Hey, Church! 

“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.” C.S. Lewis

So far in our “Weird Stuff” series, we have looked at miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Two Saturdays ago in Personal Worship, we meditated on the miracle of existence and how God so perfectly ordered the universe that if any one piece of the elaborate tapestry were altered, life as we know it would unravel. Then, last Saturday, we meditated on the possibility that God may work more miracles in our life than we often recognize because we tend to overlook the smaller ways He intervenes in our affairs, perhaps even on a daily basis. 

This week, I want to look at the other side of the spiritual realm and consider the problem of evil. Like miracles, the works of evil can be big or small, obvious or hidden. Whereas the gifts of the Holy Spirit are always for the building up of Christ’s Church, evil is consistently bent on destruction. 

I started reading a fascinating book this week entitled, People of the Lie: The Hope of Healing Human Evil.(1) It is written by M. Scott Peck, a retired psychiatrist and former agnostic who converted to Christianity as a result of his experience with patients. During the course of his career, he became convinced that the spiritual realm existed because of the evil he observed in the people he counseled. His book recounts some of their stories. 

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Bobby, a 15-year-old boy, had been admitted to the emergency room the night before his parents brought him to Dr. Peck for a psychiatric evaluation. The hospital diagnosed him with depression and sent a note to the receiving psychiatrist: 

Bobby’s older brother, Stuart, 16, committed suicide this past June, shooting himself in the head with his .22 caliber rifle. Bobby initially seemed to handle his only sibling’s death rather well. But from the beginning of school in September, his academic performance has been poor. Once a B student, he is now failing all his courses. By Thanksgiving he had become obviously depressed. His parents, who seem very concerned, tried to talk to him, but he has become more and more uncommunicative, particularly since Christmas. Although there is no previous history of antisocial behavior, yesterday Bobby stole a car by himself, crashed it (he had never driven before), and was apprehended by police. His court date is set for March 24th. Because of his age he was released into his parents’ custody, and they were advised to seek immediate psychiatric evaluation for him.

Upon meeting Bobby for the first time, Dr. Peck noted that his features were typical of a teenage boy. Long, spindly limbs, skinny torso, poorly fitted clothes, hair covering his eyes, and a gaze that stayed blankly fixed on the floor. He also had sores on his arms and hands, which he picked at nervously throughout their conversation. After some time of discussion, Dr. Peck sensed Bobby’s resistance to more serious things and decided to change the topic to something that often elicits some enthusiasm from young people:

“It’s not long since Christmas… What did you get for Christmas?”
“Nothing much.” 
“Your parents must have given you something. What did they give you?”
“A gun.” 
“A gun?” I replied stupidly. 
“Yes.” 
“What kind of gun?” I asked slowly. 
“A twenty-two.” 
“A twenty-two pistol?”
“No, a twenty-two rifle.” 

Dr. Peck wrote, “There was a long moment of silence. I felt as if I had lost my bearings. I wanted to stop the interview. I wanted to go home. Finally I pushed myself to say what had to be said.”

“I understand that it was with a twenty-two rifle that your brother killed himself.”
“Yes.”
“Was that what you asked for for Christmas?”
“No.”
“What did you ask for?”
“A tennis racket.”
“But you got the gun instead?”
“Yes.” 
“How did you feel, getting the same kind of gun that your brother had?”
“It wasn’t the same kind of gun.” 

Dr. Peck comments, “I began to feel better. Maybe I was just confused.”

“I’m sorry, I thought they were the same kind of gun.” 
“It wasn’t the same kind of gun,” Bobby replied. “It was the gun.” 
“The gun?”
“Yes.” 
“You mean, it was your brother’s gun?” 
“Yes.”
“You mean your parents gave you your brother’s gun for Christmas, the one he shot himself with?”
“Yes.” 
“How did it make you feel getting your brother’s gun for Christmas?” 
“I don’t know.” 

Dr. Peck writes, “I almost regretted the question. How could he know? How could he answer such a thing? I looked at him. There had been no change in his appearance as we had talked about the gun. He had continued to pick away at his sores. Otherwise it was as if he were already dead–dull-eyed, listless, apathetic to the point of lifelessness, beyond terror.” 

“No, I don’t expect you could know,” I said. “Tell me, do you ever see your grandparents?”
“No, they live in South Dakota.” 
“Do you have any relatives that you see?”
“Some.” 
“Any that you like?”
“I like my aunt Helen.” 

Sensing the first hint of enthusiasm in Bobby’s demeanor, Dr. Peck asked,

“Would you like it if your aunt Helen came to visit you here while you’re in the hospital?” 
“She lives quite far away.” 
“But if she came anyway?”
“If she wanted to.” 

Dr. Peck determined that he must get in touch with Aunt Helen, and shortly terminated the interview. 

The next day, Dr. Peck met with Bobby’s parents. They were hard-working, blue-collared, middle-lower class people who went to a Lutheran church every Sunday. They were quiet, orderly, solid, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason for the devastation that had befallen them. First, their oldest son killed himself, and now Bobby seemed very likely to follow suit. Since the full conversation recorded in the book spans six pages, I will only quote the portions most pertinent to the point I would like to make here. 

“I’ve cried myself out, Doctor,” the mother said.
“Stuart’s suicide was a surprise to you?” I asked.
“Totally. A complete shock,” the father answered. “He was such a well-adjusted boy. He did well in school. He was into scouting. He liked to hunt woodchucks in the fields behind the house. He was a quiet boy, but everyone liked him.” 
“Had he seemed depressed before he killed himself?”
“No, not at all. He seemed just like his old self. Of course, he was quiet and didn’t tell us much of what was on his mind.” 
“Did he leave a note?”
“No.”
“Have any of your relatives on either side had a mental illness or serious depression, or killed themselves?”

They reported none, and the mother asked,

“Oh, Doctor, you don’t think that there’s any chance that Bobby might… might also do something to himself, do you?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I think there’s a very significant chance.” 
“O God, I don’t think I could bear it,” the mother wailed softly. “Does this sort of thing–I mean, hurting yourself–does it run in families?”
“Definitely. Statistically, the highest risk of suicide exists in people who have a brother or sister who’s committed suicide.”
“O God, the mother wailed again. “You mean Bobby might really do it too?”
“You hadn’t thought of Bobby being in danger?” I asked.
“No, not until now,” the father replied.

Dr. Peck asked more questions–about why they did not take his school administrators’ concerns, or Bobby’s own apparent depression, more seriously, as a sign that he needs help. More of the same feigned surprise from the parents. When he suggested extensive counseling, they argued, “It’s not that easy for us to take Bobby here or there during weekdays. We’re both working people, you know. And these counseling people, they don’t work on weekends. We can’t be just taking off from our jobs every day. We’ve got a living to make, you know.” He suggested Bobby stay with Aunt Helen for a time. A sensible suggestion that was quickly met with more disagreement from the parents. 

Eventually, Dr. Peck brought up the subject of their thoughtless Christmas present. 

“Look, Doctor,” the father interjected, “I don’t know what you’re insinuating. You’re asking all these questions like you were a policeman or something. We haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t have any right to take a boy from his parents, if that’s what you’re thinking of. We’ve worked hard for that boy. We’ve been good parents.”

Dr. Peck wrote, “My stomach was feeling queasier moment by moment.”

“I’m concerned about the Christmas present you gave Bobby.”
“Christmas present?” The parents seemed confused. 
“Yes. I understand you gave him a gun.” 
“That’s right.” 
“Was that what he asked for?”
“How should I know what he asked for?” the father demanded belligerently. Then immediately his manner turned plaintive. “I can’t remember what he asked for. A lot’s happened to us, you know. This has been a difficult year for us.” 
“I can believe it has been,” I said, “but why did you give him a gun?”
“Why? Why not? It’s a good present for a boy his age. Most boys his age would give their eyeteeth for a gun.” 
“I should think,” I said slowly, “that since your only other child has killed himself with a gun that you wouldn’t feel so kindly towards guns… [Besides], you didn’t know Stuart was depressed, [so] there was perhaps no reason for you to worry about him having a gun. But you did know Bobby was depressed. You knew he was depressed well before Christmas, well before you gave him the gun.” 

“Please, Doctor, you don’t seem to understand,” the mother said ingratiatingly, taking over from her husband. “We really didn’t know it was this serious. We just thought he was upset over his brother.” 
“So you gave him his brother’s suicide weapon. Not any gun. That particular gun.” 
The father took the lead again. “We couldn’t afford to get him a new gun. I don’t know why you’re picking on us. We gave him the best present we could. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know. We’re just ordinary working people. We could have sold the gun and made money. But we didn’t. We kept it so we could give Bobby a good present.” 

“Did you think how that present might seem to Bobby?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that giving him his brother’s suicide weapon was like telling him to walk in his brother’s shoes, like telling him to go out and kill himself too.” 
“We didn’t tell him anything of the sort.” 
“Of course not. But did you think that it might possibly seem that way to Bobby?”
“No, we didn’t think about that. We’re not educated people like you. We haven’t been to college and learned all kinds of fancy ways of thinking. We’re just simple working people. We can’t be expected to think of all these things.”
“Perhaps not,” I said. “But that’s what worries me. Because these things need to be thought of.” 

Dr. Peck describes the scene in that moment: “We stared at each other for a long moment. How did they feel, I wondered. Certainly they didn’t seem to feel guilty. Angry? Frightened? Victimized? I didn’t know. I didn’t feel any empathy for them. I only knew how I felt. I felt repelled by them. And I felt very tired.” 

After some coaxing and arguing, Dr. Peck managed to convince the parents to sign an agreement allowing him to communicate with Aunt Helen about Bobby’s situation. Helen and her husband, also hard-working people, were nonetheless willing to have Bobby live with them as long as insurance could cover the cost of psychiatric treatments. Dr. Peck connected Bobby with an excellent psychiatrist in Helen’s town, who agreed to take him on as a long-term outpatient case. 

Before Bobby was even released from the hospital to move in with Helen, even within a couple of days after meeting with Dr. Peck, “Bobby was quite amenable to the [prescribed] change. Indeed, he improved rapidly with several visits from Helen, the prospect of a new living situation, and the care he received from the aides and nurses. By the time he was discharged to Helen’s care, three weeks after his admission to the hospital, the sores on his arms and hands were only scars, and he was able to joke with the staff. Six months later I heard from Helen that he seemed to be doing well and that his grades had come up again. From his psychiatrist I heard that he had developed a trusting therapeutic relationship but was only barely beginning to approach facing the psychological reality of his parents and their treatment of him.”

—

When asked to define evil, Dr. Peck quoted his eight-year-old son, who explained it simply as “‘live’ spelled backward.” Evil opposes life. The Bible tells us that our enemy, the devil, seeks to “kill, steal, and destroy.” Likewise, in Dr. Peck’s experience with human evil, he says, “it has to do with murder–namely, unnecessary killing, killing that is not required for biological survival.” Evil stands against life in every way. Not only bodily life, but in every other attribute of human life—“sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will.” 

When you think of real-life evil, what are some of the images that come to mind? Certainly, our imaginations may wander to the netherworld, where demons and a palpable yet invisible darkness dwell. But we encounter evil every day in quite visible ways. Anti-life sentiments are their tell-tale sign. The protesters outside a pro-life clinic, seething with anger that anyone should tell a woman that murdering a baby is wrong. Activists who run law-enforcement officers over with their cars because they disagree with the laws they were sworn to enforce. The “pride” of some in the LGBTQIA+ camp, who cannot, by nature of their intimate relationships, procreate, and have no regard for what God has to say on the subject.* 

Another characteristic of evil is that it lies. The deceiver emboldens people to carry out all manner of atrocities under guise of virtue. Nazi concentration camps were said to be forces of “order” and “safety,” for the good of the German people. Abortion is a “human right” that promotes “women’s health.” Gender reassignment surgery of a child is “affirming” care. The abolition of (select) natural and civil laws is “virtuous,” “inclusive,” and essential for “liberty.” A parent who is so self-deceived in his or her own evil will give their son the gun his older brother used to commit suicide and call it a “good gift.” Such self-deception does not tend to happen all at once, but by one small compromise at a time (see the C.S. Lewis quote above). 

The Bible tells us that the devil wants to “kill, steal, and destroy.” He does so, not as an evil-looking red monster with a pitchfork (that would be too easy to resist!), but as “a father,” the “father of lies.” He is the prince of darkness, but he “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14; cf. Eph. 6:12). He prowls around the earth, stalking his prey like a lion, and devouring the simple minded who, like him, call good “evil,” and evil “good.” Instead of looking within and addressing one’s own dysfunctions and failures, evil people deny “the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy, and imperfection [by] casting their pain onto others through projection and scapegoating. They themselves may not suffer, but those around them do. They cause suffering. The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society.” 

Finally, lest we commit the same error we seek to identify in others, we must remember that we are not merely detached observers of evil; we wrestle with the same powers of darkness in our hearts. It is almost comical how easy it is to strain at the speck in someone else’s eye while ignoring the plank in our own (Matt. 7:3-5). The Bible warns about this too. “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind” (1 Cor. 10:12-13a). Even we who are redeemed by the blood of Jesus! Though the Spirit gives us desire and capacity to push back against the forces of spiritual darkness, a scourge of sin that will ultimately be removed, while we live in mortal bodies, our hearts remain “deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9). 

What should we do with this pervasive problem of evil? Below are just a few suggestions, but I would encourage you to ask God what He may want from you. Whether the evil is within your own heart or external to you, the first step is to take notice. Having seen the example of Bobby’s parents and considered key characteristics of the enemy’s tactics, pray for discernment to better identify evil in your day-to-day existence. 

1. Identify evil wherever it may lurk–within and without your own soul. To name something gives you a certain power over it. If you don’t call it “evil,” you will be tempted to believe it simply from an “angel of light.” 
2. Pray! For discernment in identifying evil, for wisdom on how to address it, and for all those who may be unconsciously caught under the enemy’s spell. 
3. Do not judge! The purpose of identifying evil in a person is not to cast judgment, or assume superiority. We must learn to discern the spirits of this world while not forgetting that we, ourselves, are sinners saved by grace. Identifying the source of someone’s actions as evil ought only to empower you to preach Jesus to their bondage more boldly. It is because we love people that we want to see them set free by Christ! 
4. Read God’s Word, specifically about the character of your enemy, the devil, and the kinds of pernicious tactics his followers employ. 
5. Re-read the descriptions of evil above, this time considering each one’s opposite. If that is evil, then this (opposite) must look like… (e.g. Evil promotes death, so good must promote life; e.g. Evil people cause suffering, so good people work to ease human suffering…)
6. Most importantly, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). 

A few other scriptures deserving of your reflection over the weekend: 

“Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). 

“In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16).

“The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). 

“Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41).

“You, dear children, are from God and have overcome [the forces of darkness in the world], because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world (1 Jn. 4:4).