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We were discussing words yesterday, and how evil may not be reserved for the Dr. Evils and Hamburglars of the world.
What if not writing the book is evil?
What if staying at the job you hate is evil?
What if not following that inclination or spark to do THE THING is evil? And not in a you’re-a-really-bad-person kind of way, but just you’re really not in a faith space kind of way?
The realization sat me up in bed of its own accord so I looked it up. Sure enough, our simple language can never properly express scripture. And I’m still not sure if that is an accident or planned.
But the first use of the word evil I found was pretty typical to its stereotype:
Strong’s Greek: 2556. κακός (kakos) — bad, evil
(“inner malice”) – properly, inwardly foul, rotten (poisoned); (figuratively) inner malice flowing out of a morally-rotten character (= the “rot is already in the wood”).
Yikes. Inner malice.
But it also reminds me of that foul-smelling demon that I dated. Like rotting wood, it is the state of decay that is the absence of light.
We imagine the evil dude in the novel who has warts on his face. But what if the inner malice was such that it was ours? Towards ourselves?!
Ouch!
But then I followed the word around a little because I had the inclination that there would be more than one word that the ancient happy Latin translators — you know, the Catholics? — would just slap the word evil on everything and be done with it.
I was right.
wickedness
Usage: (a) evil (i.e. trouble, labor, misfortune), (b) wickedness, (c) vicious disposition, malice, spite.
Evil now includes trouble, labor, and/or misfortune!
And it happens again, here:
And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Genesis 6:5
Wicked is bad, disagreeable, malignant — like cancer? Unpleasant (giving pain, unhappiness, misery); displeasing, unhappy, unkind, vicious.
It gives new meaning to the scripture — wicked imaginations. The stereotype doesn’t even really show up until the end of the definition. So wicked imagination could be that unhappy visualization of everything going wrong that you are playing over and over in your head at night as you lay in your bed.
And it makes me think that me hiding under the covers from my destiny just may be dead center in the definition of wickedness.
It always used to bug me when the preacher would call me a sinner. It didn’t make me feel better that we are all sinners, really. I just didn’t get it. I thought God made me… pretty great. And really, that childhood take isn’t far off from the idea of seeing the Master in the Masterpiece… But, if I am the artwork, what can I, the masterpiece, do in my own power, other than exist?
Like the flower that blooms: I just am.
Sin is failure.
So it’s not really confined to a past time when the bible was more relevant. Sin is present… just a really, really loaded word that everyone wants to conveniently forget.
But it is these keys in the bible — the words themselves from He who not only wrote the Word but spoke existence into being with His word.
And you were created in His image, my friend!
That’s why you’re so gosh darn powerful! What if you started speaking like it?
Come out from those covers and get in life. Get dirty. Make some mistakes. Get into sin… of course, not intentionally. But go see if you can fail and watch God make something big and beautiful out of it.
You know, like He always does. ✨
