That’s a quote from 2 Peter 2:3, but no greedy people in our world, thank goodness, and certainly no one daring to exploit us with lies and made up stories to make money.

If only.

Unfortunately, as in Peter’s day, we have our “experts in greed” too, verse 14, who spin their cunning little webs to exploit our human fears and weaknesses (verse 18) with promises of freedom for us but they cannot free themselves (verse 19).  

That’s because greed is a terrible addiction. Enough is never enough, it must have more. It’s a monster that cannot be reined in. So its helpless offspring cannot stop lying and hiding facts when there’s money to be made.   

But Peter has a couple of words for us that hopefully act like a cooling flannel for our fevered brow, the two words being: Think Justice.   

Fortunately, God is a God of justice and he’s fully aware of what the greedy people who exploit us are up to, so through Peter he tells us that “Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping,” verse 3. And if that condemnation doesn’t happen in their lifetime now it is held in store “for the day of judgment,” verse 9. We can rest assured, then, that “They will be paid back with harm for the harm they have done,” verse 13. Justice will be done.

In the meantime, however, Peter also tells us that “in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own evil desires,” chapter 3:3. They laugh among themselves at how easily they can play us, like making us cut back while they live in luxury, knowing there’s nothing we can do about it. And for what purpose, pray tell? So “they can follow their own evil desires.” Oh yes, God knows exactly what they’re up to.  

But God also judges with mercy, expressed through Jesus on the cross when he cried out, “Forgive them because they have no idea what they’re doing.” He took into account that even these greed-addicted swindlers have been played too, so any punishment God inflicts on them is in mercy too, to wake them up to the grim realization that they too have been puppets in the hands of an even craftier enemy, who played them just as callously as they played us.  

To some it’s an unbelievably daft idea indoctrinating children on dressing up in costumes to roam around on a cold evening getting junk food from mostly total strangers. I mean, who on earth came up with this nonsense? 

But that’s the eye-opener, because the ones who “came up with this nonsense” didn’t think it was nonsense at all. It was deadly serious. Two thousand years ago the Celts thought the evening of October 31 was the one time in the year when the divide between the physical and spiritual worlds, and between the living and the dead, could be crossed. And that was scary, because they really thought the dead could appear among them as ill-intentioned ghosts. So the Celts wore masks when leaving home after dark to avoid being recognized by the ghosts – and they put out food for the ghosts too, to appease them.     

Weird though that sounds, it took root in England and Ireland where putting out food to appease the spirits on October 31 continued. But then some bright sparks got the sneaky idea of dressing up in creepy costumes to get people to give the goodies to them instead. It was called “mumming” back then. “Trick or treating” today.

Enough history is known, then, that the customs of our modern Halloween mimic quite shamelessly the pagan oddities of the past. Criticism by Christians is hardly valid, though, since the Christian church also took pagan customs and made them into Christian traditions that still exist today as well. 

So a lot of people through the last 2,000 years have made Halloween, in all its evolving forms, names and traditions, into a special time – first as a pagan festival, then a Christian one, and now as a bit of “harmless fun.” 

But it wasn’t a bit of harmless fun to the Celts who started it, and maybe it isn’t now either, because I just finished reading an article about the need to ease young children into Halloween because it can be, quote, “scary,” so “be on the lookout for fears and anxieties.” Oh, brilliant, let’s scare the children. I sometimes wonder if we parents have vital bits missing in our brains. 

But that’s not to bash us parents too much, because those pesky Celts really caught people’s imagination about spirits with evil intent. And history, both secular and biblical, is on their side too – that evil and evil spirits are real. Could it mean, then, that those Celts got it right, that there really are evil spirits that can enter our world? 

In that case, Halloween isn’t so much nonsense after all – if it takes us back to what those Celts did, which was treat evil seriously and take determined steps to protect themselves from it. 

The quote above from Matthew 6:13 was stirred by things I’ve been excruciatingly tempted to write in furious and sarcastic reaction to some of the ruinous ideologies being spun and enforced by those in power and by those claiming to be in the know. 

But who am I to write about such things? I’m no expert. And how is getting myself all twisted up in a negative, emotional knot going to benefit anybody, including myself? It became obvious, then, to say to God, “Lead me not into that temptation,” or “Please don’t let me go that route, because I could make a horrible mess of things if I do.”  

I can see why Jesus coupled “lead us not” with “deliver us from the evil one,” because temptation is the devil’s weapon of choice in messing us up. He used it on Adam and Eve, and again on Jesus – tempting Jesus to feel the need to prove he was the Son of God by magically turning rocks into loaves of bread, by flinging himself off the highest point of the temple wall to be saved by angels, and by grabbing the chance to create a new world order, a great reset that would solve all the world’s problems right away. All excruciatingly tempting. 

I feel a pang of sympathy, therefore, for those in rulership and influential positions today, because they face enormous temptations too, having learned from the pandemic how much power they’ve got. They can shut down entire nations’ economies, and through fear and intimidation create compliance to their most draconian decrees. And the wealth they accumulated too, by forcing people to buy online rather than local businesses, and by claiming we’ll only be safe if everyone is injected, the profits from which have been (and still are) astounding.

Think of how tempting it must be, then, for those in government, media, and corporations to believe they have the power of gods. And to realize they can bully, lie, deceive and be hypocrites to their heart’s content, and amazingly get away with it. And if people resist, well that just plays into the hands of those seeking to set up a police state to control our every movement. 

Imagine what having that kind of power, therefore, might tempt people into doing, that’s not only dangerous for us but for them too, taking into account Jesus saying “it’s easier to gallop a camel through a needle’s eye than for the rich to enter God’s kingdom” (Matthew 19:24) – and especially when the rich justify their quest for power and money with moral sounding platitudes.

But in this world it looks like the rich and powerful have got it made. Allowing themselves to be led by temptation, however, is dancing to the devil’s tune. He has them by the nose. And what strength do they have to resist? Do they even want to resist? Which is troubling because King David wrote in Psalm 37:35-36, “I (too) have seen a wicked and ruthless man flourishing like a green tree in its native soil, but he soon passed away and was no more; though I looked for him, he could not be found.” One day no one will know these ruthless profiteers of today even existed.  

So I have to ask God to not let me fall for the temptation of hating them, because my hate won’t do them any good, or me. What they need, just as desperately as I need it, is the power to see temptation and resist it, because in “resisting the devil he will flee from you,” James 4:7.   

The title above is based on Jesus’ comment in Matthew 18:6 that “if anyone causes one of these little children who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” Mess with kids, Jesus said, and you’re better off dead. 

Strong words by Jesus to a group of adults who wanted to know “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He answered by calling “a little child” to stand before them, and in verse 4 he said, “whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

And there in Jesus’ words we have the best picture of the world he’s  creating, supplied for us in beautiful clarity in children. And it all boils down to humility, a quality Jesus himself had (Philippians 2:6-8), and a quality he also created in children. A child, for instance, isn’t the least bit interested in being important or great. But growing up in this world a child faces a gauntlet of stupid adults who think making a name for oneself, focusing attention on oneself, and inflicting one’s own image of self on others, are the ultimate goals of human existence. 

And unfortunately, that translates into these self-obsessed adults influencing children to become the same way. Which is very dangerous ground, because in Jesus’ own words, “if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,” he deserves a concrete noose round his neck so he sinks to the bottom of the sea and drowns. 

Two points for adults to take note of, then: the first being, that children naturally believe in Jesus. Jesus built that into them, as any parent soon discovers when teaching a child about Jesus. My one huge embarrassment as a Dad was holding our six year old son back from leaping over the pews in response to an altar call at a church. Running to Jesus was no problem for him, but for some weird reason it was for me (I hear echoes of Matthew 19:13-14).  

The second thing Jesus warned about was causing a child “to sin” – the sin in context being the adult obsession with being important and great. It was a sin so serious to Jesus that in verse 3 he said, “unless you (adults) change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Note the word, “never.” In other words, you don’t have a future, chum, if you don’t get rid of your obsession with yourself, and especially when it’s causing children to pick up that obsession too. 

An example today would be the adult obsession with gender identity, and getting children, including toddlers, all wrapped in it as well. Kids couldn’t care less about their gender identity, but adults have made them think it’s hugely important. So now kids are being focused on themselves and what they identify as, and they’re being taught that everyone else should indulge them too. No wonder they get to thinking they’re the centre of the universe, the exact “sin” Jesus warned adults not to inflict on children in Matthew 18. 

In Matthew 19:14 Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven belongs to children.” So, to paraphrase the seriousness of Jesus in both Matthew 18 and 19, it would be, “Don’t mess with children” – or better put, “Don’t you dare try to pervert the lovely, trusting, innocent, humble nature of children with your twisted, demonic adult nonsense.”

After much deliberation the dreaded moment comes when a jury is asked for its verdict: “Guilty, or not guilty?” – and then the highly charged pause awaiting the answer. 

And after much deliberation in John 3:1-18, the moment comes when Jesus also makes his verdict. His concluding remarks are made in verse 18, a simple statement that “whoever believes is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” A sentence will be pronounced, then, based on whether a person believes in Jesus being the Son of God, or not. 

With that understood, Jesus bangs his gavel in verse 19 and says, “This is the verdict.” And what follows is an explanation as to why people do, or do not, believe in him being the Son of God. Which is good to know, because it’s like a heads-up for all of us as to what this life of ours actually boils down to. It’s a simple point: do we believe Jesus is the Son of God? And is that important? Well, yes, when God sent his Son into our world to show us how we can live forever (verse 16). 

But he also sent his Son into our world to explain why living forever doesn’t mean much to people. Jesus tells us why in verse 19: “This is the verdict,” he says; it’s because “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” So it’s in us to prefer doing evil things.

Which leaves us in a horrible predicament, because, verse 20, “Everyone who does evil hates the light.” It’s horrible because we can’t stop hating light, just like cockroaches cannot stop themselves scurrying into the darkness at any sign of light either. But why do people hate light so much? It’s “For fear their deeds will be exposed.” The pandemic, for instance, visibly exposed the money-grubbing greed of pharmaceutical companies, and the censoring of anyone who dared to expose them. And they couldn’t stop themselves doing it. Evil had become second nature to them. It had become who they were. Such is Jesus’ verdict. 

There’s more to Jesus’ verdict, though, because in verse 21 he says, “whoever lives by the truth comes into the light,” so living by truth also exposes motives and actions, but with a huge difference, because they’re “being done through God.” God can be seen in them. They are living proof God exists, because his motives and actions have become second nature to them.  

And what is their motive? Paul explains in Ephesians 5:8, that If we “live as children of light” what drives us, verse 10, is “figuring out what pleases Christ.” And why do we do that? Because we believe he’s the Son of God.  

One simple statement from Eve would have spared us thousands of years of misery and madness. If only she’d said, “Not my will, but God’s will be done.”

And think what would have happened if politicians and leaders all through the ages had said that. So when they were tempted into thinking “you can be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5), they said, “No, I don’t want to be a god like God. God is God and his will be done.” 

I could have spared myself a lot of misery and frustration too, if I’d thought, “Not my will, but God’s will be done,” when faced with the incompetence, hypocrisy, bullying and theatrical posturing of so many world leaders. Because Scripture tells me “the authorities that exist have been established by God,” Romans 13:1. So they’re God’s business, not mine, and he will sort them out. As Jesus told Pilate in John 19:11, “You’d have no power over me at all, if it wasn’t given to you from above.”    

But why, then, does God allow evil people to hold office? Genesis fills us in on that one. Offered the chance to know good and evil, we took it. We chose to know evil. And we soon got a taste of it too, as to what it does, how it operates, and the awful things it makes us do to each other. And here we are now, learning exactly the same things about evil. But that’s what we chose. No wonder, then, we end up with leaders who happily sacrifice their people for their own ego driven fantasies. That’s evil for you. That’s what it does.

And there’s nothing we can do about it either. Violent protests, wars, and assassinations may get rid of evil leaders, but there are plenty more to take their place. It never ends. The same old cycle over and over again. And how frustrating when a leader has already done untold damage to his people and his nation, and he still has several more years in office to go. But that’s evil for you; no matter how awful some leaders are they somehow remain in office, like Hitler who survived at least forty two plots to kill him.     

So what are we supposed to learn from all this? Well, God offered an answer to that in the book of Job. God made a deal with Job, that if Job could stop evil “then I God will admit to you that your own right hand can save you,” Job 40:14 (starting in verse 6).     

There’s the challenge, and what leader has succeeded in meeting it? None, because no human leader has a snowball’s chance in hell of stopping evil. That’s God’s point. It’s beyond our human capacity. But leaders keep on promising to “bring in change,” “build back better,” and make their nation great again, and sometimes there is a period of hope and change, but power so often corrupts.  

What hope have any of us got, therefore, especially as the lunacy gets worse, of a nice, normal life without the fear and frustration of another madman dragging us into war or bankruptcy? 

Well, when Jesus was nearing the end of his rope he left us with a way to cope and a way to hope. It was his simple statement to God, “Not my will, but your will be done.” He accepted that, for now, evil must have its way with us humans, because that was God’s will. God “subjected this creation to futility,” Romans 8:20, but “in the hope that” one day we’ll be free of evil forever (verse 21). 

And that’s what got Jesus through the most trying time of his life. And now it’s his will to see us through too. So rather than resort to what I’d like to do about these leaders – let his will be done, not mine.  

God’s all for kings and queens – and he said as much in Genesis 1:26-28 when creating male and female humans in his image. In his own words he said “let them rule over” the earth and its creatures. And the Hebrew word for rule, radah (rah-dah), really meant govern or reign. So in Genesis we’re introduced to King Adam and Queen Eve. 

We’re also introduced in Genesis 3 to the problem that royalty has been up against ever since. It’s the evil thought put into their heads that they are more than kings and queens, they are also gods, verse 5. This has led to all sorts of unsavoury behaviour by ruling monarchs, who don’t take kindly to peasants, serfs, plebs and ordinary hard-working folk rising up in protest and demanding change. Such cheek from the “deplorables” has stirred many a reigning monarch to retaliate with violence and severe penalties.  

But God did warn the Israelites who so desperately wanted a king that “This is what the kings who will reign over you will do,” and what follows in 1 Samuel 8 is an eerily accurate description of monarchs through the ages exploiting their people rather than serving them. Not all of them have been that awful, but even a man after God’s own heart, King David, abused his power by having the husband of the woman he wanted killed. 

The history of the monarchy in England hasn’t exactly been prim and proper either. King Charles the first was convicted of high treason in 1649 and had his head chopped off, and kings were actually abolished after that. The Scots, however, proclaimed his son king and crowned him Charles 11 in 1651, but he ended up in exile for nine years after being trounced by the English. Rocky roads for both father and son.  

I wonder how many kings through the ages, therefore, took note of that little gem of advice to monarchy in Proverbs 29:14, that “If a king judges the poor with fairness, his throne will always be secure.”  

Note that it’s his attitude to the less fortunate in his realm that commands respect. He doesn’t treat their cries as an insult, nor does he scuttle off into hiding when his people are driven to protest. “The righteous,” verse 7 – those truly representing God – “care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.” 

It’s such a simple formula that identifies a good monarch from a bad one. And King Solomon, for all his faults, knew that. In Psalm 72:1 he begged God, “Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness,” for with that help from God, verse 12, “he (the king) will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help,” and in verse 13, “he will take pity on the weak and the needy.” 

So with that in mind, are kings and queens a good idea? Yes, because with God’s help they can be a wonderful power for good. “By justice a king gives a country stability,” Proverbs 29:4. He doesn’t divide a country and set people against each other. He unites a country with a simple statement, “Where’s the need and how can we help?”   

Imagine having a king or queen like that. So that when death comes there’s a queue of people stretching back for miles wanting to honour a life humbly lived in service and duty.  

So said God in Exodus 12:12 in his promise to the Israelites to wrench them free from Egypt. Their freedom, therefore, would come with the destruction of the Egyptian gods. It’s not surprising, then, that the ten plagues God inflicted on the Egyptians each pictured an Egyptian god or goddess – including Pharaoh himself, who was also worshipped as a god. 

God “brought judgment” by turning the gods the Egyptians worshipped against them. The river Nile, for instance, was a manifestation of the god Hapi, greatly celebrated by the Egyptians for bringing life to the land in the rich silt deposited in the annual flood. Imagine the shock in the first plague, then, when God turned the life-giving water of the Nile into blood. Hapi (ironically pronounced ‘happy’) was now a killer.  

With this in mind, then, does God do plagues today to bring judgment on our gods too – and by the same means as well, by turning our gods against us? 

Well, for most of my life I’ve given god-like status to several highly honoured institutions for having my best interests at heart. I watched the nightly news, for instance, believing it was being presented by an honourable profession dedicated to reporting truth. I went to my Doctor, believing that the treatment he or she recommended was based on the expertise of their medical training. I voted for a party and party leader, believing their policies were based on their sincere desire to serve. 

But then along came the Covid 19 virus and what a terrible shock to find out that Big Pharma, Big Tech, along with mainstream media, government officials, medical management and other assorted global influencers, had sold their souls to the devil putting money, greed and profits ahead of accuracy, care and service. And by turning a blind eye to the injuries and fatalities they were causing, it had turned them into killers too. 

They’re not so much “gods” now, are they? They have done irreparable damage to their professions and their prestige, which sounds very much like judgment has been brought upon them too. And not surprising who by either, Romans 1:18, because “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” And in Romans 2:8, “for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.” 

So now where do we turn when our respected institutions cannot be trusted? But could it be that God brought judgment on them to free us from our dependence on them? So at last we realize there is only one source we can trust in, who really does have our best interests at heart. And he’s more than willing to prove that to us when we turn to him for help – just like he did with the Israelites in Egypt. 

The above is from Philippians 4:8 that “whatever is true and honest, whatever is just, pure, lovely, and of good report, and if there’s anything excellent and worthy of praise, think on these things.”

But how can anyone keep their minds on all eight of those things in a world where so few of those things exist? And especially among the leaders and those who are supposed to be setting us an example too. 

But there is hope, because some really awful, nauseating people in high office can and do repent – like Saul (the future Paul) who switched almost overnight from being a member of the vicious elite that seek to crush those they view as a threat, to becoming a humble, obedient servant totally dedicated to God’s purpose (Acts 26:16-19).  

For me that’s something worth “thinking on,” because if it happened to a blaspheming, violent thug like Saul (1 Timothy 1:13), then what’s to stop it happening to narcissistic, godless thugs in office today too? Saul was a nasty piece of work, like many of the rich elite in our world today who are drunk on power, prestige and money and exerting their weird ideas on us poor plebs, but think instead on the excellence and praise of a God who can knock a power-mad monster like Saul off his high horse in such a way that Saul could respond and repent. 

God was amazing, because he took into account Saul’s “ignorance and unbelief” (verse 13). And even if it was willing ignorance on Saul’s part it did not deter God from “pouring out his grace abundantly” even on “the worst of sinners,” so that we now have this vivid picture in Paul of God’s “unlimited patience” (verse 16). 

For my own mental health that is far more worth thinking on than “doom scrolling” through the madness on the internet that leaves me wondering at times if God is even involved at all in stopping evil. But Paul could say from experience, “Don’t let all that nonsense get to you. Think instead on what God did to the likes of me.” 

And think instead on what God did through Paul too. When Paul was Saul he set his murderous sights on wiping out thousands, but as Paul he became God’s instrument in the salvation of millions. And through Paul God has equipped billions of us through the centuries with the knowledge and means of overcoming the insanity and mind-destroying antics of evil.     

And in Paul we also see Philippians 4:8 being possible, because he was true, honest, just, pure in his motives and a lovely man to know. He loved hearing good reports about others (Colossians 1:3-6), and he gushed in his letters about things excellent and worthy of praise that others had done. Paul could say with relish in Philippians 4:9, then, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice,” because he knew from his own experience that in living such a life “the God of peace will be with you” (verse 9).

And what if our leaders caught on to that too? Well, the hope is always there that they will, because God got to Saul and look what he turned out to be instead. Something worth thinking on – for our own peace of mind as well.  

The Great Reset to build a better world is the brainchild of the World Economic Forum and its founder, Klaus Schwab. It gained global infamy from an essay it published in 2016 entitled, “Welcome to 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better.” In it, the writer (Danish MP Ida Auken) states: “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy. Whatever you want you’ll rent and it’ll be delivered by drone.” By 2030 she predicts we won’t own a house, a car, appliances or even clothes; they will all be rented to us. And every move we make will be tracked by mass surveillance.

It’s not surprising, then, that Schwab’s Great Reset has been compared to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which tell of how ordinary people can be made into powerless slaves by oppressive, malevolent dictators.

But Jesus did warn us in Matthew 20:25 that “the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them.” And history is full of them, like the wealthy feudal lords in Medieval England reducing the peasants to mere slaves. But somehow these brutish types weasel themselves into power and get away with exploiting people for their own ends – just like Jesus said they would.

It was jolly refreshing, then, to hear a leader of a political party speak of getting back to “the good old traditional values” our western societies were built on, described by George Orwell in 1939 as the “Judaeo-Christian scheme of morals.” Which is really saying “based on the Bible,” since both Jews and Christians take their cue from Scripture.

As a youngster I was very fortunate to grow up in a village where those scriptural values were part and parcel of the community, thanks a great deal to the little church on the hill where most people gathered every Sunday. But I didn’t realize until I left the village for the big, wide world, what that church did to the village. It created a safe, caring community. We didn’t need to lock our doors, and on arriving back from a two week holiday we found a vase of flowers on the kitchen table. Anyone in need was taken care of, and there were all sorts of clubs catering to those with similar interests and talents.

Such was the influence of a Christian church. But Paul did define church as “the pillar and foundation of the truth,” 1 Timothy 3:15.

“Church,” in other words, is where the truth is being lived – and lived in such a way in ordinary people’s lives it can be seen as right and true. It’s a living prototype of the world as God intended it to be, full of care for each other, where burdens, joys and needs are shared, people’s talents are directed to serving others, and all ages are respected, without the nonsense of divisive social classes.

And isn’t that “the truth” we all desperately wish the entire world would pursue? But that’s what Jesus set up his church for, to be a witness to it being possible – to a Great Reset that really works.