As I was pondering Halloween this week, I began to think about evil and it's place within the Christian journey. Honestly, we try not to think about evil that much. We would rather focus on the good feelings from Christianity and how to be better people. We leave evil for conversations about the world.
We must be careful to walk a fine line in our journey. On one side of the line is looking at Christianity as something that solves all of our problems and where only happiness should be found. On the other side, if you talk about evil and sin too much you could end up glorifying it. So we must walk the middle and have a healthy view of evil and good and how all of that works within the kingdom.
We cannot truly appreciate our salvation, the goodness of God, the sacrifice of Christ, unless we have a healthy respect and understanding of sin and evil within our world. It is never a "fun" Sunday to take time to lament or confess or even recognize the brokenness of our world. However, if we only have fun on Sunday then we miss the point of why we point to Christ. Why do we point to Christ? We may answer that our lives are better off with Jesus. We may answer that worshipping God gives us a good feelings. We may answer that without Sunday we cannot make it through the rest of the week. All of the answers are more about us than Christ. We point to Christ, because in the cosmic war of good versus evil or angels vs. demons or Christ vs. Satan, Jesus Christ sacrifices his divine nature to live in this world, and then later sacrifices pain, anguish, and ultimately sacrifices his life so that we can have a perfect, ultimate conqueror to follow. When Jesus overcomes evil, so do we!
(Keep Reading...)
We must be careful to walk a fine line in our journey. On one side of the line is looking at Christianity as something that solves all of our problems and where only happiness should be found. On the other side, if you talk about evil and sin too much you could end up glorifying it. So we must walk the middle and have a healthy view of evil and good and how all of that works within the kingdom.
We cannot truly appreciate our salvation, the goodness of God, the sacrifice of Christ, unless we have a healthy respect and understanding of sin and evil within our world. It is never a "fun" Sunday to take time to lament or confess or even recognize the brokenness of our world. However, if we only have fun on Sunday then we miss the point of why we point to Christ. Why do we point to Christ? We may answer that our lives are better off with Jesus. We may answer that worshipping God gives us a good feelings. We may answer that without Sunday we cannot make it through the rest of the week. All of the answers are more about us than Christ. We point to Christ, because in the cosmic war of good versus evil or angels vs. demons or Christ vs. Satan, Jesus Christ sacrifices his divine nature to live in this world, and then later sacrifices pain, anguish, and ultimately sacrifices his life so that we can have a perfect, ultimate conqueror to follow. When Jesus overcomes evil, so do we!
(Keep Reading...)
Some of our problem is that we have watered down evil to be something we dislike rather than a destructive force that can destroy not only life and happiness, but eternal life and joy as well. Again, we must be careful to treat evil as true evil without exalting or glorifying it above the One who conquers it. In the book of Revelation 13 Jesus defeats the beasts of the sea and earth. These are essentially the civil and religious powers of Rome. While we cannot appreciate all of the apocalyptic talk of this book, the readers of the day would have understood very well. John was giving a revelation and presenting an evil that wasn't just disliked but feared beyond imagine. And in that he constantly said Jesus conquers!
We conquer too! We don't conquer over our political opponents or laws that offend our faith. We don't conquer over "feel-good" faith that's empty or misguided doctrines. We conquer over the evil one who lurks and waits to steal, kill, and destroy. We conquer over death, sin, hatred, bigotry, racism, sexism, murder, lies, slander, immorality, and darkness. When we have a good sense of true evil, I know we will live even more for Christ, because of what he has done for us.
Here are a few quotes from David F. Ford and his book Theology A Very Short Introduction
This is from Chapter six and I would encourage you to read this whole chapter. Ford gives a really deep theology for evil.
Imagine a God who creates a world in which there is genuine freedom, and who refuses to manipulate that freedom into always doing good. (p.73 in response to why God allows for evil)
God might even in some sense suffer the consequences of evil, taking responsibility for it by identifying fully both with those who undergo it and those who do it. (p.73 same response as above)
A further dimension of that approach is to try to see the various aspects of evil from the perspective of trust in God. (p. 73 How evil in the world can actually point us to trust in God)
The practical implications of that trust and hope in Jesus Christ are that the overwhelming emphasis is on living in love with him and others now. The stress is not on trying to solve the mystery of evil but on resisting it, and building up communities whose 'best practice' of worship, forgiveness, faith, hope, and love is a sign that God, not evil, is the basic truth of life. (p.82 on how the point is always God)
We will appreciate more of what Christ has done, if we can truly understand what he has overcome! It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick!
We conquer too! We don't conquer over our political opponents or laws that offend our faith. We don't conquer over "feel-good" faith that's empty or misguided doctrines. We conquer over the evil one who lurks and waits to steal, kill, and destroy. We conquer over death, sin, hatred, bigotry, racism, sexism, murder, lies, slander, immorality, and darkness. When we have a good sense of true evil, I know we will live even more for Christ, because of what he has done for us.
Here are a few quotes from David F. Ford and his book Theology A Very Short Introduction
This is from Chapter six and I would encourage you to read this whole chapter. Ford gives a really deep theology for evil.
Imagine a God who creates a world in which there is genuine freedom, and who refuses to manipulate that freedom into always doing good. (p.73 in response to why God allows for evil)
God might even in some sense suffer the consequences of evil, taking responsibility for it by identifying fully both with those who undergo it and those who do it. (p.73 same response as above)
A further dimension of that approach is to try to see the various aspects of evil from the perspective of trust in God. (p. 73 How evil in the world can actually point us to trust in God)
The practical implications of that trust and hope in Jesus Christ are that the overwhelming emphasis is on living in love with him and others now. The stress is not on trying to solve the mystery of evil but on resisting it, and building up communities whose 'best practice' of worship, forgiveness, faith, hope, and love is a sign that God, not evil, is the basic truth of life. (p.82 on how the point is always God)
We will appreciate more of what Christ has done, if we can truly understand what he has overcome! It is not the healthy who need a physician, but the sick!
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