The voices we hear often belong to that enemy, which is actually an organized legion of many.
Dr. Scott Peck, psychiatrist and best-known as author of The Road Less Traveled, bravely sought to raise evil--as the myriad manifestation of these voices--to a level of actual, psychiatric diagnoses.
As we know, in the world of medicine, a diagnosis begets treatment, and he became an expert in treating the angst caused by these voices in our head.
A common thread of these voices is to hurt back. Who hasn't been hurt by others--or inflicted hurt on our own?
Jesus modeled absorbing every hurt in the universe so that we might consider absorbing a few hurts from others, returning love rather than hurting back. This doesn't sound like such a winning formula, but it has a power of its own.
Dr. Peck describes this mystery in People of the Lie:
...the only ultimate way to conquer evil is to let it be smothered within a willing, living human being. When it is absorbed there like blood in a sponge or a spear into one's heart, it loses its power and goes no further.
The healing of evil--scientifically or otherwise--can be accomplished only by the love of individuals. A willing sacrifice is required. The individual healer must allow his or her own soul to become the battleground. He or she must sacrificially absorb the evil.But, you ask, what will happen if you become this willing sacrifice? After all, you are the "victim" of the hurt. He continues:
Then what prevents the destruction of that soul? If one takes the evil itself into one's heart, like a spear, how can one's goodness still survive? Even if the evil is vanquished thereby, will not the good be also? What will have been achieved beyond some meaningless trade-off?
I cannot answer this in language other than mystical. I can say only that there is a mysterious alchemy whereby the victim becomes the victor. As C.S. Lewis wrote: "When a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards."
I do not know how this occurs. But I know that is does. I know that good people can deliberately allow themselves to be pierced by the evil of others--to be broken thereby yet somehow not broken--to even be killed in some sense and yet still survive and not succumb. Whenever this happens there is a slight shift in the balance of power in the world.Be a power player.
