What Is Evil and How Does It Affect Us?

Recently in our Sunday School class the teacher asked the question “What is evil?” It was interesting to listen to all the adjectives describing evil. For example, folk mentioned ideas like, hating, cheating, immorality, stealing, and many more that I cannot recall. We could add items like homosexuality, adultery, idolatry, pride, lusts of the flesh, gossip, and telling lies. We could go on, but you get the idea.

Most of these items are describing evils’ results, which is fine because that is how and what we think at first thought. However, it is deeper than these listed and all of these mentions are rooted in a simple definition. Evil is the rejection of God.

Let’s discuss this definition.

Whenever a person is involved in these descriptions of evil, he is rejecting God Himself! God has done several things to let us know what He requires and Who He is. So if you engage in evil, you are rejecting God and doing you own thing while going your own way. If you think about this, you can begin to perceive how sinful we are from day to day.

How has He let us know:

1. He has listed His commands. They are listed throughout The Bible. The Old Testament listed many things and is very straight forward in its proclamations. Sometimes it seemed to be a little firm but you get the point very clearly. God doesn’t beat around the bush, so to speak. The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things. Then you can see clearly the illustrations of how people rejected God’s way from the beginning. From Adam throughout the Scriptures you can see how people chose their own path of sinfulness while deciding to go their own way. Plainly it is a rejection of God’s commands.

Adam and Eve’s decisions were definitely a rejection of what God told them to do.

David’s decision to lure Bathsheba to his bedroom and then kill her husband was a rejection of God’s commands. There are many more examples, but time is of the essence.

2. God explained His Creation to us in His Word and told us He could be seen in them both visibly and invisibly so that man is without excuse about Who He is and how powerful and mighty He is. It may be difficult for us to grasp this concept, but God told us that this was how it works. Man sees His Creation and chooses to reject Him and not believe Him and then man tries to explain away what God said and why it is not true by making up fantasies about how it all was made. Atheists still stutter to explain how everything in creation was formed out of nothing and from nothing scientifically. They cannot. It is simply a rejection of God. Yet missionaries have recounted many accounts of tribes and peoples who had never seen a white man but they can explain in their words how man was created out of the dust of the ground. Also, we do not give the Holy Spirit enough credit for convicting people and speaking to people in far away places so they can know God. We read that Jesus has appeared to many people in dreams where they decided to follow Christ. That has happened in Iran and many other countries who do not allow the Gospel to be heard. I know that’s hard to accept the reality of it in dreams but I have heard and watched many accounts of people who have come to Jesus from those experiences.

As I mull over these thoughts and issues concerning what evil truly defined is: it is a rejection of Gods ways! To me, it is humbling as I begin to see my own constant sinfulness as I daily commit to choosing my own way. We each have such pride in the fact that we think we are such perfect Christians who are following Christ, yet we break His Word every day. The choices we make while walking in our own self-righteousness being blind to the truth about ourselves in the light of His Word only reveals our own spiritual nakedness. Many of the things we do are seemingly small things. But is any sinfulness and rejecting God’s way small? I’m thinking about little fibs we engage in but are lies dressed up to seem trivial. How about our pride? Do we desire that people know all our good qualities or how educated we might be, or our successes which we tout so easily to inflate our ego through recognition. Oh yes, how sinful we are! Thank God that the blood of His Son Jesus cleanses us from all our sins. We can try to improve but though we try, we fail so often. Thank God for His unspeakable Gift.