evil | Elaine Olsen

hell-bent…

May 15, 2012

Hell-bent. Are you? Am I?

I know. A heavy question, but since I used this phrase in my last post, I thought it deserved some further exploration. Merriam Webster defines hell-bent as “stubbornly and often recklessly determined.” The earliest mention of the phrase in our English vernacular dates back to a line in the poem The History of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion in Virginia by Benjamin Coleman (1673-1747):

“Ab-origines in Arms…did then resort,

In Haste to Susquehanna Fort,

Hell bent on Thoughts of Massacree.”

Apparently, there was a price on Colonel Bacon’s head, some “ab-origines” stubbornly determined in their pursuit of justice cloaked in massacre. I wonder if we’re prone to the same sort of behavior. A stubbornness, recklessness that resides within our hearts and that pushes us toward destruction—a massacre of the body, and ultimately the spirit, that lands us smack dab in the middle of hell.

Hell-bent. A phrase that, in my opinion, dates much further back than Coleman’s imagination. A truth that dates back to the beginning.

“Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. … And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’… When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” –Genesis 2:8-9, 16-17, 3:6

Hell-bent. Determined sin, stubbornly and recklessly chosen from the very beginning. Adam and Eve, massacring their flesh, bending their will in the direction of hell.

We cannot escape our genetic and our spiritual DNA. Without the transformational, sacred work of the cross, we remain hell-bent. With the cross, we overcome our stooped stature to bend our knees in another direction. With Jesus, we bend toward heaven—heaven-bent. With Jesus, our knees fall to glory rather than destruction.

So what’s the gain of a life that is heaven-bent? Well, to understand this we must visit its contrast. It’s much easier to digest the wonder and witness of heaven, but to study the wilderness and witness of hell? Few will go there; it’s just too barren a place for those of us who are focused on the goodness of God. But that’s just it… therein lies the core definition of hell. To live in God’s goodness, is to live with the understanding of its contrast.

“He [God] will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power….” –2 Thessalonians 1:8-9

Hell is the absence of God and his goodness… completely. Yes, we talk about “hell on earth”—seasons of life seemingly void of God’s presence and his goodness, but truthfully, “hell on earth” is nothing compared to hell for all eternity. Whether you’re a Christian or not, if you’re upright and moving today, then you’re experiencing the goodness of God. Life belongs to the Creator. The fact that you’re actively participating in this privilege is a testimony to God’s love for you.

Have you enjoyed a cup of coffee today? A walk? Creation—flowers, scents, and sunshine? Have you been blessed by the love of a friend, spouse, child? Been hugged lately? Had a good conversation? A good nap? A good thought? Are you educated? Employed? Free to choose your habits, consumptions, neglects? Have you known the warmth of a blanket, a bath, an intimacy with your husband, your wife? A good book? A good movie? A favorite television show? How about a delicious plate of food… even a stick of gum? Music, money, and merriment of a wide variety?

Anything good in your life today? Then thank God. Whether or not you’re willing to recognize him as the source of all goodness doesn’t mean that all goodness doesn’t begin and end with him. All goodness begins and ends with God… every blessed thing that we experience in our lives.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” –James 1:17

To be hell-bent is to determine in our hearts that we are willing to live without it all in the end. Without God. Without goodness. Complete and utter emptiness except for the very deep realization of just how far that emptiness extends. A massacre of the soul that will not recover… ever.

I don’t tell you this to shame you; heaven knows there was a time in my life when I was hell-bent, bowing low and bowing often in the direction of sin and eternal destruction. I don’t tell you this to judge you; judgment belongs to the Father. No, I write you these words to warn you, just in case there are some of you who’ve never accepted the fact that there is a life beyond this one. Heaven is for real, but so is hell. There isn’t anything you’ve experienced on earth that comes close to matching the actuality of what awaits you if you continue to bend your heart in opposition to God’s truth.

I cannot imagine a life apart from God. I’m glad I don’t have to, but there are those who claim not to see him; not to feel him; not to know him. I would tell those people (maybe even you) to look at the multiple goodnesses in your life. In them, you will find God… a fleeting glance of what you risk losing should you continue in your hell-bent determination to do life your own way. You may think that you’re living apart from God, that there is no God, and that you are free to live without consequence. But you would be wrong.

No one lives apart from God; no one lives without consequence. This is our Father’s world, and God will have the final word on our eternal residency. He, alone, holds the key to forever.

Hell-bent; heaven-bent. In which direction are your knees bending this day? Choose wisely. Choose soberly. Choose today. An earthly tomorrow is not promised to us, but an eternal one is. As for me and my heart, I choose a forever with God and all of his goodness. I pray you choose the same. As always…

Peace for the journey,
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PS: For any of you who are struggling with your hell-bent tendencies and would like prayer or to discuss things further, please feel free to contact me by clicking on this link. Shalom.

the "exactly-why-we-need-Easter" post…

April 1, 2010

Would that I could escape the sin of this world.

I would, but I can’t. It surrounds me, invites me, terrorizes me, and reminds me of everything that is wrong about this world. Read about it in the headlines, see it on the television, hear it in the Wal-Mart, wherever we live and move and have our being, sin is the order of the day. A blatant and firm reminder of exactly why Jesus and his cross are needed, not just 2000 years ago, but today.

Today.

My heart is a tangled-up, jumbled-up mess this morning. I went to bed a mess; woke up a mess all because of a single headline that has, yet again, gripped my emotions with all the fury and fuss of hell’s intention. A seven-year-old girl has fallen prey to the sadistic schemes of the enemy, brought about through the hands of her step-sister and several young men intent on satisfying their sinful lusts via her innocence. I’ll spare you the details. They’re enough to turn your stomach, and if you’re stomach remains upright and unturned by them, then your heart has grown cold, calloused and unmoved by the sin-sick condition of this world.

This isn’t my happy Easter post; friends. Would that it could be. This is my exactly-why-we-need-Easter post. It would be nice if Easter dresses and egg hunts were the focal point of my heart this day, but they aren’t. Instead, I’m thinking about the unsanitized version of Easter—the one that’s ugly, repugnant to the senses, and that steps all over our need to keep Easter lovely and between the lines of our religious décor. As Christians, we are sometimes tempted to skip over the fuss and fury of Friday’s hell in order to arrive at Sunday’s conclusion.

I understand. I’m a Sunday-conclusion kind of gal. It’s how I like to live my faith, in victory and full of the conquering truth of the resurrection. But to arrive there without taking ample pause to reflect on what our Jesus went through in order to allow us sweet victory, is to keep sin’s ugliness separated from grace’s beauty. And that simply cannot be done. They come as a package deal, sin and grace, grace and sin. Without one, there is no need for the other. Life could simply live as it lives with no consequences, no rules, no guidelines except the one that says, “If it feels good, do it and let the chips fall where they may.” Apparently what felt good for at least seven men this past Sunday was a seven-year-old girl, and the chips? Well, they’ve fallen on tender soil—the broken soil of a young life—the consequences of which will be staggering in the end.

We don’t live in a world free from sin and the need for grace therein. As Christians, we sometimes forget our need for grace; the world has certainly forgotten its need for grace, but God has never been neglectful with his remembrance. He knows what we need, even as he knew it 2000 years ago, even as he planned for it pre-Eden on the front side of Genesis.

It’s hard for me to think about God and the “all-knowing” part of his nature—if he saw this past Sunday coming, even from the very beginning, then why did he allow it? Why make her pay for the sins of others? Why should she (the least of the least) harbor the fullness of carnality when she didn’t ask for it? Someone should have loved her better, watched over her better, made sure her “better” was of paramount importance. But “better” she didn’t receive, and now she is left to mourn what’s been lost.

I don’t have perfect answers for my questions, but I serve a perfect God, and by faith, I’m choosing to believe in those answers. I may not receive them on this side of eternity, but if I didn’t believe they’d one day be available to me, then I’d given up on faith a long time ago. Why? Because my almost forty-four years have afforded me plenty of occasions for questions and for the sacred mystery attached to their answers. There are simply some wrestlings of the heart that exceed my understanding at this point. Perhaps with spiritual maturity, I’ll grow in my understanding, but for now, all I can do is concede truth to Jesus and to look toward Sunday.

For Sunday is coming.

Soon.

Resurrection is upon us, closer now than it has ever been.

A Sunday conclusion that reads sinless, sanitized, saved by grace and grace alone.

Grace for all, even them—those seven, Lord—the exact reason why you could not skip over the hell of Friday to get to the hallelujah of Sunday. Oh the depths of where you’ve been for me, for them, for her, for the world. I cannot explain that kind of love and grace. I can only receive it, and in turn, Lord, out of that receiving… give it.

Even to them.

This is the conquering truth of Sunday’s conclusion.

Forgiveness.

Not as the world gives, Father, but as you give.

Even so, make my heart a conduit of yours.

So be it.

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the elephant in the room…

January 11, 2010

“Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD until he comes and showers righteousness on you.” (Hosea 10:12).

He spoke some words to me this morning, somewhere between my dreaming and my waking.

Not God.

An elephant.

Yes, that’s what I wrote. An elephant. Yesterday’s headline news about a woman and her child being killed by a mother elephant intent on protecting her African turf somehow made its way into my dreaming. Instead of this woman being chased by an angry elephant, I was the object of his fury. Funny how that happens. Reality merging with the subconscious, all playing itself out upon the stage of our slumbering. All making sense in the moment, calling on emotion to interject its full witness throughout.

The emotions in that moment for me?

Panic. Fear. Retreat.

Thank heavens for the makeshift rest area that existed feet away from my frightful encounter. It sheltered me in one of its two, crudely fashioned stalls, concealing my presence from the formidable beast which seemed, for the moment, a bit confused as to my whereabouts. I practiced being hidden until she rudely entered in. Apparently bamboo doors aren’t equal to the strength of an angry, momma elephant.

I kept quiet, eyeing her mammoth frame through the narrow slit in the stall door. Rather than knocking the entire structure to the ground, she turned her head and drew near to my fright. Her eye was big. Her eye was penetrating. Her eye was eyeing me, dressing me down and reading me through that narrow slit—a space now ample enough for her intervention and my swift destruction.

She didn’t go there; instead she spoke there.

“Run, run, back to the place where you came from. Then this country can go back to being what it has always been, drab and undisturbed.”

An elephant’s exact words to my slumbering soul. I’m not kidding, and for what it’s worth, I wrote them down. In fact, I carried them to church. Been thinking about them all day long.

~About drab and undisturbed ground.

~About the brave few who are willing to walk its breadth in faith believing that their feet were meant to go there.

~About breaking up the unplowed ground of a dreary and untouched soil.

~About an angry elephant who’d rather leave things as they are; keep the “baby” protected and unaffected by outside influence.

~About lives that live out their days unaltered because no one dared to step out for their sakes… speak up for kingdom’s sake.

~About those who let the threats of the enemy keep them immobilized in fear and from moving into the spacious place deeded to them by a gracious and very good God.

~About a country that remains as it is because no one dreamed beyond its borders.

Stuff like that. All marinating inside my head and ruminating within my heart for an entire day. And tonight I’m wondering where that line is between dreaming and waking. Between what’s imagined and what’s real. Between voices that author from heaven and threats that author from hell. Located somewhere in an elephant’s words to me, I find them both… hell’s threat and heaven’s hope.

“Run, run, back to the place where you came from. Then this country can go back to being what it has always been, drab and undisturbed.”

Hear the threat. Hear the hope.

The hope precedes the threat. Without hope—without the anticipation of what might be discovered because of what will be disturbed—then there would be no angry elephant in the room. And lest we haven’t noticed in recent days, there’s an angry elephant in the room, friends. Rather than sidestep him, avoid him and pretend that he doesn’t exist, don’t you think it’s time we deal with him? His threats? His false impressions regarding what’s his and what’s not?

Makeshift stalls are poor excuses for spiritual progress. They are exactly as they were created to be… a temporary dwelling to stall your forward progress. If fear is what has led you there, what is keeping you there, then an elephant’s anger has raged successfully. You’re right where she… where he wants you to be. As he wants you to live.

Unproductive. Ineffective. Incapable of “disturbing” the ground beneath your feet, unplowed or otherwise.

It is time to disturb the ground beneath your feet, sisters and brothers in Christ. It is time to face the elephant in the room. Time to look the angry momma squarely in the eye and echo back to her some familiar words…

Run, run, back to the place where you came from. Then this country can go back to being what it has always been.

God’s.

I don’t know what that means to you today. It’s meant a great deal to me. I have a feeling it just might be the right encouragement for someone who’s stuck in a makeshift stall right now, stuck in fear and more than willing to concede some sacred ground to an angry elephant rather than claim that soil as kingdom inheritance. If so, then receive my dream as yours, and carry the truth of its witness into your week. You and I were empowered with God’s Spirit to deal with our elephants. Let us not walk God’s earth in fear. Let us, instead, disturb it for his sake and for his heaven’s gain.

In the name of the Father who created us, the Son who paid the highest price to redeem us, and the Holy Spirit who tabernacles within us, Amen. So be it.

peace for the journey,

innocence lost…

November 2, 2009

Today I’m writing with my tears.

It’s not always good to write from a place of strong emotion, but for some reason, I’m compelled to say something. To offer a few words on behalf of a young life that has passed from this world with little more than an on-line epitaph that reads…

“Body of four-year-old missing boy found in a dryer”

In a dryer, friends.

A young life disposed of and temporarily hidden in a place designed for wet laundry, not for the fragile frame of his innocent understanding.

It shocks me, repulses me, angers me, and reminds me that I am living in the middle of a world’s evil. It’s extreme and callous, prevalent and intentional. This is just one story amongst thousands with enough “sensational” value to land it on the front page of an Internet search engine, alongside rumors of “Scientology fraud” and a “rare murder in Mayberry.”

More evil. More senseless acts of violence. More sin. More depravity. Have mercy. Is that all there is these days?

This seems to be the case, at least to a public without the eyes to vision beyond temporal atrocity. Everywhere we turn, everything we read, every news’ broadcast that anchors in our homes and via our computers is littered with the stories of evil and the depravity of humankind. Why?

Because evil sells. Evil roots at our deepest fears, and while our “senses” warn us to run away from the invading headlines, we sometimes cannot help but be drawn to the story. If we’re not careful, we enter into the story and, before long, our minds and our hearts are filled with thoughts that run contrary to what God desires.

True, we cannot turn a blind-eye to the problem of sin in our world. Evil speaks to the very reason of its contrast … God’s good. Evil sets the stage for a final showdown between heaven’s grace and hell’s determined intention for destruction. And while, as Christians, we know how that’s all going to flesh itself out one day, today I cannot help but wonder when that might be.

I’m ready for God’s final showdown. For an end to the enemy’s temporary “reign” upon this earth. I don’t want to read any more headlines regarding evil being perpetrated against God’s children, especially those who are unable to retaliate and who blindly trust their “elders” because God has created their young hearts for trust.

I don’t want child sex offenders to receive a “light sentence” because of their perceived “rights” in the matter. They gave up those rights when they made the decision to give into their depravity rather than seek help for their problems. Their excuses regarding their own depraved childhoods hold little water with me.

I’m not unsympathetic to their need to find resolution to their sin; I am, however, unsympathetic to them finding that resolution in a half-way house or group therapy session that sits within reach of a neighborhood school or playground. God’s grace can and does mediate its way behind prison doors—a controlled environment that sometimes better serves the cause of evil’s transformation (just ask my friend Mike, who spends a lot of time behind those closed doors dispensing God’s grace to the needy). Some soils are better left untouched by evil—protected and “out of reach” for the enemy’s intention.

I don’t want any more babies to be aborted in the name of a “mother’s rights” to her body. Our bodies are not our own. We were bought with a price; time to get on our knees and find our thanks for the fact that we’ve been given this moment in time, these few breaths to live our purpose on this earth, because our mothers better understood the value of their seeded womb. There is coming a day when every murdered child will have his/her day in court. The King will hear their cries, and if grace hasn’t been pled over the perpetrator’s heart, then God will exact a sentence in keeping with the crime.

I don’t want any more children to know the physical abuse and torture from adults who claim their “mental instability” as the culprit rather than calling abuse by the name is deserves—evil… sin. Those who decide that having “control” over their children allows them unlimited authority in the matter are those who have never sat under the authority of Jesus Christ. Children were not created for beatings, for the hammering out of our own “issues” upon and within their feeble flesh. Children were given to us as a blessing from God to be a blessing unto him.

No life arrives upon this soil without God’s planning; God’s notice; God’s love. None. Kids are not our mistakes. They are our treasures and are meant to experience their own walk of grace and discovery upon God’s earth. To think otherwise, is to cast our lots into the cradle of evil that births these heinous atrocities like water from a faucet.

Like a young girl being gang raped outside a high school dance while others stood by and did nothing.

Like a child being chained as a prisoner for years in her basement while giving birth to several children, fathered by her captor.

Like a young boy dying after being tied to a tree for days as a discipline strategy to get him to comply with parental rules and regulations.

Like an unborn baby being extracted from his mother’s womb prematurely to meet out a woman’s fantasy about being a “mother.”

Granted, these are extreme examples, but when children are diminished in the eyes of those who are charged with their keeping—with their “rearing” and their shaping—then intention plants a seed toward evil. And seeds of evil, when watered with years of neglect and a refusal to grow in a healthier understanding, eventually grow into a field of sin that harvests as tomorrow’s sensational headlines.

We must stop this, friends. All children of this world deserve better. They deserve our time and attention, our looking at them as our Father looks at them. Some of us are in the middle of our parenting years. Some of us on the backside of them. Some of us have never known the fruit of our own wombs. It makes no difference our “parenting” station in life. God’s children are meant for all of us. And I bet this day, there is a child within your circle of influence who could use your witness.

You prayers, your presence, your time, your gifts, and your wisdom that, in the end, will harvest toward kingdom gain rather than toward hell’s determined intention.

The only way that I know to combat this kind of evil in this present age is to invest my life in its contrast—in the lives of the children I’ve been given and in the lives of others who sit under my influence. Some of them are children. Some at other various stages in life. Regardless of ages, all of us are in need of a better response to the problem of evil in our world.

May the grace of the cross be the “rooting” that forces our contemplation in the matter and that leads us forward to make a change in our world. Any other “rooting” proffers little in the cause of God’s children.

And God’s children, well, the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

Thanks for listening to my tears and my words today. How grateful I am for a public canvas that allows them both a safe place to land. As always…

peace for the journey,

~elaine

A Sacred Replacement

June 19, 2008

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” (Romans 12:9).

What do you do with evil?

What do you do with a story that breathes so heinous that it rocks you to core and forces you to utter words of vengeful wrath and retribution?

What do you do with a God who allows a thirteen year-old boy to die at the hands of his parents because they deemed him punishable—worthy of being tied to a tree for nearly two days in sweltering temperatures until he breathed his last? Until his wounds could no longer bleed. Until his cries for help could no longer be voiced. Until his weary soul finally succumbed to a death that, more than likely, was a welcome relief for this one who had suffered so long at the hands of those who were supposed to cradle and shape him for adulthood.

What do you do with this kind of evil?

I tell you what I did. I cried my soul dry. I got right down on my bedroom floor and pounded my fists, all the while asking my God some hard questions. I asked him why. I asked him about the possible good in the matter. I asked him for vengeance—for a tree tying to be the consequence for two adults who should have loved better. For retribution to be swift and to be hard. For a full measure of remorseful realization to become their portion. For their sleepless nights and for their tortured remembrances.

I am mad, and I don’t know what to do with these feelings. I am frustrated by them because there is little I can do to change the situation. No amount of my wishing and imagining can paint the scene as pretty. This simply is the ugly side of living, and it seems huge and uncontrollable and too big for my management. I have come to my brick wall in the matter, when turning to the right or the left yields a similar outcome—overwhelming sadness.

Neat and tidy living. That is what I’m after. Peace and love and joy and promise. A people created in God’s image through whom God’s image is easily detected. A people who get it right and who walk in the light and truth of Jesus Christ. Not a people who are hard to love and who are seemingly devoid of anything sacred.

When evil roams and rears its ugly swath of color, my dissonance finds its voice. I don’t like these challenges to my faith…to the truth that embodies a good God, despite the evil that persists. Still and yet, evil does persist, and I am forced to grapple with its insistence. God is OK with my questions and my frustrations, but if I am to grow in my perfection toward him, then I must come to some conclusions in the matter. I must move closer in my understanding of how to deal with evil’s prevalent presence.

And just last night, after my pounding and weeping and anger found their rest, I opened up God’s Word to the bookmarked section that would serve as my daily reading. Romans, chapter twelve.

God’s Word is an accomplishing Word. I choose to live the truth of Isaiah 55:10-11. No matter my frame of mind…no matter the circumstances that surround my current, I have learned to go to Scripture in my everyday. I may not always understand what I read or how it applies to my life, but I believe in the power of its effectual work. Last night stood as a relevant witness to this truth, especially as it pertained to my anger and to this world’s proclivity toward evil. In particular, the last verse of Romans 12.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

What am I to do with evil?

I am to overcome it with its contrast—with God’s good.

This is what my Father is calling me to do with the anger that persists in my heart and with the evil that insists its voice within this world.

To overcome evil’s ill effects…to conquer and to carry off the victory in behalf of my King…I must sow goodness into the soil that boasts my current. Period. That’s it. This is what I can do to soothe the ache of the story that has rocked me to the core. And while I wasn’t able to untie the hands of an innocent child prior to his death, I can, in part, untie the hands of evil by putting my hands to the task of planting God’s good seed while I am yet alive.

Of doing some good things today and tomorrow that will supplant the enemy’s intention for evil with God’s truthful intention for all things good.

Thus, I planted a little good this day.

I prayed some prayers on behalf of innocent children everywhere and asked God for his timely return to earth so that others would be spared the anguish of a tree-tying.

I baked some brownies for a summer feeding program that our church sponsors on Wednesday evenings.

I wrote some notes of thanks that needed writing.

I bought a book that needed sending.

I played a game that needed playing.

And in the midst of all my sowing, a friend came by to tender a little goodness in my direction.

Thanks, Beverly, for a Farmer’s Market treasure!!!

Yes, I think that God is onto something, for my day is coming to an end and somewhere within the course of my planting, my anger has subsided and the enemy’s got a portion of his due. Do my simple acts of goodness replace the heinous sins committed against the innocent? Absolutely not. But they do soothe the ache of my soul and lead me closer to a grasping of a sincere and sacred love for humanity.

I hate evil. Therefore, I will cling to God’s good. And for some reason that I cannot begin to understand, my Father allows me the privilege of diffusing evil’s grip through the sowing of his sacred seed via this flesh. I want to do my part, and so I pray…

Use my heart and my hands to plant your good, Father. Make me mindful of all the ways to sow accordingly. Let me not grow weary in the doing, for in time, you’ve promised a harvest of untold measure. Protect us from evil, Lord. Protect the innocent from the schemes of the enemy. And when the hurt grows too painful to bear, remind me that evil is not my end. You are my end, Father, and you hold the final word in the matter. And thus, my hearts says, come quickly, Lord Jesus, and speak you final peace. Amen.

In regards to buying that book that needed sending, I decided to sow some good on your behalf. I numbered the comments from my “Raising Faith” six-part series, and drew a number out. #49 is the winner of my newest read, The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. Connie over at Littlerad is #49. Congratulations Connie! I can’t tell you how much I cherish this man’s poetic embrace of his terminal illness. Please send me your snail mail via my e-mail on the side bar, and I’ll get you your book ASAP!

Also, I am headed to She Speaks/She Writes this weekend in Charlotte, so I will be absent for a few days. My family is on vacation next week, and I will try and post from the road. Be blessed in all your doings this weekend. Sow some goodness for God’s sake and for evil’s defeat. Shalom!

Category Archives: evil