Deliver Us From Evil

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Deliver us from evil.

What is the greatest evil we face in the world? I’ll give you three guesses…Nope, you’re wrong.

The greatest evil from which we pray to be delivered is sin.

Pope Benedict said, “That we be freed from sins.” Jesus of Nazareth p. 168

We spend all our time focused on the symptoms or consequences of evil, but the cause of all our problems is sin. Mine and yours. And the source of all sin, hence the source of all evil is pride. So what we are praying for in the last petition of the Our Father is that God will deliver us from our pride!

What is pride? Pride is all the ways we try to validate our existence, prove our worth, apart from God. And how do we try to validate our existence? How are we trying to convince ourselves and others that we are special, that we are necessary, needed, invaluable, and that we belong here?

It might be through a profession, or a relationship, or children and grandchildren or intellectual or physical abilities, physical health, intelligence, personality…Ask yourself – what is the one thing you fear the most to lose? We fear losing it because that thing gives us value; and without it – we are nothing - we do not belong.

What is that thing for you?

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If the thing that you think makes you valuable – that you belong in the world, is anything other than God – then you are in deep trouble. Why? Because unless you know and accept that you are valued and loved by God, unless you know that God looks at your and says “You make the world a better place just by being in it,” then you can’t be sure it is true. You our defects, sins, limitations, deficiencies, failures scream at you that you are worthless. Other people are fickle – they are constantly changing their opinion of you. Your value in the eyes of the world is always trending up and down – it is more uncertain than the weather or the market. And if there is no guarantee of your value, then you can’t be sure it’s true, and you will spend all your time and energy trying to make it true, all your effort trying to convince others it is true and fearing any suggestion that it might not be true.

Now here is where sin becomes a real problem. Sin makes us doubt our claim to goodness and validation. Sin challenges our sense of self-worth. That is why we can’t admit our sins and its why people are not interested in Jesus and religion. Admitting our sin and our need for a Savior is the greatest threat to our ego and our self-worth.

But - Deep down we all know we sin and no amount of self-validation or validation from others can remove the fact that we know we sin, we have defects, that we are mess. So even if we try to give ourselves validation or other people tell us we are good and valuable – deep down we know the truth – we know our defects and our defects tell us we are not valuable.

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Once we see we have defects we have two options:

A.  Tell ourselves those sins and defects are not so bad, other people are worse; or it’s not our fault, that we were a victim and other people are the real problem and go on trying to validate our existence, justify our goodness and value by what we do, or have done, or who praises us or how much wealth we have or what relationships we have…but every time our sin, our defects show themselves – they are a threat to our ego – a threat to our goodness and value. So we have to double down, not admit our own sin, focus on the problems out there in the world and in other people.

I can’t be the problem because if I am the problem then I have no worth and I am scared to death of that deep down. Because we don’t have a proper sense of self-worth from God we can’t and won’t admit our sin.

B.  The other option is to accept God’s validation.

As our Creator God says to us “It is good that you exist, how wonderful you are. The world is a better place simply because you are in it.” And as our Father God says to us “I love you.”

As a result of our failure to rely on God’s validation we constantly try to validate ourselves, we avoid criticism, and we criticize others.

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The Solution to Pride is to realize we don’t need to prove our worth, God already thinks we are immeasurably valuable, and He has told us so. All we need to do is to say “Thank you.”

The first best way to say thank you to God is the way He asked, by keeping the Sabaath. That means every Sunday, thank God the way He chose, that is by Going to Mass, offering yourself to him unconditionally when the priest invites you to lift up your hearts and we say “We lift them up the Lord, and receive him in the Eucharist which literally means thanksgiving.

Now, I know you go to Mass – but go with the realization that you don’t have to validate your worth. God did by creating your and dying for you – go to Mass with this in mind and rest in this fact and thank Him for it.

Then spend the whole day Sunday thinking about, celebrating and resting in what God has done for you and not what you need to do to prove your value.

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Finally, what we do on Sundays we should do for some time each day – thank God for the fact that He thinks you are of immeasurable value just because you are His son or daughter.

Think about the truth that God looks at you, smiles and says “It is good that you exist – how wonderful you are.”