Giving the Devil His/Her Due

Being someone who gets most of my insight and inspiration through television, one of my usual habits is to get into a particular series that is out on DVD and fly through the episodes with reckless abandon. The most recent series to get this treatment from me is the show “Carnivale,” which aired on HBO in the earlier part of this decade.
Set in the Great Depression, the show depicts two different people: one a farmer who loses his land and starts to travel with a carnival and the other being a Methodist minister who looks to expand his ministry on a massive scale. One twist to this whole drama is that the farmer (Ben) and the minister (Brother Justin) are the avatars for Good and Evil respectively and their eventual meeting will be the battle between Good and Evil carried out.
This TV show stuck out to me because it deals with the subject of evil, something that we don’t spend too much time dwelling on at Spirit of Peace Church. It is understandable, the subject receives considerable attention from many of the conservative denominations we came from and don’t care to go back to. When I was in college, I would attend a few meetings of a more conservative religious group and a subject of frequent discourse was the concept of “Spiritual Warfare,” the idea that Christians are in a constant battle with the forces of evil and we must remain ever vigilant against their attacks.
Although I do have trouble accepting the idea that we are constantly under attack by evil, I cannot deny that the presence of the Devil and demons is a part of our sacred story and their activities on Earth are usually associated with pain, sadness, and injustice. Still, the stories that discuss evil in the Bible such as Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert and Jesus casting out the Legion from the possessed man remain very black and white while we live in a world of Gray. For example, going back to “Carnivale,” Ben is certainly not without sin since he joined the traveling carnival after escaping from a Chain Gang he was sentenced to for murder. Likewise, although Brother Justin seemed preordained to be the avatar of evil, he really didn’t embrace his role until an act of violence committed by someone he trusted pushed him over the edge. In our society, an individual who commits a violent crime may use past, economic status, mental state, and other factors are often offered up as potential explanations (albeit not excuses) for committing a crime.
Therefore, I believe we are left with the question of what exactly to do about evil. While it is not something that should be ignored given its tendency to fester if it remains unchallenged, how do we reconcile that with not focusing so much on it that we forget the good news, which is Jesus’ message of salvation? As part of our service, Rev. Rita usually says the light has never been overcome by the dark. Evil is, unfortunately, an inescapable reality of life on Earth, but knowing that good is a greater force that it can never overcome gives us the confidence to know that evil’s hold over the world can and will be overcome.