Evicted!

A criminal pornographer hacked and hijacked my Guatemala CHRISTIAN school website for the Guatemalan ministry. He posted pictures of “girls next door waiting for you” and links to other sites where you can indulge all kinds of sin with pay-per-view (they do this to not pay their own hosting). The nightmare came at the worst possible time, right when moms are looking at new schools in Guatemala.

And evicting him was not easy. We deleted files, changed passwords and regenerated the original content. He came back. Thinking we were battling and invisible Trojan, we nuked the site and regenerated it.

He came back.

It was maddening. Thank God my friend (let’s just call him Yoda) discovered the posting number settings, which no one ever looks at or changes, were altered allowing the public to post on the site. Ugh! That was a sinister trick.

After two months, I can confirm we are back to promoting God after a painful period of promoting Satan. Yes, I missed the best window of opportunity. But I have my clean bill-of-health from Google, and we’re back in business!

Please pray for new students in my old school in Guatemala. What a relief to have evicted the evil.

Ted Dekker, best selling author who grew up among cannibals

Ted Dekker

The sin principle evidenced in babies

Sin is selfishness. Christianity is selflessness.

I’m not saying babies sin. They are innocent of the understanding of right and wrong. But the Bible is correct in saying that we are born with sin. This gif is so cute we can fail to miss the important lesson it demonstrates.

As wickedness increases, love decreases

We are warned. As sin goes exponential in the end times, it will wear away on the once-sincere love of many believers. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold — Matt. 24:12 NIV.

It would difficult to argue against the explosion of sin we have seen since the 1960s: drugs, free sex, redefining sin, massacres, crime waves in Latin America, terrorists worldwide. Standards are continually becoming looser. What was once the vilest subgenre (snuff movies) is now standard fare on cable TV (True Blood). What’s most disturbing is that nothing is disturbing any longer.

And Christian standards have slid. The line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior has been pushed back. I’m not point fingers though. I myself am susceptible. If anything, I am warning myself (and others) about the dangers of living in Sodom. Let’s not let our heart grow cold.

*I don’t own the rights to this image, and I’m not making any money on it. If you own it, feel congratulated. It is genius. I found it on a design site.

Love does not delight in evil

A sinister side of the human heart secretly rejoices when bad happens to another — and worst case is when it happens to your spouse.

The is the opposite of envy, which angers over another’s blessing. It must rank up there with Hitler’s concentrated evil. The Bible says that married couples are one flesh, and you are mistaken to think that means only the physical union. It’s also emotional and spiritual.

So when good happens to your spouse, it happens to you. When bad happens, bad happens to you too. You are one flesh. Expel such rejoicing from your evil heart.

1 Cor. 13:6 says: Love does not delight in evil.

Here’s every element of the series:

• 1 Cor. 13:4
  • Love is patient
  • Love is kind
  • Love does not envy
  • Love does not boast
  • Love is not proud

  1 Cor. 13:5

  • Love is not rude
  • Love is not self-seeking
  • Love is not easily angered
  • Love keeps no record of wrongs

  1 Cor. 13:6

  • Love does not delight in evil
  • Love rejoices in the truth

  1 Cor. 13:7

  • Love always protects
  • Love always trusts
  • Love always hopes
  • Love always perseveres

  1 Cor. 13:8

  • Love never fails

The ancients were right: Pandora’s Box

The real question is: Where does evil come from? The modern question, “If there is a God, why is there suffering in the world?” is a ploy to trip up Christians. It’s meant to be unanswerable, a knockout punch, a word trap. It’s insincere because if the atheists were TRULY worried about suffering in the world, they would strive to mitigate it. If there are any atheists WORKING (not talking) to ease suffering, then I will join you at your side and work with you. If you then ask me where God is, I will tell you, He is in your heart, my friend the atheist who works to ease suffering in the world.

Pandora was given an irresistible temptation: Whatever you do, don’t open this box. Of course, curiosity got the best of her, as it does with us all. Out flew all the evils of the world: hate, greed, envy, murder, etc. When she realized whas was happening, Pandora struggled to close up the last demons in the box before they flew out, but alas, it was too late.

Last to struggle out was a misfit among rogues: Hope came out. So as the Greek mythology goes: With evil, comes suffering, but humans can look up with hope for better days. The story so resonates with humans.

Obviously, I adhere to the Creation account of Eve and the apple. But I see in the Pandora version a universal questioning. Ultimately, I believe that if you’re sincere, such questioning will lead you to merciful and loving arms of the Father.

MacBeth

Shakespeare’s MacBeth starts with good intentions. He defends the king from a traitor. When he’s promised the kingdom, he swears off procuring it himself. If it falls to him, he’ll take it.

But the good intentions soured. Dark ambition took over his heart. When the king visited his castle, MacBeth killed him and made it look like it had been the king’s own guards. As next in line to the throne, MacBeth got the crown.

All his bases were covered except his conscience. He hallucinates that his hands are covered with blood. Then he argues with the ghost of the king in front of his friends. His kingship was short. What’s ill-attained quickly will go up in smoke.

The Matrix falls short when explaining evil

Betrayal over steak dinner

Neo

Although The Matrix bellows the standard New Age mantra of sinlessness, it undermines this thesis with Cypher’s betrayal of his comrades.

The major conflict is humans fighting against the machines, who personify evil — a not-so-original sci-fi plot. Deprived of solar power in post-apocalyptic world, the machines turn to cultivating humans in farms to supply their energy needs. A vast human population is kept docile in a holographic, computer-generated world. Only a few enlightened humans fight the machines in this world.

The nearly indestructible Agent Smith who suppresses the human rebellion.

The balance of the fight will fall to Neo, the foretold savior. But Neo doesn’t believe in himself. Most of the movie then is dedicated to him overcoming his lack of belief and

Morpheus tells Neo that humans are raised on farms to become batteries

accepting his fate as “the one.” The only evil is ignorance, a New Age philosophy with roots in Buddhism and Gnosticism, which is now embraced by humanists.

But a subplot undercuts the ignorance-is-evil myth. On the one hand, Cypher betrays the enlightened friends because he is tired of fighting and only wishes to return to the

Trinity

software illusion world of blissful ignorance. But he also turns Judas because he loves Trinity, who is attracted to Neo. Thus, jealousy undoes this major thesis of the movie. The roots of evil lie in many desires.

I like The Matrix because it’s not mindless. But it also shows that the anti-God crowd cannot adequately grapple with evil. We Christians believe that evil lies in the human bosom. If a person follows the Spirit of God, he will conform more to God’s image and manifest compassion. But if a person unbridles his passions, he will fall into evil. Because evil lurks in all of us, we need a Savior, who forgives and transforms us daily. Achieving a higher consciousness, whether induced by occult or psychedelics, is not the answer.