In our last time together, we talked about the necessity of having passion as you interact boldly for the sake of bringing someone a taste of God’s character. We also said that what is required is a degree of wisdom to know what kind of person you are dealing with. If you are dealing with someone like Buck’s father, Charlie, it will be very different than loving someone like Buck’s wife Terry. What we’re going to be focusing on this lesson is:

• What does it mean to love an evil person?
• What is an evil person?
• How do you diagnose, if you will?
• How do you get to know someone who is evil and to know that they are indeed evil?
• What does it mean to boldly love someone who is wicked?

First of all, it is a very sad fact that all of us have had encounters with evil people. Hopefully, in your life it has been only occasional. But there are many other tragic situations where a person must deal with evil on an on-going basis in a relationship of husband and wife, or working in an employer/employee relationship.

Evil exists. Normally we think of evil in the large category. Individuals like Hitler, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and those caricatures of evil. They are indeed evil. They become symbols of an entire generation. To think of evil in that way, we often miss the very simple fact that evil can be more of the garden variety. It can be more like the individual next door who does not seem to cause any trouble, yet if you get to know their character you find their heart to be indeed evil. And so we need to think of evil in terms of a bit different category than what we normally think of.

We’re going to be looking at this category of evil. In the next session, we’ll talk about the category of the fool. In the final session, we will be looking at the category of the simpleton. But whenever you categorize people, you make 2 potential errors.

1. The first, there’s a certain symmetry and elegance trying to categorize and it is important to do so, but you can make the mistake of somehow assuming the categories are nice and neat and clean. In many ways, the fool is just a less severe evil individual. In fact, the Lord Himself says of all of us, though you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children." so the reality of evil exists for all of us. I can put it in this way, I really believe of myself and I’ve committed evil, but I am not an evil man. All of us have done evil, but we may not have the character and the heart of someone who is indeed evil. So don’t try and get the categories so tight that it makes perfect differentiation.
2. A second warning: if the categories are too rigid, it’s very easy to assume that once a person is evil, they will always be evil. That’s a denial of the Gospel. I’ve worked with evil people who have changed. I’ve worked with fools who have changed. The difference between judgement and assessment is the difference between "in pen" and "in pencil". When you make a rigid judgement that a person is and always will be - that’s contrary to the usefulness of these categories. But if they’re written "in pencil" that always leaves the door open for the individual to change.

With these two warnings, what is an evil person? There are three qualities that we can underscore:

1. There is a real profound absence of empathy. That is, an evil person seems to have very little to no feeling or heart for another individual. There is coldness in their soul. So that they’d don’t feel pain, hurt, joy for another human being. An absence of empathy.
2. There is a profound sense of shame, that is, they feel no shame. It is a shamelessness where there is no sense whatsoever of being able to be exposed and to be seen and then to be brought to a point of conviction. So there is a certain degree of what we’ll call hardness. A hardness that is somehow an arrogance that mocks any possibility of weakness.
3. There is a profound absence of goodness, and that is, there is no desire to bless. There seems to be a strong desire to destroy, to delight in destroying. The image for me is the image of a "black widow" that catches its victims in its web and then slowly moves towards its victim, in one sense, with the anticipation of its destruction.

And there you have a picture of evil itself. And that is the person who wants to draw in, seduce, have power over you, to shame and eventually destroy you.

What you are about to see is a picture of evil. We want to show you again the nature of how evil interacts. And you can look at Charlie now from these categories, an absence of empathy. And that is, as he talks about what happens with his son in terms of having his knees blown out; there is not a thought that his son physically had pain. No thought whatsoever that there was any loss for his son in terms of not being able to continue his football career as well.

Second, there is an absence of any shame on his part, but even more the desire to shame, at the point where he looks at his son and basically, says, "You make me sick. I can’t believe my name is at the back of your jersey."

That is just a violent shaming of his son and one where afterwards, after all the violence of that interaction a sense of almost enjoying saying to his son, "Could you get me a cup of coffee?" What a picture of the ongoing work of a black widow that draws in, sucks in, shames and destroys! Watch this interaction.

Now, we’re at a point where we can consider what does it mean for Buck to boldly love his father? Let me tell you at least some of the preconditions that must be in Buck’s heart if he is going to interact with his evil father.

Evil seems to have a great deal of wisdom in knowing what you are unwilling to lose. And it will find that spot in your heart that you are unwilling to give up and it will use that to its own advantage.

I worked with a good friend of mine, whose father was a very evil man, a very wealthy man. and there was something in the way his son dealt with his father where he knew the father knew, that the son was unwilling to lose the inheritance that would eventually come to him. And on that basis, the father was able to control the son.

Evil equally knows how to shame you. It knows how to make you feel very, very small, and if you’re terrified of being shamed, evil will always hold that power over you. It knows what you are unwilling to lose. It knows where you can be easily harmed. It even knows where you’re intimidatable. If you’re a fearful person, evil will use that against you. Therefore, the precondition in dealing with an evil person is there has to be enough desire to hate evil and to long for good that will enable you to somehow be willing to lose, to somehow face shame directly, and not to flee when you are intimidated. If those preconditions are there, then we can talk about what it mean to love evil.

It means to offer evil that good:

Let me put very bluntly. Evil cannot be interacted with. You can’t dialogue with someone who is evil. If I had to put it into some kind of warfare, evil must be interacted with from the standpoint of "siege-warfare". This means that you take a line and draw it around evil so that evil cannot escape without very severe consequences. That means you must encircle evil, letting evil know you know it is evil, with very clear consequences, that is if he chooses to violate, will happen that are painful, that are quick, and that are non-negotiable. When that is the case, then you are in a position where you can defeat evil by eventually starving them out.

What is Buck to do with his father? I am not suggesting that Buck should avoid his father nor that he should attack. But on the other hand, when his father begins to shame him, to attack him, I really do believe it would be an honorable and loving thing for Buck to look his father in the eye and say, "Dad, are you aware that you are going through your black widow routine? Are you aware that you’re looking to destroy someone, me right now?"

That would draw the line. And then to be able to look his father in the eye and say, "if you continue, Dad, you’re really going to compel me to watch this great game in another room".

Evil must be circumscribed and therefore the consequences become clear. That is the gift of defeat. And if, and occasionally it will happen, that evil will give in and say, "Oh yeah. I guess I am doing that." Then there’s room now to dialogue. Only on the basis of surrender, do you open the door to a second major gift, and that is the:

That is first letting evil know what it has done, what the effects are, what you hope for them, and what must happen if change is going to occur.

Let me underscore that, it means opening the door to what evil is doing, what is the effect of evil on you, what you would like to see different, what would build a good relationship and then making very clear what must happen. What are the specific steps that must occur if there is to be an interaction?

For example. If Charlie said, "I’m sorry son. I don’t know why I’m being so cruel. But I know I know I’m being cruel." To be able to look at his father and say, "Dad, I’m thrilled you’re aware that you’re being pretty harsh right now. Do you understand that it was a hard time for me when my knees blew out?" In other words, asking evil to be aware of empathy. To be aware that it lacks the capacity of shame. And to underscore that every human, even someone evil at some core part was meant to do good and therefore desires to do good. That is drawing the things that would be true for anyone who is made in the image of God. That is the gift of defeat.

The second major gift is the gift of surrender that opens the door to talking about repentance.

There is a final gift and is probably the hardest gift. It is the:

I am assuming a few conditions and this is:

1. Over a lengthy period of time, interacting with the individual who is evil, praying for them, grieving for them, confronting them, drawing the line, holding them accountable for the consequences over a lengthy period of time.
2. After a great deal of prayer and consultation with other believers, there may come a point where you lay the line down in such a way that you do not enter back into relationship with that person until they are will to grapple with the damage they’ve done to you. It is the gift of excommunication and that is cutting off relationship. It is really given them a taste of hell. Paul talks about excommunicating someone for the purpose of causing them to feel loneliness and shame. And those are two tastes of hell itself 1 Cor 5:5, 1 Tim 1:19-20).