My family has a genealogical connection to the Salem Witch Trials, so I have been reading the newly released book, Killing the Witches. In any religion forum, ours included, there are threads about Satan, hell, devils, the anti-Christ, etc. In fact, atheists are even gung-ho on making God out to be evil.
What is wrong with us as a people? Spectators delighted in seeing people hanged, burned, pressed to death under stones. The good people back then who did protest or help the accused remind me of ourselves today: While bad things erupt all around us our efforts now come across as puny as those who lived through the witch trials then. God is good! So why the fascination and the power of evil?
In Matthew, Mark, and Luke you find a warning that to 'blaspheme the Holy Spirit' is the unpardonable sin. To show contempt for, to insult God's work as the Holy Spirit by attributing it to Satan/the Devil is the ultimate rejection of the God/the Christ. Described as 'the unpardonable sin' for those with that attitude or mindset.
Within that concept is the description of mortal sin as evil/mean spirited/hateful acts or words that separate the sinner from God's grace. Now that of course is rather ambiguous and theologians from the First Century on have struggled to cope with the concept of God's grace versus those who reject it as Paul wrote in Romans: "If God be for us, who can be against us.?" But Jesus was pretty adamant in his quote, "Whoever causes a child to stumble (lose his/her faith) would be better for that person to have a millstone hung around his/her neck and be drowned in the sea."
Yet again and again we see unspeakable evil against people of faith--The Roman persecutions, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the pograms, massacres, Salem Witch Trials, the KKK, mass shootings, and many cases of bad things that happen to godly devout people.
In America, it does seem especially bad at this time with religion, most especially Christianity, under political assault in a way most of us as Americans have never experienced until recent decades. And it is having a terrible impact on society with us seeing more viciousness, hatefulness, mob mentality, pure evil.
Why does God allow it? Because God gave us free will to choose right or wrong, good or evil, justice or not so that we can experience love, joy, hope, anticipation, delight. But free choice also gives us ability to choose hatefulness, judgmentalism, corruption, malicious hurtfulness, deviancy, immorality and far too many people do.
The Bible teaches us that there will always be those who choose and do evil, people who will attack and try to talk us out of our faith, who do the work of Satan.
At the same time, people of faith are the primary reason there is agape love, charity, compassion. goodness in the world. That Christianity remains the No. 1 religion in the world despite all those who misused/abused it, despite all the efforts to destroy it, despite those who embrace Satan in trying to destroy people's faith. . .that is an incredible testimony to God's power.
Our job as Christians is to resist/reject evil and live our lives as an example of God's goodness, justice, peace, assurance.
