In a movie I saw recently, one character was an Apache witch. He had a line that struck me as very insightful about human nature. He asked the question, ‘You have two dogs fighting inside of you, one good the other evil…which one wins?’ The protagonist answered: 'The one you feed the most'.
I don't believe there's a battle between good and evil in the universe. That presumes goodness and evil are equal but opposite. Good and evil are not equal. God allows evil to exist as it suits His purpose. In the human heart it’s a different story. We are at ground zero for our own battle between good and evil. We can understand those that do evil because we know the evil in ourselves. We all draw from the same nature. We take that nature with us where ever we go. For that reason there can never be a Shangri La or a Utopia. We would take our nature, who and what we are, with us there and it would eventually destroy what we hoped to find. We can pass laws to try and reign in our nature. We can look to our heroes for their examples of how they have overcome. The battle still belongs to every human being and the fight is still a personal one. The battle between good and evil in the human heart is a battle that must be fought in every human heart. Those that win in conquering their own evil can’t conquer it for anyone else. Every newborn child is a new battleground.
Incidents like the recent slaughter of 31 innocent people at Virginia Tech make it clear that some people give themselves wholly over to evil. The most ironic thing in our modern American culture is that the very things that serve to constrain the evil in our hearts are being slowly eliminated from our national consciousness. Our sacred writings declare that there is a Creator and it is He who endows us with our human rights. Dark forces, in the name of the separation between church and state, are attempting to erase all mention of that Creator from our national consciousness. They are promoting the concept of cultural relativism, the idea that there isn’t one standard of right and wrong but many depending on the time and place they are conceived. The same forces deny even the existence of evil. These dark notions are destroying the strongest safeguards we have against the evil that is among us. Those behind the ideas know that when light shines into your life, it doesn't just make the road ahead more clear, it reveals your own dark places too. And, it is in our nature to want to hide our own darkness. That's the very reason we need the light so badly. That light can only come from God.
It isn’t so important that every individual in our society believes in God so much as it is a cultural value. We need to have something to look up to. We need someone to answer to. We need a common value to give us purpose. Without that we are finding ourselves in a moral free fall. We need to recognize that there are some things that are right and some that are wrong and they always will be. We need to recognize that evil exists. It is among us. It is in us. To erase those very ideas from our national consciousness is to cloak ourselves in darkness. To deny those truths is ultimately to commit suicide.
As a Christian, I have a firm faith that God is; that He is watching and that He cares about His children. My faith gives me hope for a better future. God gives me a clearly defined moral value system. He defines what is right and wrong. God is my light in the darkness...even my own darkness. God gives my life purpose. I believe that God will prevent us from destroying ourselves one day. He will change our very nature one day so that our utopian ideals will be realized…in His Kingdom. If I didn’t have my faith, and the hope that comes with it, I sometimes think I would succumb to a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness. I look around our culture and see that many, many others have done so.
Knowing that I will stand before God one day scares me a little. It makes me feel the need to change; to work on being better than I am now. That makes me uncomfortable but it also makes me a better person. I don’t insist that anyone believe what I believe. I don’t ever try to convert anyone. I don’t use my faith to judge others. I am guided by my faith to see my fellow man as the children of God, made in the image of the living God. I am guided by my faith to love them as I love myself, to forgive them when they wrong me, and to serve them wherever I can. Without that, I honestly don’t know where I would be or what kind of person I would be. That’s a part of what knowing God has done for me.
It is the dog we feed the most that wins out. Character is built, brick by brick, by what thoughts we give power to. Every time we do the right thing we strengthen that part of ourselves. Every time we give in to our darkness we fall a little deeper into the pit. The darkness is closing in to be sure. But in the darkness I see the light. It is the desire of my heart to share that with my fellow man. All I can do is try, to the best of my ability, to be a conduit of the light in a dark world. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that the light will prevail!
I don't believe there's a battle between good and evil in the universe. That presumes goodness and evil are equal but opposite. Good and evil are not equal. God allows evil to exist as it suits His purpose. In the human heart it’s a different story. We are at ground zero for our own battle between good and evil. We can understand those that do evil because we know the evil in ourselves. We all draw from the same nature. We take that nature with us where ever we go. For that reason there can never be a Shangri La or a Utopia. We would take our nature, who and what we are, with us there and it would eventually destroy what we hoped to find. We can pass laws to try and reign in our nature. We can look to our heroes for their examples of how they have overcome. The battle still belongs to every human being and the fight is still a personal one. The battle between good and evil in the human heart is a battle that must be fought in every human heart. Those that win in conquering their own evil can’t conquer it for anyone else. Every newborn child is a new battleground.
Incidents like the recent slaughter of 31 innocent people at Virginia Tech make it clear that some people give themselves wholly over to evil. The most ironic thing in our modern American culture is that the very things that serve to constrain the evil in our hearts are being slowly eliminated from our national consciousness. Our sacred writings declare that there is a Creator and it is He who endows us with our human rights. Dark forces, in the name of the separation between church and state, are attempting to erase all mention of that Creator from our national consciousness. They are promoting the concept of cultural relativism, the idea that there isn’t one standard of right and wrong but many depending on the time and place they are conceived. The same forces deny even the existence of evil. These dark notions are destroying the strongest safeguards we have against the evil that is among us. Those behind the ideas know that when light shines into your life, it doesn't just make the road ahead more clear, it reveals your own dark places too. And, it is in our nature to want to hide our own darkness. That's the very reason we need the light so badly. That light can only come from God.
It isn’t so important that every individual in our society believes in God so much as it is a cultural value. We need to have something to look up to. We need someone to answer to. We need a common value to give us purpose. Without that we are finding ourselves in a moral free fall. We need to recognize that there are some things that are right and some that are wrong and they always will be. We need to recognize that evil exists. It is among us. It is in us. To erase those very ideas from our national consciousness is to cloak ourselves in darkness. To deny those truths is ultimately to commit suicide.
As a Christian, I have a firm faith that God is; that He is watching and that He cares about His children. My faith gives me hope for a better future. God gives me a clearly defined moral value system. He defines what is right and wrong. God is my light in the darkness...even my own darkness. God gives my life purpose. I believe that God will prevent us from destroying ourselves one day. He will change our very nature one day so that our utopian ideals will be realized…in His Kingdom. If I didn’t have my faith, and the hope that comes with it, I sometimes think I would succumb to a sense of emptiness and meaninglessness. I look around our culture and see that many, many others have done so.
Knowing that I will stand before God one day scares me a little. It makes me feel the need to change; to work on being better than I am now. That makes me uncomfortable but it also makes me a better person. I don’t insist that anyone believe what I believe. I don’t ever try to convert anyone. I don’t use my faith to judge others. I am guided by my faith to see my fellow man as the children of God, made in the image of the living God. I am guided by my faith to love them as I love myself, to forgive them when they wrong me, and to serve them wherever I can. Without that, I honestly don’t know where I would be or what kind of person I would be. That’s a part of what knowing God has done for me.
It is the dog we feed the most that wins out. Character is built, brick by brick, by what thoughts we give power to. Every time we do the right thing we strengthen that part of ourselves. Every time we give in to our darkness we fall a little deeper into the pit. The darkness is closing in to be sure. But in the darkness I see the light. It is the desire of my heart to share that with my fellow man. All I can do is try, to the best of my ability, to be a conduit of the light in a dark world. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that the light will prevail!
1 comment:
I see you are still a GREAT writer. The words you write are so clear---so right. It always feeds my soul to read your blogs. When are you going to put your writings into a book? Our society NEEDS for you to make your writings a book. Each blog is a treasure.
Charlotte Lacy
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