Sin, That Willful, Wicked, Demonic Power

I’m never sure of any fact.
I guess Confusion is my name.
Men worship me in many forms,
All gods and faiths are just the same.
Some call me “cool” and “open mind.”
I helped King Saul consult

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a witch.
Men can’t discern what’s false and true;
Their view is blocked in my deep ditch.

On a popular Christian talk show, a guest said that evil is nothing. He claimed that sin is the absence of good, a vacuum of nothingness where there ought to be virtue, a shadow consisting of nothing but the absence of light. He added that the wicked deeds of evil tyrants that have brought untold misery and slain millions are merely a vacuum of “ungoodness.” The host agreed. Sadly, this reflects common, shallow thinking by some Evangelicals. If that philosophy were true, then inanimate rocks and animals without the sense of virtue that comes with the image of God, would be evil because they lack positive good; however, they are obviously not evil in God’s sight.

In reality, evil is a maliciousness that enjoys inflicting pain and death. It is sickeningly, tangibly evident wherever Satan and his demons have had a monopoly for centuries over the religious life of the people. Widows and children have been sacrificed to idols linked to demons, deception and misery abound, and hatred fills the air.

Demons possess a positive evil, even more so than the evil of men who pervert the image of God that they bear. Demons lie out of a raw desire to deceive, to pervert and to destroy. Such lust for misery, fear, anger and hatred is evident in non-Christian religions. Poverty and a poor quality of life everywhere in the world coincide precisely with areas where Christianity has had the least influence for the last few centuries (where the light and salt has been totally lacking). Idolatrous superstition characterizes all really painful and persistent poverty, wherever the doctrines of demons have been embraced by a society as a whole. When the gospel first penetrates a pioneer field, its light is in such contrast to the darkness people have known, that many whom God has chosen and opened their spiritual eyes, readily embrace it

Demons are fallen angels whose sin is especially heinous, because they have made a reasoned choice in the presence of God’s untarnished light. In contrast, men sin because they live in spiritual darkness. There is no truly free will in men, as there is with fallen angels. Men are born with a will already in bondage to sin. They are born blind, by nature dead in trespasses and sins. We do not become sinners by choice; we choose sin because we are sinners (Eph. 2:1-4, etc.). Fallen angels became sinners by choice, a choice made because of an informed, reasoned desire to rebel against a good and holy God who was perfectly visible to them. But men sin, at first, out of sheer selfishness without a thought of God in their minds. When they do sin with Him in mind, He remains invisible to them, far away.

Human sin is still just as repugnant to God as that of demons, and is just as liable to punishment. But God finds it easier to lavish unmerited grace on men than He does with fallen angels, not because their sins are less annoying to Him, but because of who they are, sons of Adam and one with the Final Adam.