Don’t Become the Evil You Oppose, Part Three

This child is destined … to be a sign that will be spoken against. Simeon

The world has corrupted many of our religious people. This can make us outliers on our own “team.”

Jesus Himself experienced this sort of thing. Simeon prophesied that Jesus would be opposed when Jesus was only eight days old. 

“This child is destined … to be a sign that will be spoken against,” he said. He went on to tell Mary that a “sword” would pierce her own heart also, which certainly appears to be a prophesy of the day that the soldier rammed a sword through Jesus’ heart on Calvary. 

Jesus was indeed “a sign that was spoken against.” Throughout His ministry, He was mocked, reviled and attacked by the most powerful priests of His day. They ultimately succeeded in getting a corrupt politician to murder the Son of God for them. 

Catholics call this being a “sign of contradiction.” Jesus was a sign of contradiction to the politicized, cold-hearted and rule-oriented preaching and teaching of His day. He was a sign of contradiction to the same political heresy that we are forced against our wills to oppose. 

There is not one of us who wants to be a sign of contradiction. Being a sign of contradiction hurts.

Do you remember how Jesus answered the devil? He used Scripture. When satan tempted Him with political power, “all the kingdoms of the world,” He answered “It is written, Worship the Lord your God, and Him only.” 

In other words, do not succumb to the idolatry of power. Worship God.

I believe that Jesus was fully human when Satan tested Him. He was one of us. If He had been fully God, He wouldn’t have been tempted. He wouldn’t have needed to quote Scripture. He could have just said, “Be gone.” 

But we can’t do that, and Jesus, in His human weakness, couldn’t either. Not then, not during His first great trial against the powers of darkness. Just as Jesus the human did not step down from the cross, so Jesus the human was tempted by the same things that tempt us in our desert. 

He didn’t use His divine powers to cast Satan away. He fought with the same tools that we have at our disposal. He used faith, Scripture and trust in God and Him only. 

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you do not become a monster yourself,” Nietzsche said. He understood the danger. But he turned his back on the protection of the Protector. 

The loneliness of worshipping in churches that are in love with power of this world is painful. The sorrow of losing trust in our religious leaders runs deep. 

That is the Abyss, staring back at us. It is the devil, pricking us here and there to see what works. It is old scratch, poking us to find the method or means he can use to drive us to fall down and worship him, or if not him directly, one of his creatures, his petty little false idols that he dangles before us like charms on a bracelet. 

I promised I would talk about the Way out of all this misery. We cannot be rogue planets without a sun. We must find our orbit. That orbit for all of us is Jesus Christ. 

He not only suffered as we suffer. He showed us the Way. He gave us clear commandments and teachings to follow that will lead us through this or any other time of peril. 

I’m going to talk about that in detail. 

But this subject is too important to discuss superficially. Tomorrow is Part Four.