EVIL

What Makes People Go Wrong?

I didn’t make up the title to this study. I STOLE it from the May 21^st, 2001 issue of Newsweek (they ALWAYS publish their weekly before the date on the cover!!!!????). So, in reality, as long as I recognize that THEY came up with the title first, and as long as they have no patent on that title, then I REALLY didn’t STEAL it at all. Just borrowed it.

SEE! I rationalized that sin right away. I convinced myself that, in this case, thievery is not wrong.

Is it the same if you cut in front of someone with your car, as when you show prejudice, or commit heinous crimes like rape and murder? No! Yes!! Well, which is it Mac? Your readers want to know. Well, it ISN’T the SAME, but it sure ain’t much different. It is ALL EVIL.

There are several ‘layers’ of evil, I suppose. Several ‘levels’, each of a different variant degree.

Looking back when evil first was ‘created?’, it was not with man. As far was I can deduce from the Bible, evil existed whenever Satan (our current synonym for evil) rebelled against God. God, of course, ‘rebelled’ against Satan as well, by casting him into the darkness.

God can ‘cast’ anybody out into the darkness. Because he is God. I have a feeling that people that DO commit EVIL deeds, WILL be cast “into the lake of fire” to accompany Satan for the rest of eternity. So, does that mean I am doomed to be ‘cast’ because I, uhum, ‘borrowed’ the title for this lesson? I hope not. You see, as a Christian, I have been ‘saved’ from that type of punishment (at least for all my PAST sins). What concerns a lot of young Christians (and sometimes the mature ones as well), is that any present sin can have the same affect upon our salvation. AND IT CAN. Just reading Ephesians 5 and Galatians 5 alone, should be warning enough that ‘present’ sin can get you ‘life’ in Hell. But, thank God for his love for us that he LETS us confess our present sins and he FORGIVES us of them!!!!

But, that is not what I want to make as the topic for this study. I want to research, in our Bible, the question posed in the title I appropriated: What Makes People Go Wrong?

Let’s start in Romans 7, verse 7. Here, Paul, the “greatest sinner of all” (his words, not mine), is writing about evil. About struggling with sin. I am going to include these verses below, so you don’t have to go to your Bible, and back again to this paper.

⁷What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet."

⁸But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead.

⁹Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.

¹⁰I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.

¹¹For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.

¹²So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.

¹³Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

¹⁴We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

¹⁵I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

¹⁶And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.

¹⁷As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

¹⁸I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

¹⁹For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.

²⁰Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

²¹So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

²²For in my inner being I delight in God's law;

²³but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.

²⁴What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

²⁵Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Well, I guess the answer to my question is obvious. SIN makes us go wrong. Paul said so, especially in verse 8 above: ⁸But sin …… produced in me every kind of covetous desire. Well, if SIN makes us go wrong, and sin is present in everyone (Romans 3:23), why isn’t everyone a Timothy McVeigh, an Adolf Hitler, or a Jeffrey Dahmer? What separates a ‘really bad’ person from a ‘normally bad’ person? After all, Jesus said so himself, in Mark 10:18, that ….No one is good--except God alone. Why are there varying degrees of ‘badness’?

Wow, the answers to THESE questions are a lot tougher than just blaming Eve for bringing sin into the world. (But don’t blame the ‘first lady’, because if it hadn’t been Eve, it would have been SOMEBODY!! ) Medical ‘experts’ have been analyzing these questions for decades. Recently, several studies have involved brain wave activity (or the lack of) to attempt feeble answers. Frontal lobes, left temporal lobes, prefrontal cortex and cingulated-gyrus are just a few of the terms doctors throw around to attack the questions. They claim that varying degrees of activity in different sections of the brain are the ‘cause’ of abnormally ‘bad’ behavior. Mac’s throw upon all that is 1), they MIGHT be right, but 2) brain activity may be a result of, or a by-product of, behavior, instead of necessarily a ‘cause’ of it. However, Mac is not a medical ‘expert’ and has no scientific data to back up his opinion.

Well Mac, if it isn’t brain activity, then what could it be? Why are some people just plain ‘badder’ than others? Another ‘popular?’ theory is the sometimes horrific upbringing of a child. A person’s environment. I think we can all agree that a molested child will retain some of the terrible ordeals he or she had to suffer through, and is still suffering. Can that ‘suffering’ produce behavior that is considered ‘bad’? Yes, probably, in some, or even most, cases. Paul says in verse 15 that ^”I do not understand what I do..” And probably many mistreated children who, although they have matured physically, also do not ‘understand’ what they do. But from what I read of Paul, I could not determine what kind of ‘upbringing’ he had as a child. I DO know however, that he was trained in the OT scriptures and absolutely knew good from evil. So why was he ‘the greatest sinner of all’ (as he put it)?

I believe I may have touched on a lead to a very plausible answer to ALL of these questions in this study. I mentioned a person’s environment earlier. We all know that Original Sin is NOT ‘passed’ down from parent to child. Ezekiel 18:20 is perfectly clear on this subject. So we can’t blame Eve nor Adam for the way WE act. But can we necessarily blame OTHERS? Our peers? Our Parents? Our relatives? A lot of things (and people) make up our environment. What we see, what we feel, what we smell. A lot of things. But to narrow it down further, our environment has a tremendous affect on our HEART. (let’s get to the heart of the matter). Sorry about the pun, but I DO believe that it is our HEART that leads us to commit varying ‘degrees’ of sin.

Consider the heart of Paul. First, he was a great persecutor of the sect that was known as ‘the Way’ (Christians). (See Acts 9:1) In the following few verses, we see how Paul’s HEART was changed. A MAJOR event took place in his life to change his heart. Sometimes I wonder if it is that which must also change the hearts of many in the world today. God (Jesus) became a part of Paul’s ENVIRONMENT that day on the way to Damascus. Prior to his vision, Paul had a stone-cold heart. He gave approval to the death-stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:1), and even began to ‘destroy’ the church (Acts 8:3). His heart to do evil was changed that day he was blinded. (Strange how his physical blindness was really the OPENING OF HIS EYES!) He SAW and HEARD Jesus! I DO believe that experience would have a similar affect on many today. Not ALL, remind you, because there were many who saw Jesus when he was here, and still continued to do wrong. Like the one a lot of people BLAME for the death of Jesus - Judas. I hope that you, as a reader of this study, do not blame Judas. Like Eve, if it hadn’t been Judas, it would have been SOMEONE. Maybe even you. Or me. After all, WE ARE TO BLAME for the death of Jesus, because of our SINS!. Anyway, as you read through the book of Acts, and the 13 or 14 letters that Paul wrote (some people assume Paul penned Hebrews, but the ‘experts’ have failed to agree in finality), you can see how his heart changed. Paul was now doing GOOD, not EVIL. Did he stop doing evil altogether? NO! Just reread Romans 7:7-25 and it is plain to see that he continued to do wrong. But his HEART was in the right place. He (or someone) stated in Hebrews 3:12 about the heart: “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” ‘Unbelieving’? Is that all it takes?

To BELIEVE with your heart, and you won’t do evil? Again, NO! There are millions of believers in the world today, that believe in God, yet still are evil.

Wow! Then what are you getting at, Mac? Even if my heart is in the right place (for God), then I am still capable of doing wrong? Uhuh! No doubt. But let’s get back to the discussion of ‘levels’ or ‘degrees’ of wrong/evil. We all know that in God’s eyes, a sin is a sin is a sin. They are all ‘equal’ in his eyes. So why, in our eyes, do we consider some to be worse than others? You may have heard about the 7 ‘deadly’ sins. (1 - Pride, 2 - Envy, 3 - Wrath/Anger, 4 – Sloth, 5 - Averice/Greed, 6 - Gluttony 7 - Lust) (Ordered by the way Dante Aligheiri(1265 - 1321) placed them.) (You can get your dictionary out if you need to look up Averice and Sloth!) Dante was a Catholic layman who wrote "The Divine Comedy," which is really three epic poems in Italian: "Inferno," "Purgatorio," and "Paradiso," which are about Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven/Paradise, respectively. In "Purgatorio," Dante places each of the seven sins on a level, with the higher levels closer to Paradise and the lower ones closer to Hell.

What a concept. But, unfortunately (fortunately?), that is NOT the way sin is described in the Bible, the Word of GOD!. Check out Ephesians 5, verses 3 through 5: ³But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. ⁴Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. ⁵For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person--such a man is an idolater--has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Paul says not even a HINT of sexual immorality. How can a HINT of ANYTHING be as bad as ‘the real thing’? Well, in God’s eyes, it is. Because it is a reflection of your heart. A HINT is an indicator that ‘worse’ evils can come forward. COARSE JOKING, C’MON!! EVERYONE tells coarse jokes. No they don’t. Not if they want to be right with God. Do you SEE what I am getting at? There are no “7 Deadly Sins”! ALL SINS are deadly! Not having an “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God”, in MY mind, is DEADLY. More on specific sins can be found in the previous chapter of Ephesians, as well as the remaining verses in chapter 5. Also, as most of you are aware, Galatians 5 lists several sins. Not IN ORDER, mind you, as having any ONE of them leads to a terrible fate. Read those sins listed in verses 19 through 21, and reread what the latter part of verse 21 says: “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Paul doesn’t categorize each sin individually. He doesn’t put them ‘in order’. He simply lets us know what God already knows: a sin is a sin is a sin, and people that sin (without repentance and Godly sorrow), will NOT inherit the kingdom of God!!!

But, if we are evil because we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), what salvation do we have? If we sin, then we ARE evil, and God and Evil do not mix. If we do wrong (sin), then are we forever banned from heaven? Well, most Christians know that answer. NO. That is, if you REPENT! Change your heart. Desire to do good. Do you have the same feelings as Paul had in Romans 7: ^18”I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out”. ? Why CAN’T we carry out our desire to do good? Well, we CAN! Although evil will always be a part of our lives, so can “doing what is good”. We must start off by doing something else that Paul preached to the disciples in the church in Corinth. He says in 2 Corinthians 10:5: “ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” Take captive every thought! AND, make it obedient to Christ. IF YOU DO THAT, you WILL defeat evil. There is no evil in Christ. Hence, if your thoughts are ‘obedient’ to Him, then YOU will have no evil. This command is an extremely difficult one for us. We are bombarded daily by Satan’s lies, temptations, and deceiving schemes. Sometimes we let our thoughts become disobedient. And the MORE we do, the MORE we will. THANK GOD IN HEAVEN for His kingdom here on earth. We KNOW that we can not make EVERY thought obedient to Christ. That is why the kingdom is here. To help us KEEP our salvation provided by the blood of Jesus, two centuries ago.

In my inner being, I delight in God’s Law. I LOVE the fact that I am going to Heaven some day. But, I also am completely aware that that ‘fact’ can also be changed if I allow Evil to win that war that Paul says is waging within the members of my body. Are you aware of that as well? Are you aware that ‘even hints’ of wrongdoing can change that ‘fact’? I am confident that Paul wrote those verses in Romans 7 above, IN TEARS. “What a wretched man I am.” Evil IS within us. We ARE wretched. Our ‘inner evil’ is there because we are man (or woman, as the case may be). We were not BORN into sin. We didn’t inherit it from anyone. We, sometime along our pitiful lives, let sin into our hearts. Why? That leads back to the original question of this study. What makes us go wrong? WE do, that’s what. Giving into temptation. Allowing HINTS of sexual immorality to take hold and commit other sexual sins. Losing the war that is waging within our bodies. Listening to false teachings and following them because they are ‘easy’. Being prideful, arrogant, sloth-like (I LIKE that term). SIN. Giving into it, is what makes us what we are. Not standing up AGAINST sin, is why we are evil. Job was tempted, and tempted, and tempted. But he did NOT give up against sin, against the temptations from Satan. He maintained his faith with God.

Paul said “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” The verse following that plea, Romans 7:25, answered it. God! The blood of Jesus is our salvation. Yes, we are evil. Some people do ‘more evil’ than others. Those that have a weaker heart, a weaker love for God, a weaker set of armor, a weaker respect for others, a weaker love for our neighbors, friends, brothers, sisters, and the poor, a weaker sense of right and wrong, and a weaker knowledge of the truth. (Socrates once said: “In their choice of good and evil, [we suffer] from a defect of knowledge.”) THOSE people I described above are the people that are evil. Yes, it includes ALL of us. Although Solomon described his lover in chapter 6, verse 9 of Song of Songs, as ‘perfect’, we know that she was not. We also know that WE are not perfect as well. Only God. But, like Dante’s attempt at ‘classifying’ sin in a hierarchy, so can we ‘classify’ the people of today in sin. The STRONGER heart you have, the STRONGER love for God you have, the STRONGER knowledge of the scriptures you have (remember Socrates’ statement), and the STRONGER love you have for ALL mankind, the CLOSER you are to God, and the FARTHER away you are from Evil.

People go wrong, because people are people. Non-perfect beings. Come closer to God by daily scripture reading, daily prayers to our father, daily sharing of our beliefs and lives with others. That’s how we combat DOING wrong. Turn the other cheek. Do not repay evil for evil. I truly feel sorry for the McVeighs, the Hitlers, and the Dahmers of the world. But I am confident that there would be a lot more of them if it wasn’t for the outpouring of love and knowledge from the kingdom of God here on earth today. Jesus has worked wonders in millions of lives by giving us the light to learn, the will to fight and the desire to love, no matter the condition of our prefrontal cortex or cingulated-gyrus.

^{Romans 7:25}Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! AMEN.