Deliver Us From Evil

The most dangerous kind of evil is that which is mistaken for good.

We all think we are expert at figuring out that which is evil and that which is good. Evil is the stuff we don't like, championed by the people we don't like. Good is the stuff we like, championed by the people we like.

Right?

Or maybe it is more difficult than that. Solzhenitsyn said that evil is a line that runs through every person's heart. It cannot just be identified in the people, systems, or structures that we don't like, even when they are clearly harmful. We must also examine where our own hearts are aligned with that which the Lord calls evil.

That last line really matters. We aren't as good at discerning as we think we are, largely because we are compromised and immature in our understanding. Hebrews 5:14 says "But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil."

Discerning is difficult. It takes training through constant practice. And it is about attending to what the Lord deems life-giving or life-taking.

But today we are more apt to let other people do the work for us. We rely on media and social media to present us with easily-digestible versions of right and wrong, with pictures and graphs spelling out for us who it is fashionable to hate.

None of this - not the rabid blaming of Others, nor the virtue-signalling attempts to make sure we are on the right side of history this week - encourages us to examine the contents of our own hearts. If we are to be delivered from evil we must look first to our own complicity, our own great and terrible capacity to commit atrocious harm, actively or passively.

(A note: Here I speak not of the evil that continues to physically/economically crush vulnerable people around the world, but of the spiritual exhaustion of the West. There is a certain "Deliver us from evil" that the vulnerable justly and urgently cry, and we must attend to this voice as well.)

I suspect that our first step is to pray, honestly and vulnerably: "Search me and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts, See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."

That is a frightening prayer to have answered, but it may well be the only starting point for our deliverance. If we do not ask for and receive this  deliverance with humility and hope, we will be in no position to discern the good and evil in the world around us.