July 15, 2016

“Then they brought to him a demoniac who was blind and mute; and he cured him, so that the one who had been mute could speak and see. All the crowds were amazed and said, “Can this be the Son of David?” But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that this fellow casts out the demons.” He knew what they were thinking and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.” Matthew 12:22-28

“We do not have to create a conscience for ourselves. We are born with one, and no matter how much we may ignore it, we cannot silence its insistent demand that we do good and avoid evil. No matter how much we may deny our freedom and our moral responsibility, our intellectual soul cries out for a morality and a spiritual freedom without which it knows it cannot be happy. Our being is not to be enriched merely by activity and experience as such. Everything depends on the quality of our acts and our experiences. A multitude of badly performed actions and of experiences only half-lived exhausts and depletes our being. By doing things badly we make ourselves less real.” Thomas Merton (The Pocket Thomas Merton, p. 15-17)

In the world we are living in today, so many people are struggling with this question: “Who are the people who are the good ones and who are the people who are evil? So many individuals today think that all policemen and policewomen are evil if not crooked. Others think they all are good and honest. Other people think all Democrats are bad if not evil – others think all Republicans are bad if not evil. We are all struggling with squaring in our conscience where the evil exists, and where good exists. And then, we hear from Jesus that we are called to love our neighbor, pray for our enemies – and Thomas Merton says to do good and to avoid evil, and with the way our society is today, we would rather just sit at home and not do anything. It would be safer that way, right?

Of course we know the answer is wrong, and Thomas Merton is suggesting, I believe, that our conscience demands that we focus on the good – and by good I mean “doing” good. The only way we will be able to defeat evil, is for more people to do good. Good will defeat evil. But in the good we do, let us not do it half-heartedly, but persist in not only doing good, but doing good, well.

Pastor Dave