FROM THE PASTOR’S HEART OP-ED BY DR. ROBERT KENNEDY
I do not know that you are one of those who might believe what I am about to reference as a reality, but in some parts of the world, some individuals hold as a reality that they can put “a curse” or what they call “a spell,” upon others.
Of course, when you hear of such a thing, it might cause you to laugh at them, thinking that they are so primitive. But please stop the laughter if you are, because while you, and, I should say, we, might be living in what is called a more civilized world, we can look around and see people who are doing such wicked things that we have to say they have “a curse” or “a spell” upon them.
I do not think I need to call the names of many, but when we think of cursed individuals, we have to think in the contemporary frame of Hitler. I just reread a brief of his story and note that he is called “one of history’s most diabolical monsters.” And it is of interest because of the dramatic rescue that took place in his life when he was still a boy.
When he was only four years old, living in Batavia, he and another little boy of five years were playing “Cowboys and Indians” together when he slipped off an embankment into a river and nearly drowned, except that the five-year-old Johann Keuhberger jumped in after him and saved him. Johann went on to become a priest, while Hitler went on to become one of the world’s most monstrous men, killing over six million Jews, millions of Christians, and others who would not submit to his cause.
Let me also reference the monster, Pol Pot, who led the Communist Party (the Khmer Rouge) of Cambodia in carrying out the genocide that took the lives of between one to two million of his people. Many of them were buried in mass graves in what would be called the Killing Fields of Cambodia.
And do not forget Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, or American serial killer and sex offender who killed about 17 victims between 1978 and 1991. What made his crimes most gruesome was that he would put his victims in a refrigerator, cook pieces at a time, and eat. He was killed in prison by a fellow inmate in 1994.
I think you have seen the common thread that fits in the lives of the people I have named above. They are monstrous and cruel. They are “sick,” you might say, “demon-possessed.” They have no sensitivity for those who feel pain. They can watch the most wicked actions without feeling any sense of empathy. They are hateful. They cross every line of decency of what might be called human morality. They stand out a lot.
But I am sure you can add to my list of persons with similar egregious crimes, in the times that Hitler, Pol Pot, and Jeffrey Dahmer lived and in our time. What I am hoping is that you do not miss the point that I, while we focus on these most monstrous of persons who have come into our world, you understand the potential that all human beings have to be just like them, since the Fall cited in Genesis 3 and the curse that we have brought upon ourselves.
In the reality of the Fall and the original curse, the prophet Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9 KJV). The immediate context in which Jeremiah speaks is that of Judah’s sinfulness despite all the blessings of God.
As Jeremiah 17:1 says, “Judah’s sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and the horns of their altars.” You might say that is a harsh commentary from the prophet, but the apostle Paul says the same of ungodly humanity. In Romans 1: 29-32, he notes, “They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.
“They are gossipers, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.”
The apostle says the same to the Jewish people to whom he was writing in Rome, “What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away; they have together become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.’ ‘The poison of vipers is on their lips.’ ‘Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways and the way of peace they do not know.’ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.'” (Romans 3:9-18 KJV).
While not every person will commit all the sins listed above, every person has the potential because of the curse. And we should not try to deny it. In the words of C.S. Lewis, we need to stop obfuscating by saying words like, “I do not think that it is our fault that we cannot tell the real truth about ourselves; the persistent, life-long inner murmur of spite, jealousy, prurience, greed, and self-complacence (that) simply will not go into words. But the important thing is that we should not mistake our inevitably limited utterances for a full account of the worst that is inside.” (see The Problem of Pain, p. 60).
The point of appeal that I am making is that we need to own the reality of the curse upon us. We also need to ask the Lord God to help us get rid of it, because without such help, we are sure to do some awful things, if not like Hitler, Pol Pot or Jeffrey Dahmer, like one of those described in the writings of the apostle Paul or the common crime lists of our day.
May God help us take responsibility for the egregious acts we commit, submit our lives to him and avert the curse.
