My great-grandmother was inclined to see spirits. One afternoon, on an otherwise ordinary day, she glimpsed one that was casting a baleful eye on her small grandson (my mother’s brother). Consequently, like any good grandmother, she took action. “Run, Baby, run!” she yelled from the porch. “Run, Baby, run!”
I have an image of little Robert taking off across the yard, heart pounding, bare feet churning up the sandy soil amid a flutter of guinea hens, racing for his very life and soul until the screen door slammed behind him.
There are indeed forces contrary to God in our world. That becomes evident just by reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on television. I am convinced, however, that most of those forces do not bother to chase either adults or children across the yard, because there is something much more efficacious they can do to.
If the wiles of evil were obvious, we would be likely to run, like Robert, for the safety of grandmother’s arms. On the contrary, evil’s methods tend to work on us so subtly that we may not even be aware that we’ve changed sides. For example, we may find ourselves convinced that God does not have our welfare at heart, and that the will of God is simply a series of arbitrary commands and painful events. Who would want to draw near to such a God?
Evil may also try to persuade us that we are worthless in God’s eyes, and lead us to despair of the love and mercy of God. “What you have done is so heinous that you are unforgivable,” we hear. And in our distress we may forget that it is never the Spirit of God who speaks this word in us.
Evil tries to harden our hearts by specious arguments that may nevertheless sound logical:
- “Look around you,” say spirits opposed to the Spirit of Christ. “It is obvious that money and worldly esteem are more valuable than love and mercy.
- To be happy, seek riches and fame.”
- “Of course the end justifies the means!”
- “Violence is permissible to the followers of the Prince of Peace, as long as it is for a good cause.”
- “If the poor weren’t so lazy, if they just worked harder, there wouldn’t be any poverty.”
- “So what if those people are being ostracized? They deserve it, after all.”
- “God casts off unbelievers and those who don’t believe the way you and I do, so why should you go out of your way to show them kindness?”
These are the spirits of which we should be afraid. Like little Robert’s mad dash for the house, we must flee them as if our very life and soul depended on it. We flee, though, not by scattering the guinea hens, but by taking the time to be still with God and by learning to recognize the deceit of whatever would draw us away from God.
Then we refuse to listen to any voices in our world which suggest that God does not love us (or anyone else). We oppose these forces by allowing the love of God to fill us and by receiving the blessed mercy of God shown to us in Jesus. And we defeat them through the death and resurrection of Jesus, when we allow God to transform us into the merciful and welcoming presence of Christ for the world.
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? …
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday.
(Isaiah 58:6, 9b-10)