Deliver Us From Evil

Judge nothing; you will be happy.  Forgive everything; you will be happier.  Love everything; you will be happiest of all.  ----Sri Chinmor

Until we have seen the evil in human nature, we cannot know or appreciate the redemption offered to us in Christianity, in the Gospel/ 'good news' of Jesus Christ.  Because we have grown up in a civilized society, we have no idea of the utter corruption of human nature.  Isaiah puts it this way in terms of Israel:

Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt,

a brood of evildoers,

children given to corruption....

Your whole head is injured,

your whole heart afflicted.

From the sole of your foot to the top of your head

there is no soundness---

only wounds and welts and open sores,

not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil (1:4-6).

 

Because of the influence of Christianity on our nation, civilization, and culture, we have forgotten -- or never knew -- the utter desolation and evil that human nature, when left to itself, is capable of. We tend to think we are basically "good people who sometimes do evil things."  But, as I wrote a week or more ago, Genesis 2-11 tells a different story.  As the backdrop to the call of Abraham, these chapters portray the gradual dissolution of human nature from one generation to another.  What began as tension, division, and blaming between Adam and Evil develops in the next generation to murder between brothers, greater confusion and lack of productivity in the fields of earth, and a reversal of all the blessings of creation.  Chapter 4 of Genesis ends with Lamech saying,

 

wives of Lamech, hear my words.

I have killed a man for wounding me,

a young man for injuring me.

If Cain is avenged seven times,

then Lamech seventy-seven times.

 

The story of the flood is an "uncreation" story, or the descent back to the original chaos before creation itself, as a result of the evil in men's hearts and the resulting corruption on the earth.

 

In the flood story, God chooses one man in whom to preserve the human race.  In the story of Noah, in the story of Moses, in the story of Jesus, we see the pattern:  The Lord gets one person to listen to Him, and then he uses that person to lead His people forward on the journey of faith...and that's the way it always is in Scripture.  God simply says, "I will be with you." and that's all...Nothing more than that.  Moses' power is in the presence of the Lord, and the directions come as he walks the journey (Richard Rohr: The Great Themes of Scripture, p. 21).

 

Now Scripture tells us what happens as much as it tells us "what happened."  Without that one person listening to God, human nature still devolves into corruption and evil, generation after generation. 

 

Nowhere on earth today is this pattern more evident than in North Korea, a country almost untouched by Christian influence.  On Sixty Minutes last night, there was a story of a young man who had been born into a prison camp in North Korea.  Should anyone believe that the Genesis account of Lamech is "made-up," or exaggeration, we see the same story lived out in North Korea today---literally.  The prison camps exist to "purify" the next 3 generations from the sins of a grandfather or great-grandfather against the prevailing ruler.  Any dissention or dissatisfaction shown in one generation is punished for at least 3 generations following---the children, the grand-children, the great-grandchildren.  And the "punishment" is horrible: torture, starvation, cruelty that we cannot imagine.  Read Escape from Camp 14 (I missed the opening of the program, so don't know the author's name.)

 

This young man featured on Sixty Minutes had been starved, tortured, almost worked to death all his life.  He had no concept of love or of family, only of survival.  He did not desire to escape because he believed the entire world lived the way he did, until one person who had seen the outside world told him that there was another way of life.  Then he began to desire something more.

 

Today, most of the world is fortunate enough not to have known the brutality of civilizations prior to Christian influence and laws based on Gospel values.  Until we see a society where human nature and evil is the rule of life, we cannot know the meaning of "Deliver us from evil."  It has been said that the Buddha closes his eyes against the evil he sees and enters into Nirvana, or escape.  The prophet of God is pictured with his eyes wide open in horror at what he sees and cannot escape -- the evil of a civilization that refuses to listen to God.