Four Types of Evil, Part I

The Problem of Evil undoubtedly causes people to lose their faith. But, are some kinds of evil more to blame than others? And, what does our battling those evils say about God?

By Brian Lowther

Editor’s Note: Over the past few weeks here on the RWI blog we’ve been exploring Ralph Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction. Today, Brian Lowther begins a three-part series exploring Seed #1: The Seed of the Problem of Evil.

I’m convinced one of the main reasons people lose their faith is the Problem of Evil, which asks, if God is all-good and all-powerful, why is there so much evil and suffering in the world? But, as I’ve considered the Problem of Evil, I recognize that not all evils cause the same amount of suffering. Chicken pox causes suffering, but not nearly as much as if a child is kidnapped. Chicken pox isn't likely to cause someone to lose his or her faith, but if someone's child is kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered, well that's another story.

Four Types of Evil

In my way of thinking there are four types of evil. First is human evil such as war, hatred, murder, lying, corruption, etc. Second is spiritual evil such as demons and demonic possessions. Third is natural disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes, and fourth is violence in nature, such as animals hunting and killing each other or parasites eating their host from the inside out while the host is still alive.

1. Human Evil

Now, in regard to human evil, do you know anyone who has lost his or her faith in God because of the amount of lying human beings engage in, or because of corruption, or because they are hated by another person? In my opinion, these evils cause people to lose their faith in humanity, not God.

Having said that, we can all imagine someone who would say, “I walked away because God could have prevented that person from killing my loved one and he didn’t.”

Along these lines, a close friend once asked me, “Why does God allow the church—his representatives on earth—to perpetrate so much evil?” He was referring to debacles such as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Catholic Child Abuse Scandal of the last few decades, and dozens of other examples. I had to agree with him that the pages of church history are pretty ugly.

His question brings to mind two of Jesus’ parables about seeds and birds from Matthew 13. First is the parable where Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven to the smallest of seeds, the mustard seed that grows into the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree so that the birds come and perch in its branches. This is a pleasant picture – birds perched in the shade of a tree. But when read in the context of a parable that precedes it, these birds take on a new meaning. One of the preceding parables describes a sower spreading seed that is quickly devoured by birds. The birds are later identified as Satan. And, while the mustard seed is commonly understood to represent the progress of the body of Christ from small beginnings, it is easy to see how the birds that perch in the branches could symbolize demons led by the prince of the power of the air who have continually tried to infiltrate the Church throughout its existence.

2. Natural Disasters

Undoubtedly natural disasters are blamed on God. Think of insurance policies protecting against ‘acts of God,’ or how the governor of Tokyo said the 2015 tsunami was divine retribution for national egoism,[1] or when an American Christian broadcaster explained that the 2009 earthquake in Haiti was provoked by the Haitians' "pact to the devil,"[2] or when people said Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment on New Orleans for embracing gay pride events. If natural disasters are thought to be from God, it seems perfectly logical to me for people to lose their faith. Only a vicious, arbitrary and severe god would do such a thing. Who wants to trust in a god like that?

3. Spiritual Evil

Many of us in the West don’t take much notice of the spiritual evil that swirls around us. But I’ve heard numerous missionaries describe how demonic activity is taken much more seriously on the mission field. Whatever our cultural background may be, when we do encounter demonic activity such as terrifying nightmares or paranormal occurrences, I think most would assume it comes from a malevolent source, and not God. Because of this, I don’t think this is a main reason people lose their faith.

4. Violence in Nature

The common assumption is that violence in nature is normal and necessary. A pride of lions mercilessly hunting down and killing an elephant calf as it whimpers for its mother is called the “circle of life.” We’re used to it. Animals have to kill each other to survive. They don't seem capable of making a choice NOT to kill. We’re so accustomed to it that we assume that this is the way God created things. I can completely understand a person wondering, if God designed all this violence and cruelty and suffering, is he really worthy of my allegiance?

My Hunch

But here’s my hunch: I think God has called us, commissioned us, and prepared us to battle these four types of evil. When we do, I think that says something about God. I think it says that he is not the source of these evils, that he does not condone these evils, and that he is actively and visibly opposing these evils through us. My belief is that if someone could be convinced that God is not the source of evil, and if he or she were acquainted with numerous examples of God’s people attempting to overcome the roots of evil (and not just the fruits of evil) as a demonstration of God’s will, he or she would be far less likely to walk away from the faith.

In my next installment, I’ll explore a few examples to substantiate that hunch.

Endnotes

[1] http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/03/15/tokyo-governor-apologizes-for-calling-quake-divine-retribution/

[2] http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/01/13/haiti.pat.robertson/index.html?iref=allsearch

Photo Credit: Heather Paul/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of
the Roberta Winter Institute

Director's Update

By Brian Lowther

Greetings!

For about the past year, the Roberta Winter Institute (RWI) blog has been dormant, as we’ve been casting around, researching, and developing various ways to disseminate our core content. I’ve personally learned a lot from approaches that fell flat and from small but significant wins. As we’ve experimented, we’ve written an abundance of new material that I’m eager to share with you. I think we’ve landed on a new way to explain the problem the RWI was founded to address and its solution that will be much more compelling and helpful.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll begin publishing that material right here on the RWI blog.

So come back then, check out our new thoughts and share them with a thousand of your closest friends.

As always, thank you for your interest in the Roberta Winter Institute. It is such a privilege for me to tackle some of Ralph Winter’s most interesting and far-sighted ideas and share the results with those of you who have tracked with us over the years. 

All my best,
Brian Lowther
Director, Roberta Winter Institute

P.S. Feel free to follow the RWI on Facebook or Twitter, or subscribe to our RSS feed.

The Root of Our Desires

By Brian Lowther

Today, I finish my series exploring six common human desires and why God instilled them into us. You can read the first four installments here: The Desire for Survival and Pleasure, The Desire for Power, The Desire for Creativity, and The Desire for Love. As I noted in those four posts, I’m writing from the assumption that our desires at their roots are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil. 

I’ve hinted in my three previous entries about the deeper motivations behind the desires for power, creativity and love. Namely:  

Power

“If I am powerful, people will respect me. If they respect me, I can respect myself. That’s at the root of the desire for power. The deeper motivation is self-respect.

Creativity

“If I create or achieve something worthwhile, people will ascribe worth to me. If others ascribe worth to me, then I can ascribe worth to myself.” That’s at the root of the desire for creativity. The deeper motivation is self-worth. 

Love

“If others love me, that means I am lovable. If I am lovable, then I can love myself.” That’s at the root of the desire for love. The deeper motivation is self-love.

Dignity

Self-respect, self-worth and self-love can be summed up nicely with the word dignity. To me, the desire for dignity is at the root of these three desires. In fact, I think dignity is perhaps the most crucial of all our God-given desires. Two reasons for this come to mind. 

First, people voluntarily choose to live without all of the desires I’ve explored and can still lead very meaningful, happy lives.

1. Survival: people lay down their lives for the love of country or family. The sense of honor and sacrifice they experience gives theirs lives and deaths great purpose.
2. Pleasure: People forego worldly pleasures, and accept ascetic conditions in view of a worthwhile goal or belief.
3. Power: Many ministry workers choose a life that has no hope of power, wealth, or status.
4. Creativity: People take meaningless, non-creative jobs if they feel they are contributing to a cause they believe in.
5. Love: Monks and nuns go without the love of a spouse, virtuosos and world-class athletes have few true friends [1], and scientists leave family to travel to the Arctic Circle or outer space for the sake of new discoveries.

People can live happily for long durations, even entire lifetimes with one or more of these desires going unfulfilled. However, people can’t live happily without dignity. You may have heard the World War II story of prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp who were forced to move rubble from a bombed-out factory to a nearby field. The next day, they were forced to move the same rubble back to the factory. The next day, back to the field, day after day until they had no dignity left. They lost their will to live and began to provoke the guards to shoot them. [2]

Second, dignity may be the only desire we can pursue without fear of pursuing it too far. All of the other desires come with a dark side.

1. Survival: Pursued too far, this desire can lead to a kill-or-be-killed attitude.
2. Pleasure: Pursued too far, and one becomes a thrill seeker, living a life of debauchery and immoral self-indulgence.
3. Power: Pursued too far and this desire can lead to tyrannical, power-hungry, greedy behavior or anxiety and insecurity because power, wealth and influence can be lost or taken away, and wisdom can be discredited.
4. Creativity: Pursued too far, and this desire leads to work-a-holism or a reclusive life, holed up in some attic finishing your masterpiece.
5. Love: Pursued too far and this desire leads to neediness, which can lead to loneliness and despair, a “nobody loves me” attitude. “A tyrannous and gluttonous demand for affection can be a horrible thing,” [3] just watch almost any current reality TV show.

However, my hunch is that dignity has no dark side. One cannot pursue dignity too far because dignity is simply seeing ourselves the way God sees us. No delusions of grandeur, no competitiveness, no self-loathing, just humble, realistic self-acceptance. I’m struck by the verse, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) He loves us, respects us, and ascribes infinite worth to us just as we are, despite all of our sniffles and hang-ups and pettiness.

This hints at what it means to glorify God: to display his love by receiving it, reflecting it back to him, and refracting it like prisms to ourselves, to our neighbors (Mark 12:31), and to all creation.

Why Did God Give Us this Desire for Dignity?

This concept comes close to the ancient Greeks’ fourth term for love: agape. 

Agape (divine love - the love of God for man and of man for God)

C. S. Lewis used agape to describe what he believed was the highest level of love known to humanity. [4] The term agape has always been used by Christians to refer to the self-sacrificing love of God for humanity. When 1 John 4:8 says "God is love," the Greek word is agape. 

In the cosmic war motif, agape is many things.

1. Agape is how we can hear and understand the voice of the general.
2. Agape is the antidote to the poison of the enemy, which is lies about the character of God.
3. Agape is different than philia; it is beyond philia. Philia is giving your life for your friends. Agape is giving your life for your enemies. This is how Jesus fought and overcame Satan. By loving his enemies, doing good to those who hated him, blessing those who cursed him, praying for those who mistreated him. (Luke 6:27-28). This is what defeats the enemy. The idea of love as a weapon, self-sacrifice as a weapon is counterintuitive, isn’t it? Martin Luther King understood this principle well, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” [5]

The marvelous thing about agape and dignity is that they won’t allow us to live meaningless lives. They won’t allow us to tolerate disease, torture, rape, social exclusion, slavery, humiliation, objectification, or dehumanization. These things aren’t from God. We’re supposed to rail against them. Even people who don’t know God seem to know this instinctively. God wants us to rebel against the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4). We were made for proactive resistance against systemic evil. We were made, in short, for freedom.

Former slave, Elizabeth Freeman once wrote, “Any time, any time while I was a slave, if one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it—just to stand one minute on God’s airth [sic] a free woman—I would.” [6] 

Endnotes

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/kobe-bryant-friends-2015-2
[2] Adapted from “Why in the world am I here” by Rick Warren
[3] C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
[4] Ibid
[5] CleverQuotations.com, yyyy.http://www.cleverquotations.com/quote/1498/returning-violence-for-violence-multiplies-violence-adding-deeper-darkness-to-a-night-already-devoid-of-stars-hate-cannot-drive-out-hate-only-love-can-do-that, accessed March 22, 2014.
[6] http://www.thetrustees.org/assets/documents/about-us/press-clips/American-Spirit-Magazine-Elizabeth-Freeman-Feature-March-April2014.pdf

Photo Credit: Austen Squarepants/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of the Roberta Winter Institute

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Power?

By Brian Lowther

Today I continue my series exploring six common human desires and why God instilled them into us. You can read the first installment here: The Desire for Survival and Pleasure. As I noted in that post, I’m writing from the assumption that our desires at their roots are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil.

Power

Beyond survival and pleasure, I desire power. Is that wrong to admit? When we say someone is powerful that can either mean he or she has a lot of physical prowess, or it can mean that they wield authority over others through wealth, or wisdom, or influence. As an adolescent, I wanted physical prowess more than anything. I wanted to be the best athlete in school. One day my coach told me, “No matter how good you get, there will always be someone who is better.” I took this as a terrible discouragement at the time. But as it turns out, he was right. There are few things more short-lived than athletic success.

When I became a young man, wealth became my desire. The idea of having a 10,000 sq. ft. mansion and a stable of exotic cars was so appealing that I began to orient my life around one thing: financial success. I pursued it with tremendous resolve and embarrassing greed. One tragic day, my father-in-law was killed in an accident. As is often the case with the sudden loss of a loved one, his death prompted me towards introspective soul searching. Along the way I landed on Jesus’ advice, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…” (Matthew 6:19) These words were an alarm clock to my sleeping soul. I had been chasing precisely the wrong thing. I’ve spent the fifteen years since his death trying to redirect that tremendous resolve (minus the embarrassing greed) toward glorifying God.

However, now into my late thirties, I still can't seem to shake this desire for power. Only I desire it not in the form of physical prowess or wealth, but in the form of wisdom and influence. I want people—either singularly or en masse—to embrace the ideas I hold dear. And I want those ideas to result in their flourishing. Is that such a bad thing to desire? I don’t think so. Though I suppose it is a bit arrogant. But isn’t this desire at the core of many professions like teaching, pastoring, counseling, or self-help book writing?

Why Did God Give Us the Desire for Power?

I think God instilled in many of us a desire for power because we were made in part, to oppose the enemy. When Jesus said, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against my church” (Matthew 16:18), he may have chosen these words because gates are a defensive structure, intended to protect against an onslaught. As though we are supposed to be on the offensive against Satan and not just defending against his attacks. It takes a lot of physical and moral power to storm the gates of a terrible enemy. Additionally, I think God instilled in many of us a desire for wealth, wisdom and influence because we would need those things to subdue (kabas) the earth (Genesis 1:28), which has connotations of military victory in other passages, and to guard (samar) the garden (Genesis 2:15). [1] In a war, wealth can provide rations, boots, and weapons; influence can recruit an army; and wisdom can make a plan of action while minimizing unintended consequences.

Now, it’s no surprise that God’s idea of power, and our idea of power are quite different. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. (1 Corinthians. 1:25)

1. Sacrifice as Power: The most profound display of power in history came when Christ allowed himself to be crucified. Somehow by dying he destroyed the power of death. (Hebrews 2:14)
2. Generosity as Wealth: Similarly, the most admirable use of wealth is when it is given freely to the needy. Jonas Salk became a national hero, his generosity and compassion legendary because he chose not to patent his polio vaccine, forgoing a personal fortune.
3. Humility as Influence: In an era of swaggering self-promotion, entitlement, and unbearable arrogance, Mother Teresa had no ambition to become a celebrity. Instead, her goal was to wholeheartedly give free service to people who were a burden to society and shunned by everyone. Along the way she won a Nobel Prize and always makes the list of the most influential people of the last century.
4. Foolishness as Wisdom: This principle is why—to paraphrase C.S. Lewis—an uneducated believer was able to write a book that astonished the whole world. [2] That believer was John Bunyan and the book was Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan was born poor, never went beyond the second grade, and did most of his writing while in jail, yet Pilgrim’s Progress became the most widely read piece of 17th-century English literature.

The point is, God’s version of power, wealth, influence and wisdom are counter-intuitive, paradoxical even. In foolishness, sacrifice, generosity and humility we are powerful. These things somehow overpower and defeat the strongman (Satan), take his armor and divide up his plunder. (Luke 11:22)

Self-respect

One last thing I find most interesting about the athletic achievements and the extravagant lifestyle I once desired is, I didn’t so much want those things for the pleasure of having them, but for how people would perceive me for having them. The same holds true for the wisdom and influence I seek today. “If I am powerful/wealthy/wise/influential,” my internal monologue goes, “people will respect me. If they respect me, I can respect myself.” That’s at the root of these desires. The deeper motivation is self-respect. I’ll explore this desire for self-respect a bit more in a subsequent entry.

Endnotes

[1] Greg Boyd, “Satan and the Corruption of Nature: Seven Arguments”
[2] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Photo Credit: Laura Ferreira/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of the Roberta Winter Institute

Why Did God Give Us Our Most Basic Human Desires?

By Brian Lowther

If you’ve been tracking with the RWI for any length of time, I imagine you are the type of person whose deepest hope is to live a fruitful, meaningful life in view of the kingdom of God. But, do you ever struggle with the fact that you have other, more surface-level desires that often stand at odds with that deep hope? As an example, I have always wanted to own a jet pack. Just think of the traffic I could avoid! I also have a deep and abiding love of naps, palindromes, listening to my dad recount the events of a baseball game, and a very quiet part of me would love to spend a few leisurely years sailing around the Caribbean. These trifles make me feel quite happy. But what good is happiness if the real goal is God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil? [1] Are all of these surface-level desires engineered in me by God’s enemy to divert me off course? Or has God instilled them in me for some good reason?

To answer, it goes without saying that Satan can corrupt our desires causing us to pursue them too far. The word for that is sin. But in this five-part series, I’ll assume that these desires at their root are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which involves destroying the works of the devil. What follows are six of the most common human desires and how they help us participate in this task.

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Survival?

My most basic desire—in agreement with popular psychological theories like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—is survival. I desire food, water, rest, sanitation, hygiene, security, and safety.

It seems obvious how this desire would help me in the battle against evil. Without it, I would give up and end my life when I encountered hardships.

The will to live is remarkably strong. I witnessed my wife battle through a terrible case of morning sickness. For five months extreme nausea was her all-day companion, vomiting was the norm and eating was unthinkable. I was terrified that she would starve to death. We went to urgent care countless times for intravenous fluids. But somehow, she never gave up hope. And one day, she started to get better. Now we have two children, meaning she went through this ordeal twice. How do people survive such things? Or worse things, like concentration camps or human trafficking? Why is this desire to live so strong?

I think it is because God knew that at times, the enemy’s attacks could be grisly, heinous, and appalling. Our desire to survive must be proportionally tenacious.

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Pleasure?

If my ability to survive is not threatened, my next immediate desire is pleasure. I desire solitude, amusement, thin-crust pizza, frequent trips to the beach, maybe a jet pack—and any number of other physical or aesthetic comforts.

I think pleasure has a two-fold purpose in the battle against evil. First it acts as our “leave” from active duty. It recharges us so we can rejoin the battle. Even in wartime, soldiers don’t fight a battle indefinitely. They must take leave on a regular basis, or risk losing their minds.

Second, pleasure acts as aspirin or morphine when we experience the pain and suffering of battle. Such as: 1) The physical pain of existence, e.g., injury, handicaps, disease; 2) The mental anguish from failures, burnout, rejection, conflicts, or loss; and 3) The emotional turmoil from doubts and fears which I believe are whispered into our psyches by the enemy as a form of psychological warfare (see here for more on this). I think of pleasure as a momentary escape from these forms of existential suffering.

In the next installment, I’ll tackle the question, why did God instill in many of us a desire for power?

Endnote

[1] I realize that the battle against evil is a main theme among other main themes in scripture. I fully embrace the idea that God’s original and ultimate plan was and is for us to dwell with him and his holy angels in harmony for an eternal future. However, in the mean time, the RWI seeks to explore and advocate a “warfare worldview,” partly because we feel it is underemphasized in the body of Christ today and partly because we think it will inspire new action. If you’re new to the RWI, see the following brief essays for an introduction to the warfare worldview:

1. The Warfare Worldview           
2. The Story of the Cosmic Conflict    
3. Kingdom Mission So Far, in 500 Words
4. Three Views to the Problem of Evil: View #3

Photo Credits: 
1.  Jetman: Ars Electronica/Flickr
2. Bindweed plant breaking through asphalt: Mark Dixon/Flickr
3. Strawberry Shortcake: Sonny Abesamis/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute.