There is a powerful human need to locate evil—that is, to contain it by assigning it a specific, bounded place (in some cases, a particular person)—even though this is impossible. The boundaries of evil are blurry and porous, if they can be said to exist at all. Doug Dorst, from the book co-created by he and J. J. Abrams, “S”. 

We all want to be rid of the evil in our lives. In some cases, an individual or entire groups of people define themselves by their singular devotion to locating a particular brand of evil and eradicating it.

The challenge, however, is isolating the actual location of evil. And in our efforts, it might go something like this. We see a person caught on video commit an indefensible and unspeakable atrocity. This person, we reason by the evidence, is evil. But the boundary cannot be contained to this one individual. No. We see that he has some characteristic that identifies him as part of a larger group. We detect some sort of “uniform” that indelibly marks him as part of a team. And that team must be held responsible for its team member’s evil. This team could be a race, an authoritative power, a political party, a religious organization, an educational institution, or any other identifiable group.

Once we determine that the entire team is evil based on one or more of its members being caught red-handed, we set our sights on a righteous quest to topple it in the name of defending the innocent and ridding the world of darkness.

The problem, as we will see in today’s episode, is that our quest to locate evil is sometimes greatly misguided. Rarely does the guilt of one imply the guilt of all, and often the apparent guilt of one may be misinterpreted by the limitations of our perspective.

Worse yet, we may define some person or people as evil solely to justify our own  desires to obtain something we want or protect something we believe to be rightfully ours. This itself is evil, and eventually someone will see it for what it is and go on a quest to defeat it.

And so the cycle repeats itself.

How do we break the chain of evil? How do we identify and locate true evil and rid the world of it once and for all? Where is the compass that guides us on our quest?

Let’s find out.

Source Scripture

Eradicating Evil: John 1:29-34

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Extras

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