Sunday, March 13
“And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”
Several times a year, Fran and I load up her car, settle Jeannie in the back seat, and head south–either to Pennsylvania or Virginia or both. The best thing about the car ride is extended time for conversation. We talk about our lives, our friends, our work. The work conversations occasionally lead us deep into questions about who God is and who we are.
I don’t remember how we got there, but one Wednesday before Thanksgiving found us talking about evil through Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York. We started with our shared premise: because we believe so strongly that God is love and that God created the world good, we would like to say there as no such thing as evil. At the same time, we recognize that some things are so horrible they can only be called evil.
What is evil? Where does it come from? Is it the absence of good, or is it a force that has a life of its own? We wrestled with these questions, without many clear answers. Through the conversation, though, an image began to form for me–evil as the twisting and distorting and hardening of natural human qualities.
Fear, anger, desire for control and security–all of these are natural human emotions. They are potentially good, for they help us survive. If we are not careful, though, each of them can become twisted around themselves until they become like a knot that keeps growing with every twist. Eventually the knot becomes so large it distorts the rest of our being. The knot becomes hardened, and takes on a life of its own. It becomes a power, a force of its own, beyond the emotions that started it.
Evil does exist. I don’t believe it is some pre-existing, free-floating force that is in a perpetual battle with good. The best I can do to make sense of it is to draw upon that image: evil as fear twisted around itself into knots; evil as anger that hardens into hate; evil as the desire for power distorted until it takes over our lives.
The image helps me make sense of the very real existence of evil in our world. It also reminds me of that I always need to be attentive to what I do with my own fear, anger, and desire for control and security. How do I honor the reality of those emotions within me? How do I keep them from becoming twisted, hardened, or distorted?
Deliver us, O God, from evil. Be with us in our fear, that we might find courage to face it. Guide us through our anger, that we might lead us to passionate action rather than hate. Teach us to claim our power and live with our powerlessness. Amen.
–Debbie Clark