Avoid evil by doing good! (Friday's readings)

Luke 11:14-26

One day Jesus cast out a demon from a man who couldn’t speak, and when the demon was gone, the man began to speak. The crowds were amazed, 15 but some of them said, “No wonder he can cast out demons. He gets his power from Satan, the prince of demons.” 16 Others, trying to test Jesus, demanded that he show them a miraculous sign from heaven to prove his authority. 17 He knew their thoughts, so he said, “Any kingdom divided by civil war is doomed. A family splintered by feuding will fall apart. 18 You say I am empowered by Satan. But if Satan is divided and fighting against himself, how can his kingdom survive? 19 And if I am empowered by Satan, what about your own exorcists? They cast out demons, too, so they will condemn you for what you have said. 20 But if I am casting out demons by the power of God, then the Kingdom of God has arrived among you.21 For when a strong man like Satan is fully armed and guards his palace, his possessions are safe— 22 until someone even stronger attacks and overpowers him, strips him of his weapons, and carries off his belongings. 23 “Anyone who isn’t with me opposes me, and anyone who isn’t working with me is actually working against me. 24 “When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ 25 So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept and in order, but vacant. 26 Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.”

Food for thought!

When Jesus' enemies were helpless to oppose him by fair means they resorted to slander; they declared that his power over the demons was due to the fact that he was in league with the prince of demons. They attributed his power not to God but to the devil.

It is by no means uncommon for people to resort to slander when honest opposition is helpless. There is nothing so cruel as slander, for it is apt to stick because the human mind always tends to think the worst and very often the human ear prefers to hear the derogatory rather than the complimentary tale.

We need not think that we are free of that particular sin. How often do we tend to think the worst of other people, especially those we dislike? How often do we deliberately impute low motives to someone whom we dislike? How often do we repeat the slanderous and the malicious tale over the tea-cups? To think of this will not cause complacency but call for self-examination. We may not like what they said of Jesus, but like what we say of others.

There is no place for neutrality in the Christian life. The person who slanders is an agent of the devil. As Jesus said, "This is war, and there is no neutral ground. If you're not on my side, you're the enemy; if you're not helping, you're making things worse."

A warning! “When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert, searching for rest. But when it finds none, it says, ‘I will return to the person I came from.’ 25 So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept and in order, but vacant. 26 Then the spirit finds seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before.”

Here is the fundamental truth that you cannot leave your soul empty. It is not enough to banish the evil thoughts and the evil habits and the old ways and leave the soul empty. An empty soul is a soul in peril. As someone said, "You've got to fill a man with something." It is not enough to drive out evil; good must come in. Cleansing is necessary; but after the rooting out of evil, there must come the filling with good.

The best way to avoid evil is to do good. The loveliest garden I ever saw was so full of flowers that there was scarcely room for a weed to grow. In no garden is it enough to uproot weeds; flowers must be sown and planted until the space is filled. Nowhere is this truer than in the world of thoughts. Often we may be troubled with wrong thoughts. If we go no further than to say to ourselves, "I will not think about that," all we do is fix our thoughts upon it more and more. The cure is to think of something else, to banish the evil thought by thinking a good thought. We never become good by not doing bad things, but by doing good things.