Halloween.  It scarred me forever—in a good way.

 I’m not talking about being freaked out by a Freddy Krueger costume (why does our culture gravitate toward such gore?).   I’m talking about a lesson I learned on a neighbor’s front porch when I was a kid.

That October, Dad assembled us four boys one night, and we dug up a bucket of dirt from the garden.  We took it inside the kitchen and wetted it down to the consistency of mud (protective newspapers on the table, of course).  Dad patted, carved, and shaped humorous faces in 3D.  When the mud dried, we applied paper- mache over the hardened faces.  He then sprayed the masks with life-like skin tone and wrinkles, finally fastening an elastic strap. 

So off we went that Halloween sporting cool new masks.  One problem: the eye slits in my mask were a tad undersized—and maybe misaligned with my eyeballs.  So seeing out of the thing was a bit iffy.  At one home, I stood there as candy plopped into bags and a man finally yelled that he'd already put something in my candy bag.  As if I was being greedy and hoping for more. But I simply couldn’t see!

Though the guy was grumpy and it scared me, I've never forgotten that message—to say thank you.  What a great gift we would pass on if we made an effort to demand (yes, it requires that) of our children and grandchildren that they learn to verbally express gratitude.  Not just for a piece of candy—but for anything good that comes their way.

As believers, we love to trot out that greatest of worry-busting verses, Philippians 4:6.  But is it possible we have undersized the role of a thankful heart?  The verse says in everything “with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”  In other words, say thanks along with the request!

Is your vision of gratitude a bit like my mask—a tad undersized?  Best get this fixed!  Failing to learn gratitude is a trick nobody appreciates—least of all our Heavenly Father.

How much do you think about heaven? 

The angel, Gabriel, flew down from the celestial glories to visit a pastor as he prepared a sermon on heaven. The angel promised he would answer the pastor's single most pressing question about life in the bliss to come.  So the pastor asked Gabriel if there would be golf courses in heaven, and if so, what was their condition.

“Pastor, you’ll be excited to know we certainly have golf courses in heaven,” the angel smiled. “The fairways are, of course, immaculate. The scenery is agonizingly beautiful.  What’s more, I looked at the schedule and noted we have you down for a foursome—-this Saturday morning!”

Everybody wants to go to heaven.  Just not today.  Why?  More to the point, why do we secretly feel so drawn to this world—and distracted from the world to come? I admit that I resonate with Richard Baxter.  In his classic book, "The Saint's Everlasting Rest," he asks tough questions:

“What interest has this empty world in me?  What is there in it that seems so lovely, as to entice my desires from God, or make me loathe to come away?   When I look upon earth with a deliberate eye, it is a howling wilderness, and too many of its inhabitants are untamed monsters.” 

Our preoccupation with the here and now is at odds with Scripture. 1 John 2:15 warns, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him.”

Perhaps Baxter's most persuasive argument comes with his observation, "So much as the world is loved and delighted in, it hurts and endangers the lover.  And if it may not be loved, why should it be desired?”

Do you struggle to love the idea of heaven?  You are not alone. But let's not give up.  The answer is to continually "Set your mind on things above," as Paul urges in Colossians 3. After all, heaven is not so far.

“Yonder is the region of light!  This is a land of darkness.  Yonder twinkling stars, that shining moon, and radiant sun, are all but lanterns hung out by your Father’s house; to light you while you walk in this dark world.”

It’s time to get honest with God about heaven.  Time to set our hearts—and our minds—on “things above.”   Baxter’s brief prayer says it best:

"O, let not this flesh so seduce my soul, as to make it prefer this weary life before the joys that are about your throne!"

The gravel crackled underfoot, as we trudged to our next stop at Auschwitz.  Here, 1,300,000 people were imprisoned between 1940 and 1945—with only 200,000 surviving.   Among other displays, we stared at shoes.  Hundreds of pairs—all belonging to little children who were slaughtered—composed a portrait of agony crafted in leather. We winced at the piles of women’s hair the Nazis shaved off of their victims. There were confiscated combs and pots and pans and suitcases—almost all still bearing their owners’ names.

A sensation like emotional nausea clamped my stomach as I pondered the 1.1 million who were tortured, starved, shot, gassed (2,000 lives per hour, thanks to Zyklon B gas pellets) and burned.

We had just walked through the courtyard where thousands of prisoners were executed against a brick wall.  Next, we hiked down to a basement complex where so-called trouble makers were starved or poisoned to death. 

Two-inch round door windows revealed cement floors, hangman’s hooks, crude toilets and the potential for inhumanity without equal.  The spiritual darkness of such evil is palpable in this basement more than 75 years later.

Yet walking away from Auschwitz, I am left with a different kind of heaviness. On the ledger of history, Auschwitz is recorded as a German catastrophe, a German wickedness.  While it happened to be Germans who created this death factory, the truth is, Auschwitz is alive and well in the heart of every unredeemed human.  The point is not just that Auschwitz happened (horrible as it was)—but that it is now happening—and will always be in the process of happening.  The danger is our inability or unwillingness to see it.

Consider that between 1986 and 1989, 8% of the Kurdish population of Iraq was killed. In the 1994 Rwanda genocide, as many as one million were slaughtered. Today we have Darfur, Sudan and ISIS and on and on.

Jealousy, hatred, and pride all lead to the same place.  It’s the place where marginalizing and suffering and persecution become our daily bread, with torture and death our familiar drink.

When the Bible says “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” this is not a reference to Nazis.  It is a reference to all of unredeemed humanity. 

Apart from Christ, we are all mockers, haters and killers.  So apart from Christ and His capacity to heal all hatred, there will always be another Auschwitz. 

Let us be warned. Sharing the gospel is not just “nice.”  It is not merely “important”—it is imperative!

Two light squeezes on the trigger.

Two lead bullets from the barrel.

One dead brother on the ground.

Now, you stand before your brother’s killer in a courtroom that has just sentenced him to ten years in prison. Given the opportunity, what would you say to the murderer?

Eighteen-year-old Brant Jean experienced that moment as he locked eyes with Amber Guyger, the Dallas police officer who took the life of his older brother on September 6, 2018.  At the sentencing, Brant seized a moment to address his brother's killer.

What would you have said?  Angry words?  Raging words?  No one could blame you.

But looking straight at Amber Guyger, this is what Brant Jean told the killer in quiet, measured tones:

“I speak for myself.  I forgive you.  And I know if you go to God and ask, He will forgive you...I love you just like anyone else.  I'm not gonna say I hope you rot and die just like my brother. I personally want the best for you. I wasn’t gonna say this in front of my family or anyone.  But I don’t even want you to go to jail. I want the best for you. The best thing would be to give your life to Christ. I think giving your life to Christ, that would be the best thing that Botham would want. Again, I love you as a person.  And I don’t wish anything bad for you.”

Brant then made a request of Judge Tammy Kemp.  “I don't know if this even possible, but could I give her a hug, please?  Please?”

The judge gave her approval, and Brant Jean wrapped his arms around Amber Guyger, who wept.  Loudly.

Nor were her tears the only ones in that courtroom.

There are a whole lot of folks saying a whole lot of things about racial reconciliation these days. But what Brandt said with his hug and his forgiveness was more than profound.  It was like Jesus Himself.

“For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

--Matthew 6:14,15

I spent a rare evening watching TV the other night.  As networks do, they promoted the living daylights out of their fall lineup.  At the top of the heap: “Television’s number one new drama, ‘Evil.’”

So successful is their search engine optimization, that if you Google “Evil,” at the top of the list is this "American drama series." As if evil itself were a distinctly American value or cultural distinctive.  Or is that actually the truth?

93% of Google users like this new TV show and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a respectable rating of 81%.  One reviewer describes it as “Like ‘X-Files’ for spiritual and supernatural phenomena.”

Not having seen an episode, I’ll not comment on the content.  My issue is with the title.  CBS deliberately chose this wording entirely confident that "Evil" would be intriguing—even favorable—-to a vast swathe of Americans. And apparently, it is.

That, folks, is a problem.

It is one thing for evil to be present in society—what society could ever claim to have ever been free of its claws?  It is quite another to celebrate it.  Which is what television is doing.

Jesus prayed, "Deliver us from evil." But increasingly, our culture is drawn to it.  Far from the maxim, to "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil," we embrace it, engage it, and enjoy it.

As Francis Schaefer asked so many years ago, "How should we then live?" Philippians 4:8 cuts right to the chase:

“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

God help America when evil is “an American Drama.”