WHY ARE WE SO EVIL?

Sir,

As I sat watching the 7 o’clock news on South Africa’s etv channel a week or so ago, I watched, fixated with horror, recorded footage, in full view of the public, of police brutality filmed by concerned residents using their cellphones.
As it played itself out on the screen, two traffic cops in a Cape Town city street repeatedly kicked a stripped naked Nigerian national (a motorist) on his groin.

Sadness gripped my heart and I just wondered what makes mortal man to be so evil, so brutal with a propensity to hate and do violent acts on his fellow man in this manner and worse.
I thought of the millions who have died all over the world as a result of wars, murders, etc.
Questions incessantly pounded my mind why the brutal nature of man and how it cannot be possible for a loving God to have created some beings to be so violent and to be as vile as these cops?
A verse came to my mind where Paul in Ephesians 6:12 - King James Version (KJV) warns: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

I know without any shadow of doubt that God created everything good and when He was finished, “He saw that it was good and pleasing to the eyes,” including man himself!
Why then so much evil in us humans? I know for a fact that, as one reads Ephesians 6:12 above and many other verses in the Bible, God did not create evil.
Man chose to follow the evil path through the reckless use of freedom of will and chose to listen to Satan rather than to the all-knowing Creator.
Satan is immensely adept at broadcasting, through the airwaves, evil waves of violent thoughts to man’s mind.

He started all his master deception in the Garden of Eden where our ancestors exercised wrongly the freedom of choice bestowed on them by the loving God.
Had they chosen the Tree of Life, these dastardly acts of evil thoughts, violence etc, orchestrated by Satan, would never have entered human character.
Many verses attest to the inclination to evil of man’s heart.
1. Genesis 8:21 (ESV)–“And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.”

2. Genesis 6:5–“And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”
3. Jeremiah 17:19–“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
4. Matthew 15:18,19–“Those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.”
We, humans, tend to underestimate the power of the devil and his demons.

One of his greatest deceptions is to convince people that he does not exist.
He tempted Jesus in the wilderness and many of us do not believe that the Kingdoms of this world belong to the devil.
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. All this I will give you, if you will bow down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8 - 9)
Otherwise, if it were not so, Jesus would have disputed the devil’s claim of dominion and ownership, albeit temporarily, of all the world’s kingdom including humans.

We, at times, have the tendency of blaming God for all the calamities and violent human behaviour that befall human beings now and again, forgetting that our forefathers exercised the freedom of choice given to them by God wrongly and chose to obey Satan’s way, hence we as offspring, also are prone to the adverse effects of Satan broacasting his evil ways on us imperfect human beings.
God cannot be tempted by evil as James 1:13 was inspired to write by God’s Spirit : “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man.”
No man can successfully resist the devil’s wiles and tricks without first drawing near to God. Make no mistake, the devil and his assistants wield enormous power and without the protection of God and His Son Jesus, all attempts by human efforts are bound to fail!

See Ephesians 2 :1-3: “Wherein in time past, ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.”
We humans all have this streak and traits of rebelling against the authority of God. It is mainly the spirit and waves of evil that Satan broadcasts in the air right into our minds and thoughts that cause us to act contrary to God’s instructions. Remember, Satan is the ‘prince of the air.’

The good news is that God will finally intervene in human affairs and that Satan will be bound for a thousand years, during the Millennium rule of Christ, as God’s people are taught His ways of peace and harmony, without the interference of the devil.

All those who died without being taught God’s ways will be resurrected, given a chance to learn God’s ways.
Then Satan will be set loose to tempt those who died without learning of God’s ways. Then the sheep will be separated from the goats. Will we be there? Let’s strive to be there against all odds.
 
Alex Lucky Nxumalo
MANZINI

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