The Real Battle is Good vs. Evil

And evil has now shown its face.

I don’t attend church services as often as many of my neighbors, but I know that Satan - if and when he arrives - is going to disguise himself as a benevolent hero.

It occurs to me I might have been looking at everything that’s happened in the world the last three years the wrong way. 

When I look around the world all I’ve seen seen are examples of mass psychosis, of outrage after outrage. But what I’ve really seen is evil … or the carnage and misery that occurs when evil people rule the world. (Yes, in this column I am going to call things I think are evil … evil).

My previous assumption had been that those responsible for evil outcomes had acquired too much power and infiltrated too many important organizations to be stopped. Because of this, I concluded evil acts would continue, perhaps even accelerate.

However, what I failed to see is that the people most responsible for the denigration of society committed a terrible blunder - they’ve exposed themselves.  

In the last three years, what’s really happened is that the devil (if you will) showed his thorns. He - and his evil disciples - finally revealed themselves to the world. Because of this, the world has the chance to strike a mighty blow against the forces of evil. 

I’m pretty sure of this conclusion:  If those responsible for producing evil outcomes are not exposed and stopped, evil will continue. 

As it turns out, Covid - and the myriad atrocities it spawned - gave us the opportunity to identify the people and organizations most responsible for producing evil outcomes. 

Such opportunities don’t happen often. When evil reveals itself, good people should act decisively and dispatch it.

Evil defined at the macro level….

However, to expose and stop evil, more people must first acknowledge its existence and the ways it has manifested itself. 

I happen to believe policies enacted and supported by our world’s “leaders” have caused the unnecessary deaths of millions of people. 

Furthermore, many millions of world inhabitants are living with medical conditions that have harmed their quality of life, conditions that would not have developed absent the “public health” response to Covid.

I doubt anyone thinks the economy is in good shape, and many people sense the real state of the economy is far worse than the experts say.

In my opinion, massive increases in all-cause deaths, a massive spike in debilitating medical conditions and terrifying economic prospects are all “evil” results.

But the above are “macro” arguments.

Questions that illustrate evil at the micro level …

The following questions - if answered honestly - should give citizens a better sense of what’s changed in our world in the last three years. 

Question: Were the leaders who produced these results good or evil people?

Is it “evil” if the people who control our lives …

… forbade citizens from visiting a lonely, frightened and sick family member in a hospital?

… told us we could not visit someone we love in a nursing home?

… told a widow with few social contacts that she can no longer attend church or worship God in congregations filled with people who care about her?

… told us we can no longer operate our business nor earn an income to support ourselves and our families?

… told us that our children must stay home and cannot attend school?

… made parents choose between staying home and taking care of their children or keeping their job, which they also need to provide an income to care for their children? 

… told us we must wear a mask if we are going to be allowed to enter a public building, a mask that restricts our ability to breath and becomes a reservoir of potentially harmful pathogens and bacteria?

… told us we cannot take our children to a playground?

… told us we could not attend a concert or sporting event?

… told our children they cannot play sports or act in a play or go to any social event of more than six people?

… told us what we can and cannot say if we want to keep our social media accounts?

… told us we cannot travel to another country and friends and family living in other countries cannot travel to our country?

… told us we cannot go to a restaurant and visit with friends?

… told us that unless we were going to CVS, Wal-Mart or a fast-food drive-through that we had to stay in our homes?

… told us that we can order necessities from Amazon, but could not buy the same products from the smaller businesses owned by our neighbors?

… told us we have to get multiple shots of a drug that has not been tested for safety and does not prevent infection or transmission of the novel coronavirus?

… or told us if we didn’t get these injections, we had to pay for multiple PCR tests and couldn’t enjoy the same freedoms as co-workers who did comply?

… or told us if we don’t do this, we will lose our jobs.

… and told those of us who didn’t get these shots that we were responsible for this pandemic continuing and that we should be denied health care and benefits that vaccinated people receive.

Is it evil that millions of family members and former friends now no longer speak to one another because they simply have different opinions on personal liberty or disagree on the “threat” this  respiratory virus poses to their health?

Is it evil to discriminate against people who don’t agree with public health bureaucrats?

The responses many Americans would give to these questions confirm the cunning and manipulative power of evil. 

“Evil’s” answer to all of these questions is that these decrees are not evil - that they are actually good … and that people who do not agree with these “safety measures” are themselves evil and grave threats to democracy.

I’ve not attended church services as often as many of my neighbors, but even I know that Satan - if and when he arrives - will be heralded by many as a benevolent hero. 

My question: Could not the last three years constitute “evidence” that he has already arrived?

The question of how “one nation under God” founded under the banner of “freedom” could evolve to its current state is too perplexing a subject for this essay.  What matters is that this change - somehow over time -  did occur.

It took time, but evil actors did seize control. 

Who will lead the fight?

The good news is that in the last three years - thanks to Covid - many more Americans who had lost their sight are beginning to see the world, and the stakes, more clearly.

More than ever, the Bad Guys are right there in front of us. They aren’t hiding any more. More people are beginning to understand the true motives of our alleged protectors.

It would take just one true leader - who could mobilize other apostles - to defeat - perhaps in a rout - the forces of evil.

We don’t know yet who those vital leaders may be. 

It’s just an opinion, but I think the pivotal leader who emerges will be a person who frames the battle for what it’s already become - a battle of good vs. evil. 

Our traditional political template says a political candidate must have a 10-point program of policies they are going to implement to improve society.

This template should be discarded. The real leader who saves America should have just one program - a long-overdue political, cultural and spiritual exorcism of people who should be banished from positions of influence for the remainder of their lives.

Covid has given us the litmus test required to identify the people who must be purged. Any person in a position of “leadership” who supported policies that allowed crimes against humanity (and freedom) should be banished to the wilderness of public life (if not the penitentiary or even the gallows).

The task in front of this leader(s) will be formidable and the forces seeking to defeat him will be daunting.

But authentic leaders are not timid. If they are fortified by God, fighting evil would be a divine and righteous mission.

The alternative is letting these people - the forces of evil - ruin this nation and extinguish the final embers of freedom.

Three years ago we didn’t know for sure the exact faces of evil. Today if we can’t put names and titles to these faces, we’re all blind.

Evil might prevail, but if it doesn’t it will be because one leader, who emboldens other leaders,  was not afraid to call evil what it really is. 

I believe God would bless these leaders as He would bless anyone who fights true evil.  With God on our side, we would win. Evil will lose. But the battle has to be framed for what it really is.