Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).
I do not talk much, in these Daily Reflections, about evil in the world. Perhaps that is because I do not like to face that reality. The presence of evil in the world challenges us to do something about it. Many will react to evil and injustice with anger, frustration, sadness, and sometimes fear. These emotions are only natural. When we look into the face of evil, we shouldn’t be happy about it. Yet, we are still called to have a different reaction than those who aren’t Christian. Let me explain.
We tend to be naïve about evil, at least as to what it looks like in everyday life. Our picture of evil has been shaped by images that are taken from mythology, religious cults and from books and movies that portray evil as personified as sinister and ugly spiritual forces. Demons haunt houses, appear at séances, are summoned up by Ouija boards, contort bodies and are exorcized by the sprinkling of holy water. Evil does reside inside this concept of demonic forces (and you can believe in them or not), but it is infinitely eclipsed by the ordinary face of evil that looks out at us from newscasts, is manifest daily in ordinary life and is manifest, too, in our own faces on any given day. Mostly we are blind to the evil that foments inside us, tears communities apart and eats away at God and goodness.
The Gospels can help us understand this. In the Gospels, the evil one has two names because evil works in two ways. Sometimes the Gospels call the evil force “the devil” and other times they call it “Satan.” What’s the difference? In the end they both refer to the same force (or person), but the different names refer to the different ways in which evil works. Devil, in Greek, means to slander and to tear things apart. Ironically, Satan means almost the exact opposite. It means to unite things, but in a malevolent way.
So evil works in two ways: the devilish works by dividing us from each other, tearing us apart and having us habitually slander each other so that community is forever being torn apart through jealousy and accusation. The satanic, on the other hand, does the opposite, with the same result. The satanic unites us through the grip of mob-hysteria, social hype, self-serving ideologies, racism, sexism, envy, hatred and in a myriad of other malevolent ways so as to draw us into mob-hatred, gang-rapes, lynchings. It was satanic forces that engineered Jesus’ crucifixion.
When we look at our world today, from politics to social media to what’s happening inside many of our religious circles, to what is happening on college campuses, we would have to be blind not to see the powers of the “devil” and of “Satan” at work.
Where do we see the devil at work? Basically everywhere. Today, you everywhere see people sowing division, attributing false motives to others, calling for them to be distrusted and ostracized, calling them degrading names. Indeed, this is the dominant element we see in our politics and in our social media. The result is the breakdown of community, the stalemate in our politics, the breakdown of civility, the loss of trust in the meaning of truth, the smug belief that our own idiosyncratic narrative functions as truth and the near universal neglect of elemental charity. Today we are witnessing a dangerous breakdown of trust and civility, coupled with a massive erosion of simple honesty. The devil must be smiling.
Where do we see Satan at work? Everywhere as well. More and more we are retreating into tribes, gangs, with those who think like us and have the same self-interests to protect. While this can be a good thing, it’s not good when we unite in ways that are rooted in self-serving ideologies, economic privilege, racism, sexism, false nationalism, envy, and hate. When this happens, our group ceases being a community and becomes instead a mob, which at the end of the day, whatever its particular idiosyncratic slogan it ends up chanting, as did the crowds on Good Friday, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” It’s significant that in the Gospels almost every time the word “crowd” is used it is used pejoratively. Crowds are mindless; worse still, they generally have a sick bent towards crucifixion. The renowned Czech novelist Milan Kundera highlights this when he shares his strong fear of “the great march,” the sick fever that so generally infects a crowd and, soon enough, has them chanting, “Release to us Barabbas!” And as for Jesus, “crucify Him!” This is the face of Satan in ordinary life, the actual face of evil.
We need to name this today as we see the ever intensifying and bitter polarization inside our families, communities, neighborhoods, cities, and countries. Factionalism, anger, bitterness, distrust, accusation, and hatred are intensifying almost everywhere, even inside our own families where we are finding it harder and harder to sit down together, be civil with each other and talk through our political, social, and moral differences. Sadly, even the presence of a pandemic that threatened all of us, our reactions worked to divide rather than unite us.
Evil doesn’t ordinarily have the face and feel of the devil in Rosemary’s Baby; it has the face and feel seen on this evening’s newscast, or worse, when we look in the mirror.
So what can we do? Stay tuned.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!