Evil, Activity

London's metropolitan police force has seen just about everything in terms of crime, and they've saved much of the evidence. A forward-thinking officer in 1874 began saving items from historic cases to show new recruits. The museum includes items like: Letters from the Jack the Ripper case, an oil drum used to dissolve murder victims in acid; Cannibal Dennis Nilsen's cooking pots; The umbrella-fired ricin bullet that the KGB used to kill a Bulgarian dissident in London during the Cold War; Items that once belonged to Charles Black, the most prolific counterfeiter in the Western Hemisphere, including a set of printing plates, forged banknotes, and a cunningly hollowed-out kitchen door once used to conceal them.

The museum houses evidence from some of the most twisted, barbaric criminal cases of recent history. It is not open to the public, as some people think it's just too gruesome for public viewing, but it is used as a teaching collection for police recruits. It also may show the monstrous side of humanity, what we have been and still are capable of doing to each other.

Twenty years ago, at the moment of its IPO announcement, the most powerful company in the world declared that “Don’t be evil” would be the orchestrating principle of its executive strategy. How did Google intend not to be evil? By doing “good things” for the world, its IPO document explained, “even if we forgo some short-term gains.”

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO at the time, had some private doubts: as he would later explain in an interview to NPR, “There’s no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something.” But Schmidt came to believe that the absence of an authoritative definition was in fact a virtue, since any employee could exercise a veto over any decision that was felt not to involve “doing good things.” It took 10 years for the company’s executives to realize that the motto was a recipe for total, corporate paralysis, and quietly retired it.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible offers a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to business ethics than Google's original motto, providing guidance on positive actions rather than just avoiding a vague negative motto (Micah 6:8).

How do you make sense of the problem of pain and the wonder of beauty occurring in the same world? If you’ve ever had the privilege of visiting the Louvre in Paris, you probably braved the crowds to get a glimpse of the statue of Venus de Milo.

Millions have been captivated by the woman’s physical beauty displayed in stunningly smooth marble. They’ve also been disturbed by seeing her arms broken off. Somehow the damage done to her arms doesn’t destroy the aesthetic pleasure of viewing the sculpture as a whole. But it does cause a conflicted experience—such beauty, marred by such violence.

I doubt if anyone has ever stood in front of that masterpiece and asked, “Why did the sculptor break off the arms?” More likely, everyone concludes the beautiful parts are the work of a master artist and the broken parts are the results of someone or something else—either a destructive criminal or a natural catastrophe.

We need a unified perspective on created beauty and marred ugliness that can make sense of both. The Christian faith provides that. It points to a good God who made a beautiful world with pleasures for people to enjoy. But it also recognizes damage caused by sinful people. Ultimately, it points to a process of restoration that has already begun and will continue forever.

A Florida man was bitten on the leg by an unexpected visitor: An alligator waiting right outside his door. Daytona Beach resident Scot Hollingsworth was watching TV when he heard a bump at the door. He said, “I jumped up and headed over and opened the door, stepped out while trying to reach the lights and barely got out the door and got my leg clamped on and (it) started shaking really violently. I suspect I surprised the alligator as much as he surprised me.”

He was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries from the nine-foot gator.

The Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said that people should keep a safe distance from alligators at all times. You should also keep pets on a leash, swim only in designated areas during daylight hours, and never feed an alligator.

The commission also explains on their website that Floridians can anticipate seeing more alligators than usual as the weather warms up. The reptiles are also most active between dusk and dawn.

Florida is home to a total of around 1.3 million alligators, according to the commission’s website. The agency routinely euthanizes so-called “nuisance” gators, which are four feet long or larger and pose a threat to people or wildlife. The commission says relocated alligators will usually try to return to the site where they were captured and continue to create problems, so they must be euthanized or rehomed to zoos or wildlife rescues.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Satan also lurks in the shadows and is ready to viciously attack any unsuspecting Christian. Our defense is similar, be on guard, and be prepared to resist him by putting on the full armor of God (Eph. 6:10-18).

Gun violence is an ongoing problem in the city of Chicago. Now, a new study finds 56% of the city’s Black and Hispanic population, and 25% of Whites, witness a shooting by the age of 40. Researchers say residents were, on average, 14 years-old when they saw their first shooting. The findings add to growing concerns that people witnessing constant shootings may have chronic stress and other health issues related to violence.

Researchers say, “Our findings are frankly startling and disturbing. A substantial portion of Chicago’s population could be living with trauma as a result of witnessing shootings and homicides, often at a very young age. ... Since 2016 we have seen another surge in gun violence. Rates of fatal shootings in Chicago are now higher than they ever were in the nineties.”

Over seven percent of Black and Hispanic Chicagoans were shot before turning 40, compared to three percent of White people. On average, these residents were struck by gunfire by age 17.

While Chicago was the example for this study, it is not the only place in America experiencing the effects of increasing gun violence. The team believes these public health consequences apply to cities experiencing upticks in shootings across the U.S.

Pastor Corey Brooks spent much of the winter (of 2022) on a roof top in south Chicago sleeping in a tent. He hoped to raise awareness and resources for the South Side neighborhoods, ravaged by poverty and violence.

On the 120th day of the vigil, Brooks was joined by two other pastors Karl Clauson and Mark Jobe (the president of Moody Bible Institute). He began his conversation by asking why Jesus is the key to filling the void in peoples’ lives and transforming them for the better. In response, Jobe told this story:

I’ll take you back a few years. I'm not going to mention what mayor it was, but it was one of the mayors of the city of Chicago who came to our church. There had just been a couple of execution-style murders in the city of Chicago, and I could tell this mayor was just down. He looked at a group of maybe 40 pastors that had gathered together and he said this: “Our city is in a mess. There's violence. We don't have the answers to this. We can try to police it. We can try to educate it. We can try to create business opportunities, but we have a soul problem in this city.” And he said, “Gentlemen and ladies, what you have to offer is really the answer.” Here is the mayor of Chicago admitting our structures can't change this. This is a spiritual and soul problem. I believe that.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our cities have a problem. It can't be policed, educated, or employed away. It is a soul problem with a sole answer. The answer is the gospel.

New York City has the largest Ukrainian population in the United States, a community of about 150,000. Thousands had come to the United States as Christian refugees, most of them Baptist or Pentecostal, under a special asylum for those fleeing Soviet religious persecution.

As President Vladimir Putin put his nuclear forces on high alert, some took to the streets to join the protests against Putin’s aggression. But mostly, these followers of Jesus gathered in the churches to pray, weep, lament, and sing to God. They called their praise songs “weapons of war.”

As the nuclear threat escalated tensions, people in the service were in disbelief about how quickly the situation had spiraled. One church leader told Christianity Today, “Our minds fail to understand: How is this possible in this day and age? God allowed this to happen, and we do not know why. But we know God is sovereign, and he is on his throne. There are people who think if they kill someone it will accomplish a goal.”

A worship leader said, “Our hope is in the Lord, the one who holds things together. No matter how things fall apart, the Lord created this world, and he holds things in his hands.” He played music and led worship in tears. But he also told his church family, “Even if a nuclear attack happens, the hope we have is we go home. And we will be together with Jesus, the one we know will help us.”

When Duke Energy officials got to the bottom of the power outage, nature was to blame. It wasn’t wind or rain, or thunder or earthquakes … or even, as is sometimes the case, human nature. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden, it started with a snake.

A snake got into the electrical equipment in a local substation, which ended up causing an electrical fire that created the outage. By 10am that morning, more than 1,400 people had lost power.

Duke Energy Spokesperson Jeff Brooks said,

This is one of the reasons we are making electric grid improvements in the region. We often think of storms and trees which are the leading cause of outages, but other items like cars hitting utility poles and snakes and squirrels getting into equipment also cause a number of outages for electric utilities. That’s why it’s so important we make these improvements to strengthen our electric grid and protect it from a variety of disruptions.

Power in the region was restored later that day.

Possible Preaching Angle:

All it takes is one agent of sin and destruction to bring dishonor and harm to many in the community. The same is true in the spiritual community. The “ancient serpent” brings havoc and harm to the entire world.

After another spate of mass shootings in the US during mid-April, researchers are sounding the alarms about the potential for even more, due to what they refer to as a “contagion effect.”

Jillian Peterson is associate professor of criminology at Hamline University. She says that pandemic-related trauma and gun violence in particular have correlated to a recent increase in firearm sales, and that concerns her. She said:

We do know that those types of mass shootings are contagious, that they tend to spread through things like the media and social media. The people who are maybe vulnerable see themselves in other perpetrators who do this. (People) who are in crisis, who have access to weapons, they see one make national headlines, and there is this copycat effect.

Peterson is especially concerned about the effect of media coverage on potential copycat shooters. She said, “When you make these individuals famous, that's what other people are looking for. They're looking for that notoriety. They want to be a household name, just like the perpetrator that came before them.”

Forensic psychologist Joel Dvorkin says that preventing mass shootings should be linked with suicide prevention, especially because so many gun deaths nationwide include suicide. He said:

Whenever somebody decides to kill a bunch of people, they're deciding to end their life as they know it. Nobody goes back to their job. Nobody goes back to their family. Either they kill themselves, or they make sure that the police kill them, or they go away for the rest of their life to either prison or a hospital.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Life is too precious for us not to not take every step of prevention possible to preserve it, especially during seasons of chronic hopelessness.

For the nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor, kindness is a discipline that is its own reward. But occasionally, their acts of kindness yield more tangible fruit.

The sisters operate a hospice called St. Martin’s Home, and were at a big box retailer purchasing Christmas gifts for the elderly residents and staff. While they wheeled their cart through the parking lot, they were approached by a stranger with an offer to help load the gifts into the trunk of their car.

“We just thought it was a good Samaritan and he was there out the willingness of his heart and the holiday spirit," said sister Caroline Joseph. Sister Bernadette made sure to thank him for his efforts.

“I said, 'Gee, you did that so quickly! I can't tell you how grateful we are that you helped us.' And I shook his hand and I said, 'God bless you, and I surely will pray for you.'"

The stranger moved fast for a reason; upon their return, the nuns opened the trunk and found half of their gifts missing. But before they could file a police report, a store rep called to report that their gifts were spotted in a cart on the far side of the parking lot. The sisters’ theory is that the thief was so moved by their words of gratitude that he couldn’t finish the job.

Potential Preaching Angles:

Kindness sincerely expressed can stir goodness in even those who intend evil. Repentance is not just regret, but changing our outward actions to match our inward change of heart.

A physician told me he estimated that about 80 percent of the people who come to him come to him not because some strange bacteria has invaded their body, but they come to him for simple lifestyle reasons. I'm not going to stand up here and argue some kind of moral cause and effect in life: you do this, and you get that. But still, according to this doctor, there does seem to be a kind of wages to be paid for our sin.

We may not pay [Satan] reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents. A person who has, for untold centuries, maintained the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths of the human race, and political head of the whole of it, must be granted the possession of executive abilities of the loftiest order.

D. L. Moody, the great American evangelist, once said, "If a man is stealing nuts and bolts from a railway track, and, in order to change him, you send him to college, at the end of his education, he will steal the whole railway track."

Let us cease arguing about the existence of demons and concern ourselves with what the demons are actually doing.

At times one hesitates to reprove or admonish evil-doers, either because one seeks a more favorable moment or fears his rebuke might make them worse, and further, discourage weak brethren from seeking to lead a good and holy life, or turn them aside from the faith. In such circumstances forbearance is not prompted by selfish considerations but by well advised charity.

What is reprehensible, however, is that while leading good lives themselves and abhorring those of wicked men, some, fearing to offend, shut their eyes to evil deeds instead of condemning them and pointing out their malice. To be sure, the motive behind their malice is that they may suffer no hurt in the possession of those temporal goods which virtuous and blameless men may lawfully enjoy; still there is more self-seeking here than becomes men who are mere sojourners in this world and who profess the hope of a home in heaven.