Yearning to Breathe Free
By: Beth Swiger
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, George Floyd, Ahmaudarbery, Christianity, Christian Living

An Ancient Evil

Everyone in the country can feel the personal distress from George Floyd in that statement, and God allowed the nation to open her eyes to overlay that statement over every Black American.

We all know this unjust treatment did not start this year in 2020. It didn’t start just in the current presidency. It didn’t start over the last 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke up. It didn’t start 100 years prior to that when America fought a Civil War that resulted in the end of slavery as a practice. It didn’t start 200 years prior to that when Africans were being kidnapped, dragged from their land, and forced to work under abominable circumstances.

This is an ancient evil, and it began the very first time the Bible mentions brothers.

Cain and Able experienced the evil that we’re seeing in our day:

Jealousy — > Mistrust — -> Hardness of heart —-> Judging — — > Hatred —-> Murder

This ancient evil of strife rears its head on a national scale in our society every so often because it sees opportunity.

When our nation is backbiting, undermining, gossiping, and choosing agitation, then it’s the perfect opportunity for Strife to step in and do its evil work.

This, too, is not a new game.

Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert. The devil considered him easy prey and came and tempted Him with opportunities to stumble. Jesus sidestepped those temptations because He had scripture deeply ingrained into His being, He knew what God was doing at that moment, and He did not have broken places in His soul from which the devil could have foothold to launch his attack.

What’s very interesting is that the Bible then says, “When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.”

When our country feels these hot spurts — when the roiling issues bubble up to the surface — it’s because our strife, bickering, and agitation have created an opportune time.

It’s an opportune time because there are still open wounds in the heart of our nation. There are consequences of actions from people who died long before I was born that are still affecting our lives. The jagged places in America’s broken soul continue to wound anyone that brushes up against them.

All of these evil machinations have conspired to bring destruction, but

God will use it for good.

He is a Restorer. He is a Redeemer.

He didn’t cause any of these evil things to happen; He gave us a choice, and many have chosen to walk in evil ways. The great thing about God, however, is that no matter how broken the pieces are, He creates something beautiful when we invite Him into the process.

Joseph, in the Bible, noticed God’s redemption: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

How do we bring God’s redemption into this situation?

We want real change in our generation. We don’t want to continue hatred and injustice into the lives our grandchildren.

What must we do?

We must realize that our battle is not against the actual people that we see. It’s deeper than that. These spirits of strife, murder, and hatred have to be unentangled from our hearts. Once we choose partnership with them, we’ve already lost the battle. Those are evil ills, meant to bring destruction, and they never bring about good.

We must mourn. We, as a nation, have never collectively sat and truly mourned the cruelty of the slavery that greased the wheels of the nation’s early years of commerce. America left the tyranny of England’s taxes, but fell right into the trap of the tyranny of slavery. It wasn’t a choice that all people made, but blindness to this issue left the gate wide open for evil to be ingrained in our society. We must mourn those choices of the few, and realize the resounding impact it still has in the hearts of people who were never slaves on the outside but still feel like tyranny and oppression have been their portion.

We must ask God to help us not be blind to the evil choices in our day. I’m not actively engaging in racism, but I will mourn and work to repair. I am not actively engaging in murder, child pornography, sex trafficking, or any of the other dirty secrets in America’s underbelly, but I must mourn that sin abounds in my nation, and I must work toward the destruction of those edifices. Oh, God, let future generations not look back at us the way we look at those who abided slavery.

We must pray for real, creative solutions to these ills. God is Creator, and we are made in His image. He hovered over chaos and chose to bring it into order to create this world. Let us ask Him now to hover over our country, bring order, and create beauty. He is so good and pure and holy that even as we catch one glimpse of Him, our hope arises.

We must keep our hearts tender. Good people, like you and me, are the unwitting problem, and the little choices that we make each day are the ones that are having an impact. The Bible puts it this way: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” Each time you scroll through social media or watch the news, you have the opportunity to harden your heart or keep it soft. Each time you walk through the streets of our nation and you see someone, you have the opportunity to harden your heart or keep it soft. You can judge or you can love. We must let go of judgments, even the micro-judgments, to receive the lens of love. Don’t let the story of the few harden your heart to the good of the many. Most people are just people, wanting to live and be free. If we soften our hearts and stop judging then we’ll let go of the fear holding us back from the beauty of smiles and relationship.