Every Evil Thing
For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. – James 3:16 NKJV.
For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. – James 3:16 NIV.
Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! – Isaiah 5:20 NKJV.
The Mexican president when responding to talk of Mexico being invaded by US to take out the cartels distributing fentanyl claims they do not produce or distribute the drug. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador also claimed that fentanyl is not consumed in their country and that the US has a problem with fentanyl because of a breakdown in societal values. Obrador says about the US, “Why don’t they take care of their problem of social decay?” He then describes some of those problems in the US as being single parent families, parents who make grown children leave the home, and those who put the elderly in nursing homes and only visit them once a year. Obrador also said in one report that, “There is a lot of disintegration of families, there is a lot of individualism, there is a lack of love, of brotherhood, of hugs and embraces.” (Widely reported in various news venues.)
For those of us who live in the US it is obvious that massive amounts of fentanyl are being trafficked into our country from Mexico. Because we see huge amounts of the drug that are being stopped at the border by the border patrol and we continually hear of more overdose deaths as a result of the drug. However, Obrador has his finger right on a major problem in the US with the downward spiral of our country into immoral lifestyles, and we see a breakdown in moral societal behavior.
Envy continues to be a problem in our society as many are envious of the financial status of others, educational status of others and some are even envious of the race and gender of others. Mixed into this problem is the self-seeking, the selfish ambition at the expense of whoever or whatever may be in the way. The result is what we now have in the US of disorder, confusion, and every evil practice. There is no doubt that the evil is growing with so many trying to make evil into good and good into evil.
What can we do as we are faced with immorality everywhere we turn? We must “Abstain from every form of evil” as we are told in 1 Thessalonians 5:22 and as we are told in 1 Corinthians 15:58, “…be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
Your faithfulness does make a difference! You are the “salt of the earth” holding back the tide of evil! Be Steadfast!