Avoiding the dragnet of evil

Put at its starkest level sometimes Christianity is about the struggle between good and evil. The struggle between love and hate. And the choice between what helps us and that which harms us.

What has provoked those thoughts in me is rather randomly last Thursday I put my toe in the water of the book of Habakkuk. The same day I started to read Christine Caine's book Undaunted. Both books gripped me and started me thinking along the same lines.

To be a follower of Christ rather than just a believer means that we are called to an active opposition of evil. You could term it spiritual opposition but it can also be said that we are called to a direct opposition of evil where it is manifest in our world. Bear with me please and follow me to where I go with this.

First Habakkuk. I put my toe in the book thinking I was just going to read a passage but had to read the whole of the short book in order to try and understand it. I found myself thinking about a description that the prophet uses, "dragnet of evil, " he warns us that we are like fishes in the sea and that we can be unwittingly caught up in that dragnet of evil. Sucked into evil without at first being aware of what is happening. The dragnet can plunge towards us and before we know it we can be deep in the net with our tail flicking in panic.

I have come to realise that the main times that this happens is when we come into contact with the off-shoots of organised crime or institutional and corporate sin.

We have to allow the scales to fall off our eyes and to be aware that these "dragnets" reach our local communities. Our first response should be to say "no" to their products ourselves and teach our children to. That's a definite no to soft drugs, money lending, counterfeit goods, heroin, pimps, pornography. If they can't sell their products they lose the incentive to be in your neighbourhood. All these products are produced through coercion in some way and to deliver the product a human has suffered. Even if the first fix was free.

The link to Christine Caine's book Undaunted is that she brings, as her witness to us, a meeting that she had with some young women who had escaped human trafficking. The account is very moving and should be of concern to us. She explains why she started the A21 campaign in 2007.

For reflection

• Does the dragnet of evil come near to me or someone I care about?
• Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?  You have made people like the fish in the sea, like the sea creatures that have no ruler.  The wicked foe pulls all of them up with hooks, he catches them in his net, he gathers them up in his dragnet; and so he rejoices and is glad.  Therefore he sacrifices to his net and burns incense to his dragnet, for by his net he lives in luxury and enjoys the choicest food.  Is he to keep on emptying his net, destroying nations without mercy? Habakkuk 1:13-17 NIV
• Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,  yet I will rejoice in the Lord , I will be joyful in God my Savior.  The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights. Habakkuk 3:17-19 NIV
• Be under obligation to no one—the only obligation you have is to love one another. Whoever does this has obeyed the Law.  The commandments, "Do not commit adultery; do not commit murder; do not steal; do not desire what belongs to someone else"—all these, and any others besides, are summed up in the one command, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." If you love others, you will never do them wrong; to love, then, is to obey the whole Law. Romans 13:8-10 GNT

Dear Lord, open my eyes. Purify my heart and my intentions, free me from pressure to do things I don't want to do. I want to freely dedicate myself to seeking your peace and your love for my life. Amen