Romans 12:21
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Have you ever thought about what the face of evil might look like? Oh, I know evil is not a person that might have a face so it would be easily recognized, but still, it has a ‘face’, a presence, recognizable traits. Let’s think about some faces that are familiar to us. Even as babies we recognize the faces of our mother’s and dad’s, as well as other important people in our lives. Even babies will respond in negative ways to faces that have not been kind to them. Clearly, a face represents more than just the features we present to the world.
So, what is the face of evil? I believe it is…SILENCE! What does that mean? Well, think about these situations that are engraved in our American history. In the years since Christopher Columbus brought people kidnapped from other places to our shores, people on southern plantations ‘owned’ other people and made them work for their very existence, slavery. What might have happened if people in the south, when offered the opportunity to purchase the people that were brought from Africa, said, “NO! We will not buy other human beings! That is evil and ungodly!” NO! That might have been the end of slavery before it began. If there was no demand for the people to come over on slave ships, there would be no profit for slave traders, and no reason to bring them.
It was the same in Nazi Germany. At what point do you look at another human being and be so conditioned to treat them with such contempt, that you would be able to just shoot them and toss them to the side of the road? That was the face of evil. Or even today. How depraved is the mind of someone that would take a child from their parents and use them in sex trafficking? Yet, there would be no trafficking if there was not someone interested in paying lots of money for this service.
The person staring these evil actions in the face and complying with it, is the face of silence, and the face of evil!
There have been many people who have stood up to that face of evil. They often end up as martyrs! Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a martyr during the time of Hitler, said, “Silence in the face evil is evil itself: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak, is to speak. Not to act, is to act!”
This was from the mouth of a man who did everything he could to stop the slaughter of Jews-until he himself was killed. Yet, it is an honor to die for a cause so much greater than yourself, as millions have done.
I think also of Irena Sandler who smuggled babies out of the ghetto in Poland during the Nazi occupation. Finally the Nazi’s caught up with her and she was captured, but not before 2,500 children were spared. Irena saved the names of the children and their parents in a jjar she buried. After the war she made every effort to reunite the children with their parents. More often than not, the parents had been gassed by the evil regime in Germany.
How about Harriet Tubman in our own US. She would smuggle slaves out of the south and take them through very dangerous paths on the ‘underground railroad’ to Pennsylvania, where they would be free. She was able to, single hand rescue about 70 people from the evil of slave ownership.These people looked evil in the face, and said-no!
Yes, the face of evil-is silence. As we go forward in our own history that we are living right now, will we become complicit and silent as evil is rising and becoming more powerful all around us? Or, will we look evil right in it’s ungodly face, and with the face of our good God, challenge evil by speaking up, even at our own risk.
Friends, it has been said that silence is golden. That is a lie right from hell itself. Silence speaks with a voice of complicit submission. I cannot speak for you, but I am preparing to face evil with a Godly ROAR! Anybody with me?
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