The Existence of Evil

There is a famous line from The Usual Suspects: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."  That seems truer than ever today.  Lots of people, even professing Christians, seem completely blind to the presence of evil in the world, or really to anything spiritual.  American are beginning to become more cognizant of the spiritual world, but primarily through the manifestations of the darker side of spirituality.  There are lots of movies about witches and demons and summoning evil spirits.  How many movies are coming out that involve summoning good spirits, or the Holy Spirit?  There actually maybe a couple this year, based on what is scheduled.  I am curious to see what angle is taken by Noah, Exodus, and a few others in the works.

I saw a trailer for the movie the other day, in which one of the characters, who had been clearly established as a witch, tells another character "we're not all bad."  If we are to define witches as those who call on or worship the spiritual powers of darkness, then yes: they are all bad.  This is not to say that they can't be redeemed, but that they should be resisted, and not just accepted.  Most people don’t believe that even exists, and most of those that do condemn anyone involved as implicitly irredeemable without actually saying that.

There is a balance between human's "sinful nature" and God's redemption.  Mankind was created "good," but still sinned.  Sin is made possible by a combination of free will and the capacity to be deceived.  I believe it is possible for Jesus to redeem a Christian's sinful nature in this life.   But that will not necessarily put a complete stop to all of theirs sins, just make that not their default nature.  But it seems obvious that people by default have a sinful or selfish nature, which exerts a strong influence over their actions and decisions.  And modern culture encourages embracing this selfish nature in many ways.

So I am not trying to highlight mankind's sinful nature so much as the existence of evil forces in the spiritual world, which affect the physical world.  People need to recognize the existence of evil in order to resist it, and in order to identify its influence on other people around them.