Recently it’s just struck me how I wished I never had to explain evil to my daughter.

I wish I never had to teach her how to look over her shoulder and not to wave and say “hello!” to everybody she sees like she does now, because not everybody is nice and some people are dangerous. It breaks my heart how I’ll have to teach her that she can’t just pet every animal she sees because many of them are scared of humans and not very friendly. That some people will hate her, exclude her, treat her badly, and spit all sorts of mean words at her just for being different or having beliefs that they don’t agree with. I don’t want to have to explain to her what death is— I’ve already had to tell her that Grammy, Layla, and Lacey are sleeping until Jesus comes. I don’t want the same little voice that excitedly yells “BABY?!” at every child that goes by to ever ask me what the word “abortion” means. I don’t want her to know what gun violence is, or that kids aren’t safe in schools. I don’t want her to ever know what war is. It rips my heart right out of my chest to think about how her pure joy and wonder at the beauty in the world will one day fade into fear and pain when she finds out about the absolute horror of all the ugliness in it.

It struck me how the pure, shining innocence of a child isn’t ruined by growing up and doing bad things…it’s ruined simply by the knowledge of evil. I wish I could shield her from it forever— I wish she never had to know. And now I think I understand a little better why God didn’t want Adam and Eve to eat that fruit. It wasn’t just a “because I said so”…that fruit was from the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The deception from Satan was that if they ate it, they wouldn’t need God to tell them what was right, they would know themselves. But it was a lie— a lie that continues to this day. Because of that decision, everything on this earth now knows evil…but true goodness has become shades of grey.

The evil in this world has created more evil on every side. Everything that’s happened lately has pitted everyone against each other. Walls have been built. Words from every direction are seething with volatility, hostility, and violence. Any effort to reconcile differences seems to be a losing battle from the start. Attempts to express a thought process different from one’s own are met with criticism, contempt, and efforts to demonize. I don’t care what side of everything you’re on, we’ve all been guilty of it. We’ve all been guilty of vain attempts to justify and validate our own thoughts and feelings at someone else’s expense. We’ve all been guilty of sacrificing love and respect on the altar of selfishness. And although it’s hard to hear, murder comes from the same place in the heart as every other act of selfishness that each of us cherish in our own.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

I think deep down, we all know the government can’t fix this. No power on this earth can. This goes way beyond gun control and anti-abortion laws (whichever side of the political dumpster fire you happen to be on). “Sin is transgression of the law.” (1 John 3:4) Literally ingrained in its definition is the fact that lawlessness doesn’t care what’s legal or illegal. Sin is a heart problem, not a law problem— the government is powerless to fix the heart, and thus it’s incapable of preventing evil. They can make all the laws they want, and they may help for a while by making resources more difficult to come by and making consequences more drastic after the fact…but ultimately a heart bent on doing evil will do evil, with whatever resources it has at its disposal. All the government is capable of doing, in the grand scheme of things, is putting a bandaid on a fault line.

So what do we tell our kids?

The world will tell them “do as thou wilt.” That happens to be the Satanic Church’s catchphrase. (Fitting for a world under the thumb of Satan.) We’re seeing it everywhere. “Do what you want, do whatever feels good to you, don’t let anyone tell you what you’re doing is wrong.” The problem with that ideology is that there’s no endpoint, no line in the sand on where it stops. The hard truth is— “do what you want” is just as applicable to the kid who wants the cookie her parents said she couldn’t have, as it is to the grown man who wants to shoot up a school. The ideology this world is pushing more and more at every opportunity is not the answer to the problems, it’s the cause of them.

“Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.” (Matthew 24:12)

That verse is a prophecy of the exact time we’re living in now. And it’s spot-on. What’s the perfect recipe for a loveless society? People living in open rebellion to the God of love and against the only Law that was ever intended as guidance to sustain a perfect society of love. The truth is, we were told that this reality was coming, and we’re also told it’s about to get a lot worse.

So what is the answer? Since the problem goes so much deeper than any worldly power is able to deal with, the only possible solution is the only One who can deal with the core of the issue…the God who created the heart and can recreate it.

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone… and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)

Personally, I’m gonna teach my daughter that the world is evil, but we can fight it— because there’s someone who has already fought it and won.

“In this world you will have trouble, but take heart— I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

I’m gonna teach her about Jesus.

I’ll tell her that God loves her and everybody in the world so much, He let His own Son go on a rescue mission to live a perfect life of love and then be murdered by His own people— not to excuse sin, but to take the penalty for it Himself… so all of us, from the murderer to the mean person on the internet, could have a chance at eternal life by repenting, turning to Him, and letting Him get rid of the sin that’s killing us. That He did it to be able to give us a new heart like His— one that hates the ways we’ve hurt Him and others, and wants to let Him teach us how to love so it doesn’t happen again. I’ll tell her that Jesus left His throne in heaven because He didn’t want to be there without her… and that she is more valuable than all the stars because God Himself paid the highest price for her in the universe.

I’ll teach her to hold His Law close to her heart—not as a way to work her way to heaven, but as landmarks for how we know if we’re loving God and loving people like He wants us to. That the closer we get to Jesus and the more we let Him live through us, the better we will follow His laws and the clearer people will see what His love for them is really like. I’ll tell her that she won’t be perfect, none of us are— but if she has a saving relationship with Him, she will always be in process and becoming more and more like Him and less and less like the evil in this world every day— and all God will see is His perfect Son, Jesus, living through her. I’ll tell her that we may not always understand why things happen the way they do, but one day we will, and we will know that none of the pain we went through on this earth was for nothing. I’ll tell her that this world is not like it was ever supposed to be, but that it’s only for a little while, and then we can live forever with Jesus where none of the evil we see now will ever exist again.

I’ll tell her that hurting people hurt people—but that we can help by showing others how much Jesus loves them and help Him heal their hurts…so that maybe the ones that would have hurt people one day will come to Jesus for a new heart instead. I’ll tell her that while we may not be able to change the whole world at once, we can change the world for someone else. I’ll encourage her to use her voice for speaking truth and love out of a pure heart no matter what…and that we may not always see the results of the good we do for others, but one day when all of this is said and done and evil and death are gone forever, the only words we will ever need to hear will come from the mouth of Jesus saying, “well done, My good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:23)

I’ll tell her that this world doesn’t have to be all there is…this life is barely a blip on the radar in comparison to eternity.

Jocelyn was bending down in our gravel driveway picking up pretty rocks and giving them to me. I stood between her and the road— we live on a corner that people sometimes go way too fast on, and it was dusk, so visibility was limited. And there it hit me that I’ll one day have to teach her about the bad things that can happen so she’ll be careful…and how that knowledge has a tendency to take simple little joys and lace them with anxiety.

As I was standing between Jocelyn and the road, being her guard and making sure nothing was going to hurt her while she innocently played in the dirt picking up rocks, my first thoughts were of discouragement and fear. I won’t always be present with her to protect her from things she doesn’t understand. But then I heard God say in the back of my mind— “but I will.” At that moment I realized how often I get caught up in the silly things of this world, getting anxious about what I don’t fully understand, and forget that God is there too— standing between me and the road.

Just then I looked down and my eyes locked on an almost perfectly symmetrical, heart-shaped rock… and like a perfectly timed wink from the God of the universe, then I was the one picking up rocks.

I’m gonna teach my daughter that this world is evil, but we don’t have to be…and even though bad things happen sometimes, we don’t have to be worried or afraid.

I’m gonna teach her about Jesus.

“Choose you this day whom you will serve…as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Josh. 24:2,15)