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Online Service, Sept 15, 2024 | “What Christians Believe About the Devil” (Message begins at 38:18) By First United Methodist Church of Taylorsville
https://www.facebook.com/fumctaylorsville/videos/1028527539066164
This summer, I visited Salem, Massachusetts to learn about the Salem Witch Trials that took place in the 1690s. It was a shocking history to learn and happened in many places before Salem. Popular books were written explaining that witches were women who made a pact with the devil.
In Salem, two girls got sick, the doctor could not figure out what was going on and decided they must be bewitched. The girls accused three women their family slave and two other women on the fringes of society. Tituba, the slave, confessed she bewitched the girls (she later recanted her confession saying she was beat until she confessed and made up a story to give them what they wanted). More people were accused, and to save their own skin, those people tried to accuse other people. In just a short amount of time, over 150 people had been accused of being witches. Twenty people were killed as “witches.” Nineteen hanged. One crushed to death. Many others died in prison because they could not pay the fees to get out.
After the trials, people said the devil had control of them, and that’s why they did this. People used the devil to make other people their enemies…and then they used the devil as an excuse for why they harmed other people.
So much has been written about the absurdity of the trials and it is easy to look at all of this and call people crazy and ridicule them.
Except – when I first walked into the Salem Witch Museum, there was this quote on the wall from Charles Upham, who wrote a book in the 1800s called Salem Witchcraft:
“It would be wiser to direct our ridicule and reproaches to the delusions of our own times than to those of a previous age; and it becomes us to treat with charity and mercy the failings of our predecessors, at least until we have ceased to imitate and repeat them.”
As crazy as the Salem Witch Trials were, we are still imitating and repeating this same thing. We demonize others and call them evil because they upset us.
This is what we’re doing when we say republicans hate women.
This is what we’re doing when we say democrats want to kill babies.
This is what we’re saying when we say Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in Springfield, OH.
This is what we’re doing when we call for killing Jewish people for what is happening in Gaza.
This is what we’re doing when we justify Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
We are using language to intentionally demonize and dehumanize people to make them out to be evil….and we do this while claiming we are doing good.
Evil Impulse
If we believe God is truly one, and Christ is present everywhere and in all things, then none of creation can be truly evil. Nothing can exist apart from God. There cannot be anything or anyone who is truly evil. This is why Jesus goes on to forgive even the most evil acts of murder.
Let me say it again: Nobody is evil.
But, people can be driven by evil urges and evil desires.
This is what the Rabbis call, Yetzer ‘hara – “the evil impulse.”
I have friends who say, “The devil tried to trick me” or “The devil tried to get me.” They are talking about this urge inside themselves to lash out or do something they know is going to cause pain to themselves or others.
I do not believe in a devil that is going around making people do evil things. It’s just a temptation we all have. James says it this way:
13 No one who is tested should say, “God is tempting me!” This is because God is not tempted by any form of evil, nor does he tempt anyone. 14 Everyone is tempted by their own cravings; they are lured away and enticed by them. 15 Once those cravings conceive, they give birth to sin; and when sin grows up, it gives birth to death. ~ James 1.13-15 (CEB)
The harm we cause and the evil we do comes from our own stuff.
Our own cravings, our own hurts and pains we have experienced.
While we trust God is working for good, we know we also have a role in helping with this. We have a role in refusing to allow harm, injustice, and evil win.
Part of our role in this work is to refuse to demonize and label others as evil. To refuse to turn others into “the devil.”
No one is truly evil.
God is in everyone.
When we turn “them” into the devil or start labeling people as evil, we fail to love others well and love God well.
The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, said it this way: “I only really love God as much as the person I love the least.”
That doesn’t mean we stop working for justice.
It means we refuse to allow evil to win, by refusing to demonize people and by refusing to make them out to be evil.
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12.21).
