All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 5:5b-11)
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I was amused (or perhaps it might be better to say that I was amazed, because the two words can often be interchangeable) when I discovered a while back that the powers that be in Hollywood had decided to remake the movie “Red Dawn.” I was amused and/or amazed for a couple of different reasons. First, the original “Red Dawn” was released when I was 21 years old, which means that Hollywood is now re-making movies that were released when I was an adult! Setting aside whatever that may say about my age, I was also amused because - to be honest - the original “Red Dawn” wasn’t that good. Still, while it may not have been a great movie, it fit the tenor of the times. On March 8, 1983, in a speech to an evangelical Christian group in Orlando, Florida, US President Ronald Reagan had denounced the Soviet Union (remember it?) as “the evil empire.” All of a sudden evil had a face - a face that revolved around politics and ideology and nationalism, which means that spiritual considerations had been effectively drowned out. This was the Cold War, of course. The enemy had to be identified - and it was the Soviet Union, and Communism in general, and Hollywood took up the cause. “Red Dawn” was released a year later. It was the story of a vicious and sadistic Soviet invasion of the United States, where, high in the mountains of Colorado, a group of high school students formed a resistance movement and played a leading role in bringing the evil Soviet aggressors to their knees. A year later, Hollywood stayed on the Cold War theme, as Rocky Balboa came out of retirement in “Rocky IV” to take on the very personification of evil - the Soviet boxing champion Ivan Drago, a machine like, cold as ice, apparently unbeatable mountain of a man. I remember Drago and Rocky meeting at the centre of the ring as the fight was about to start, with Drago looking at Rocky and saying “I must break you!” You have to admit, the Cold War gave Hollywood script writers some great opportunities.
Well, it might have been a glorious opportunity for screenwriters, but the Cold War unfortunately lent itself to developing a “good vs. evil” mentality in all the WRONG ways. The point of the Cold War and the associated trappings and propaganda (and really, of any war of any kind) is that “we” (whoever “we” might be) become the good guys, and that means we let ourselves off the hook. The “evil” in those situations is always “them” - it’s the other; it’s the one who threatens us; it’s the one we fear. And because “we’re” good and “they’re” evil, then we allow ourselves to act in evil ways every now and then, because (of course) in those circumstances, the ends always justify the means. So along with some laughable Hollywood scripts, the Cold War also lent itself to the “Red Scare” and the “McCarthy hearings” where the reputations of totally innocent people were ruined and sometimes their lives destroyed because they simply knew the wrong people, and that was enough to make them suspicious. And it still happens today. Who are the evil ones today? Radical Islam, and that’s given rise to Guantanamo, and to what’s euphemistically called “Enhanced Interrogation” - a kinder way of saying torture. It’s justified because those who are doing the enhanced interrogations are the “good guys” and doing evil can be justified because the evil is being done by the good guys and directed against the evil ones, thus making the evil acts of the good guys actually good, even though they’re evil, because they’re directed against evil, so they must be good. Get it? You see how easy it is for those who think they’re on the side of “good” to fall into “evil.” It doesn’t take much. In fact, it’s so easy, it should make us all nervous! Perhaps, as Peter discusses the nature and reality of evil in our passage this morning, it explains the way the passage starts: with a call to humility. “Clothe yourselves with humility,” he says. So, don’t be proud and don’t even look proud. Be humble, and let humility be what defines you. In other words, the message seems to be, “we’re just as susceptible to evil as anyone else, so let’s not fall into the trap of thinking that only ‘they’ do evil.” That’s prideful, and it’s dangerous, because it sets us up for failure by making us complacent in our daily lives and walks with Christ.
Peter wants to make the point (if we ever doubted it) that evil is a very real and powerful force in the world around us, and therefore in our lives. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour,” is how he puts it. Whatever you think of the personification of evil as “the devil” the point is clear - we shouldn’t take evil for granted, and we shouldn’t assume that we’re not susceptible to it. The truth is that some of the most evil things I’ve ever heard of were committed by those who claimed to be Christians - and who, at one time in their lives, may well have been very good Christians, but they took evil lightly, they became proud perhaps, they thought that they couldn’t be tempted, and they fell. And sometimes they fell hard, and sometimes a lot of people got hurt in the process. No, let’s never assume that we’re too “good” for “evil” to ever be a temptation. Lots of “good” people have fallen before its power. Peter wants us to be aware that evil is not only present - he wants us to know that it’s a threat to us, and he wants us to know that no matter how “good” we think we are - and no matter how “good” we’ve been up until now - we’re not so good that we can’t fall! And so, Peter says, “Resist him, standing firm in the faith ...”
I suppose, in a way at least, this brings us back to “Red Dawn.” Whatever its’ flaws - and it WAS a bad movie (and I’ve heard that the new version is even worse) - it highlights the need to resist evil. In the movies, of course, (and too often in everyday life) you resist evil by adopting the end vs. the means type of attitude; so you can justify doing evil in order to resist evil. But while that might be a human response, it’s not a Christian response. You can’t resist evil by becoming as evil or more evil than the evil you’re fighting against. It doesn’t work that way. Fighting evil with evil only leads to more evil. Jesus did away with the “eye for an eye” mentality in the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but I say to you - love your enemy. Do good to those who persecute you.” “DO GOOD.” There’s the key. Peter said that we should “resist evil [by] standing firm in the faith.” How do we “stand firm in the faith?” By doing good! Paul said in Romans 12:21, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” The point here is not to be good - because none of us can be perfectly good and without fault or failure 24 hours a day 365 days a year for our entire lives. As Jesus said, in some words I reflected on at the beginning of the month, “Only God is good.” Only God is good by nature. Only God cannot be tempted by evil. But if we can’t “be” good, then Scripture tells us that we are to “do” good. And that’s our way of resisting evil. We resist by drawing close to God, praying for strength, always building up our faith, and letting that built up faith express itself in “doing” good - and the opportunities to resist evil by doing good are all around us all the time.
Our United Church’s “New Creed” tells us that as Christians we are to “seek justice and resist evil.” And the good news is that resistance is NOT futile! Evil can be beaten. The fight is not hopeless. We don’t see Cold War movies anymore, because the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed. That’s a human way of understanding evil, as I said, but it makes the point. Evil never wins, no matter how strong it seems, as long as we commit ourselves to doing good. Edmund Burke said in words that are now famous that “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” We don’t have to “do nothing.” Even if we can’t be perfectly good, we can still do good. Ultimately, good will always triumph over evil - because God will always triumph over evil! That’s our faith; that’s our hope; that’s our assurance. As Peter wrote, “To Him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.”
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