Storms of destruction

“In the shadow of Thy wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.” – Psalm 57

In the days when we all boarded airliners and flew peacefully to our destinations, I remember taking off now and then through the thick clouds of an impending storm. Finally, after penetrating the gray nothingness and traversing it in a steep ascent, we would break through above the clouds into bright sunlight. Gazing below, we could see the thick, dark storm clouds obscuring the earth to one side, while in the distance on the other was a bright patchwork of farmland and the outskirts of the city we’d just left, disappearing gently behind us.

Today, we’re all in that aircraft. Both as a nation and individually, we’ve embarked upon a journey to a new destination. We’re flying into storm clouds – and they’re likely to grow darker and the air more turbulent in the days and weeks ahead. Like the passengers on that airliner, we are dependent on the skills of the pilot and the training and experience of the crew for our safe arrival. Where we are headed, in what condition we arrive and, indeed, if we arrive are now out of our hands as individual passengers and citizens. Wars often generate their own sustaining causes along the way.

Since Sept. 11, there’s been a good deal of talk about evil. We may have spoken some of those words ourselves. Often, we use the word casually. I know I have. Almost as revealing as our talk about evil are those who cannot bring themselves to say the word. Yet I wonder how many mothers and fathers and husbands and wives who went to work in the World Trade Center towers the morning of Sept. 11 ever expected to come face-to-face with real evil? It’s just not the way we’ve ordered our lives, is it? And, yet, there it is. We encountered it together, and it has changed our lives, individually and as a nation.

Yes, there have been outbreaks of pure evil before in our world. Hitler comes to mind, as does Stalin. But that was in the past. Rwandans and Hutus encountered evil when they began butchering one another. Women, who had on the previous day looked after their neighbor’s children, suddenly changed, turned on the children they’d been caring for and hacked them to pieces with machetes. But that was far away. Then Columbine. Later, Andrea Yates, who methodically drowned her small children in her bathtub. And evil was here, too.

Evil ultimately destroys everything it touches – that is its life. Yet as humanity, we live with the realization that, from the beginning, we willingly accepted evil into our lives. “Eat! Ye shall be as gods …” promised Satan. Yet the reality is somewhat different, isn’t it?

Perhaps no one ever more keenly understood this than Jesus. Dr. Luke writes about it in his account of Jesus’ life, recorded in the New Testament. In the space of a few short days, three years of wonderful preparation had fallen apart. Jesus’ arrest was just moments away. That was when he turned and spoke to his rough fisherman friend, Simon Peter – who with the Roman soldiers approaching had just brazenly promised that he would never leave Jesus’ side. “And the Lord said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat …” (Luke 22:31).

Jesus knew that he was about to confront pure, naked evil, face-to-face on the cross. His words to his friend, Simon Peter, indicate Jesus knew that none of us – no matter how good our intentions – could stand in His place and bear that encounter. What had begun with such promise – “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached” – and thousands of jubilant followers, all memories now. Ahead was the cross – death between a pair of thieves – and Satan gloating at his victory over God’s plan to welcome humanity back into His eternal kingdom. Satan triumphant – God humiliated – and mankind forever confined to the ash heap of Calvary, entombed amid evil’s greatest victory.

But a funny thing happened on the way to Satan’s victory celebration. Jesus attended. That’s why the cross, far from marking the end of the road for humanity, marks instead the beginning. And just as Jesus knew that Simon Peter couldn’t stand alone against the evil that he would encounter, Jesus knows that we can’t, either. Not as individuals, and not as a nation. So the nail-pierced hands open as Jesus pleads his case to us, one human being at a time, one nation at a time. “See – I have graven you on the palms of my hands” (Isaiah 49:16).

In the face of the storm clouds, we have some decisions to make. I think Americans have sensed this. It’s as if our nation, like the rugged Simon Peter, has heard the words: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. …” Both individually and nationally, we have to decide: Is there a difference between a faith and culture that, at its apex, produces suicide bombers to destroy nonbelievers – or Mother Theresa to care for another culture’s human wreckage piled on the garbage dumps of Calcutta?

The good news for Peter back then – and for us today – is that Jesus continued on with his words: “But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”