Matthew Nath – Author

Is Evil Real?

                    Is evil real?
	I truly believe that the best trick the devil has played on my generation is to convince us that he’s not real.  Or if he is real, he definitely isn’t something you need to worry about.  The idea of demons conjures up images of cartoony red guys with horns on their heads and pitchforks.  It isn’t threatening.  It isn’t scary.  And we were taught in public school that the only things that are real are what you can see and touch, so we don’t need to worry about them anyways, right?  They can’t be real.

	Now, I don’t know about you, but I fully and 100% believe there are demonic forces that operate and affect us in our world.  I believe this because in the Bible, Jesus removed many demons from people.  This is one of the main things he did, preached, healed, performed miracles, and cast out demons.  For him to cast them out, they had to have been present in the first place.  And if they were present then, they are present now working to pull us away from Christ.

	The world that we live in seems to be working very hard to convince us that evil is not real.  Or it is not scary.  Or that it is not wrong.  Especially to our children.  When I was growing up, movie characters were clearly good or evil almost all of the time.  Lord of the Rings was very popular for me (and it still holds up for any parents looking for a good movie to watch with their kids, mine were 7 and 9 when we watched it).  The original Disney movies all had a good guy fighting against a bad guy.  We all knew there were people in the world who were selfishly willing to hurt others to get what they wanted.  That was a truth.

	We are given movies now that show monsters as good guys, movies that are rewritten from a villain’s point of view to make us sympathize with the bad guy.  The scarier part for me is how powerful the public school system is in shaping the way children think about the world.  Kids are constantly taught that this world is all we have and that there is nothing more.  If you can’t see it and touch it, then it isn’t real.  Anyone who doesn’t trust the science is uninformed at best and dangerous at worst.  And they’ll tell us what the science is.

	These oppressive systems blind us to the fact that the world God gave us is so much bigger than any of us can fully understand or appreciate.  When we see the Apostles in the book of Acts, they are healing people and casting out demons.  They are working miracles every day as they worship together in small groups of families.  They live their lives together and the Spirit is with them.  And they spread the Truth to almost every corner of the Earth.

	The same Spirit that worked in them works in us.  The stories about Paul healing the paralyzed man could be a reality for us too.  It should be a reality for us.  But we are held back by our own sinful desires.  Pulled away from what we will one day be when Christ returns and sets us fully free.  Until then, we are given the world we have.  For some people I know, miraculous healings are a part of the normal for them.  But I personally have not been called to a ministry like that.  Not yet anyways.

	So evil is real. Now what?  Well, confessing that evil is real means that you need to start figuring out how you are going to fight against it, right?  As a professing Christian, I think the one thing that we can all agree on is that we are called to fight evil.  Christ is all good, he gave his life to defeat sin and death.  He offers salvation and reconciliation with God for free.  All we have to do is turn from the evil in our lives and follow him.

	And how do we follow him?  We do what he says.  He commanded us to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, mind, soul, and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  He called us to love.   And he sent the Holy Spirit to strengthen us as we work to do this.  All we have to do is prayerfully ask for help in being on guard for evil in your life.  You’ll be surprised how many little things have crept in, I’m guessing.  And once you see the evil, do what you can to stop it.  If you’re like me, you’ll probably be fighting off you own little evils most of your life, but maybe you’ll find ways to help others fight theirs too.  I’ve found that in funeral service, what’s your mission field?