Up to our knees in evil

Pastor Elmer Mushumanski

A few weeks ago it was reported that a major international child pornography ring had been discovered in Europe. Some 77 countries were implicated with some 2,300 sexual predators, including persons from Canada, participating in spreading pictures of child sexual exploitation around the world. That was bad enough in itself, but a report in an Ottawa newspaper highlighted what was even more frightening. In this article RCMP Supt. Earla-Kim McColl, officer in charge of the National Child Exploitation Co-ordination Centre, is quoted as saying, “We’re up to our knees in evil. I think it’s important for Canadians to understand that we get a file like this about every two weeks now.” Not just a rare occurrence but regularly coming up here and around the world! Adults preying on children to feed their own sexual appetites. Police officers rarely comment publicly on cases, yet this senior police officer is quoted as saying, “We are up to our knees in evil!” How did our society get so far removed from decency and higher moral and ethical standards and sink to this kind of depravity? The Bible, which is the textbook for Christianity, holds the clues that lead us to understand what is happening to our society. In the New Testament, the first chapter of the letter to the Romans, we are told what takes place to cause humans to slide from integrity to decadence. Starting at verse 18 and continuing to the end of the chapter, St. Paul, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, speaks about the three steps that describe the slide into darkness. In verse 18 he identifies “suppressing the truth” as the first factor that puts humanity on the slippery slope and he goes on to identify some of the consequences, including sexual ones. In verse 25 he identifies “exchanging the truth of God for a lie” and gives more details of the perversions that follow. Finally, in verse 28, he identifies the last step when he writes, “Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.” Not retaining, that is not knowing, not studying, not committing oneself to living within the boundaries of God’s design for living, unleashes evil that is senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. “We’re up to our knees in evil.” We need a Savior. The truth is that God did send His Son Jesus Christ to be our Savior. As it is written in John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” We have a choice. We can bemoan what is happening in society, we can complain about it and live in growing fear and anxiety or we can humble ourselves and get back to the truth, stop exchanging the truth for lies and commit and recommit ourselves to not only knowing, but being obedient to God who created us and gave us life. God’s word as preserved in the Bible is truth. We cannot say Christianity might be good for some people but not for ourselves. We cannot excuse and exclude ourselves from faithful participation in Christianity. We cannot hope and pray that the RCMP or others will be able to put an end to evil or protect us and our children from evil. Only God’s word can do that, God’s word taken into our hearts and minds where it has power to turn humans away from evil towards good. There is no other way!