead of attempting to fly a plane through clouds using my feelings about where up, down, north and south are, I look at the consul of instruments in front of me along with listening to feedback of those tracking my flight on radar. It is by trusting the instruments and voices in my headset rather than my feelings that I am able to navigate safely through confusion. I must understand that my judgement and perceptions are flawed.
Where life is unclear in the moment I don’t try to fix or interpret it to fit my narrative. Instead I accept mystery. There is a lot I will not completely understand (like evil) while living in this world. So I trust God will tell me and you more later.
Until then I will trust that Jesus loves me as explained in Scripture.
Ultimately, if I am settled on this one point, then I can live with a lot of mysteries and be okay.