Sometimes Evil Makes More Sense

Sometimes I think about evil too much. What follows is a bit of a wrestling match with evil thoughts.

It's in each one of us. Evil runs through me all like creeping vines in an untended back yard. It claims then totally blankets the neglected objects I once treasured like my heart and mind and relationships. Pain and life's hurts cause me to forget what is valued, beautiful, spiritual. Evil's clinging, insatiable tentacles have claimed them.

In my mind, when wrapped in evil, thoughts of violent revenge disguise themselves as justice and making things right. As I lay in bed, I'm awake thinking about how to get away with violence. I'll hurt the one that hurt me and the ones I love if only my plan could run free. Evil looks so delicious when I rehearse it in my mind on my bed. 

When my own vengeance is my cause, I'm empowered. I'm vindicated. I'm intoxicated. I'm right. Indulge me. Let me run wild.

Evil is intoxicatingly powerful to a weak man that is mostly powerless to look you in the eye. Evil is reclusive. It ferments and germinates in its human host but is easy to over look. It wants to be ignored so it can seethe and plot. Evil comforts itself by thinking it is creative when it is radically perverted. When turned loose, it destroys, heartlessly, leaving unforgettably ugly scars. Evil's spores germinate, breeding evil in people who are trying to be at peace with the world around them. Evil makes people chuck good. If you can't beat 'em join 'em. It's so easy to let evil win and consume. Evil destroys lives being lived joyfully.

Evil has an inferiority complex and hates love. Evil is like cancer and steals nutrients from its host.

Love heals. Love forgives. Love sets things right without destroying. The only victim of love is evil.

Love overpowers evil. Love is radical but cannot be fully realized until evil is fully exposed. Jesus Christ proved this on the cross when, as He was abused, was heard to say, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."

It's much more convenient to live somewhere in that broad strip of no-man's-land that exists between the boundaries of radical love and unspeakable evil. Convenient but miserable.

Christ's love is the Promised Land realized. It's a place where healing continually refreshes and rebuilds the soul. This is why Jesus prayed, "Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." God wants our lives to be the touch point where this takes place. Evil has no place there.