David Feister
We recently watched the 1990 Disney animated film, The Rescuers Down Under, with our kids. The story follows a boy named Cody, living in Australia, who is kidnapped by a local poacher, Percival C. McLeach. This diabolical villain hopes Cody will give away the whereabouts of the great golden eagle McLeach has been hunting. The heroes of the film are two mice, Bernard and Miss Bianca, who set out to stop McLeach and rescue Cody.
Afterwards my 5-year-old asked if this was a bad movie because it had a bad guy in it. McLeach, afterall, wasn’t only breaking the law and enriching himself at the expense of God’s creation. He abducted a little boy, deceived him into revealing the eagle’s location, and sought to feed him to crocodiles to get rid of the evidence. Do all these bad things make a movie bad? It was an understandable question.
So why is the answer to my son’s question an unequivocal, “No.” The answer, simple and profound, was also woven through the movie in a none-too-subtle way—evil can be beaten. In a good movie, even a tiny hero, selfless and courageous, ultimately prevails over the villain and his schemes. In a good story, the night may indeed be dark, but the shadows ultimately retreat at the coming of the dawn. Such a story, as G.K. Chesterton has said, accustoms us “to the idea that these limitless terrors [have] a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”
Unbeknownst to my kids, The Rescuers Down Under poses a question to them—How is it that a mouse can defeat such a bad guy as Percival C. McLeach? Could it be mere chance or dumb luck? No, the cards are too stacked in the villain’s favor. The answer is that there is a greater power at work—one that is good—and because of that, the villain will not, cannot, win.
But of course, it doesn’t always appear that way, does it? A few weeks ago in Kensington I came upon a man who was lying on the sidewalk, not breathing, no pulse. Two administrations of the overdose reversing drug Narcan did not revive him. From my vantage point on the corner of Shelbourne and Madison watching the ambulance race away, the darkness seemed so powerful, the enemy triumphant.
The Bible itself is full of agonized prayers from the same vantage point, like the opening of the book of Habakkuk, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you, ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” In fact, none of us have probably been so acutely aware of invisible evil around us, as we live with the reality of the deadly, unseen coronavirus, perhaps entering its worst period yet of transmission and fatalities. Yet there has always been invisible evil around us and invisible evil within us—spiritual powers of darkness bent on deceiving and destroying; sin imprisoning and entangling.
Our perception of the strength of this evil and our expectation of its victory or defeat depends inevitably on where we’re at in the story, because we are part of the story. How different was the disciples’ response after casting out demons by Jesus’ authority to their response when their master and friend was nailed to a cross. How different our view of the battle when we experience a powerful answer to prayer than when we give in yet again to a particular destructive sin.
And so God doesn’t rely on the limited viewpoint of our experience to guide what we believe to be true about the battle. He gives us the whole story. He provides for us not an imaginary story but our actual, real story from start to finish, from Genesis to Revelation, from the first shots fired in the garden to the final silencing of the enemy canons in the new creation.
The true story reveals that this battle between good and evil, which we find ourselves in, is actually God’s battle. He’s the Warrior-King who “stripped the sheath from his bow, calling for many arrows,” who “went out for the salvation of his people,” who “crushed the head of the house of the wicked, laying him bare from thigh to neck” (Habakkuk 3:9, 13). It is the Lord, the Creator of heaven and earth, who arises to slay the dragon.
Where do we find ourselves now in this epic battle saga? We live in the aftermath of the Battle of Easter Weekend. In fact we’re once again celebrating the anniversary of this turning point in the war, the climactic victory when the outcome of the conflict was irrevocably determined. This is when God’s mysterious strategy to defeat the powers of darkness once for all, which was set before the foundation of the world, was revealed—“that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Through the cross the Son of God disarmed the rulers and authorities and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). And by rising from the dead he plundered his people from the domain of darkness, from deadness in sin, from following the prince of the power of the air, and instead raised us with him, transferring us to the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Colossians 1:13-14, Ephesians 2:1-6).
This is our place in the story—between the Battle of Easter Weekend and the Battle of the King’s Return. The beach has been won, the foe routed. Though the enemy’s hatred remains and though guerilla attacks continue to weaken and wound the Christian’s soul, there is no possibility of a successful counterattack being mounted.
And so we fight. We fight to free the concentration camps where prisoners sit who don’t yet know the hero of history and creation and who have not been brought into his victory. We rush the cure that we have been given to those suffering under the same fearful, terminal illness that has a 100% infection rate, a 100% fatality rate, and only one antidote—the blood of the Lamb. And we fight anticipating the final battle when the dragon will be thrown into the lake of fire, when darkness will be eliminated from creation literally and figuratively, and when we who have been redeemed “will be saved to sin no more.”
So we look at a world in bondage to addiction, groaning under coronavirus, where wickedness and injustice still run rampant, and where life is marked by the steady, ominous drumbeat of death. We look at our own hearts that are prone to wander, that are cold to the needs of others, and that still cling to idols. And we ask, “Father, is this a bad story?” But though the evil is darker than we could imagine, the evil can be beaten, it has been beaten, and it will be beaten. We know that’s true because the Battle of Easter Weekend was decisively won. “Fear not, I am the first and last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17-18). We are truly in a good story.
David Feister
Glenside PA, April 2020