By:
S. Voysey
On
January 12, 2010, Haiti was hit by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that leveled an
estimated 250,000 homes and 30,000 buildings, killing nearly 300,000 people. A
cholera outbreak a few months later claimed thousands more lives.
Philosophers
have a name for this kind of devastation. They call it natural evil. With its
earthquakes, famines, diseases, and afflictions, the world can be a hostile
place.
I
visited Haiti once, before the quake. There I met many teenage Restaveks—domestic
servants—who were treated as slaves. They were overworked by their owners and
often beaten when they couldn’t complete their chores because of extreme
fatigue. That’s moral evil—
evil arising from the human heart. We know all too well how much moral evil
infects the world. A Haitian pastor told me about the effects of Vodou
(Voo-doo) on its worshipers. Once “possessed by ancestral spirits,” Vodou
participants often change personalities, cut themselves, and do other
self-destructive acts. We might call this demonic
evil—evil from the dark spiritual realm.
Here’s
the good news: Jesus came to defeat all three forms of evil! Mark’s gospel
opens with Jesus exorcising an evil spirit from a possessed man (Mark 1: 21-28).
He did the same for others (Mark 5: 1-20, 9: 14-27). Jesus combated moral evil
by teaching love as the highest virtue (Mark 12: 28-34), promoting the values
of faithfulness and servanthood (Mark 10: 42-45), and transforming thieves like
Zacchaeus into generous benefactors (Luke 19: 1-10).
And
when natural evil broke out, Jesus had the power to quell it. He calmed a raging
storm (Mark 4: 37-39), miraculously provided food for the hungry (Mark 6: 30-44),
and healed the diseased and broken (Mark 1: 40-45, 2: 1-12).
Evil
met its match in Jesus—and was defeated. One day Jesus will return and
eradicate evil entirely. Come,
Lord Jesus!
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