Prayer, the Problem of Evil, and the Place of Tradition
God’s solution to the universal problem of evil doesn’t change, from place to place or culture to culture. Prayer is the standard. In fact, part of the transformation that Christianity brings to each culture is how it seeks supernatural intervention. Philippi was also the place where Paul met a slave girl with a spirit of divination. Through that spirit she “brought her owners much gain by fortune-telling” (Acts 16:16). Other spiritual forces and religious practices existed in Philippi. They even appear to possess a degree of power and ‘success.’ Yet Paul says to the people living there: pray about everything. The Christian faith doesn’t deny supernatural intervention. Instead God redirects us away from the traditions, things, places, and people to himself. Thus we pray: “deliver us from evil.”
The problem of evil is one that all humans face. We might debate the details of its origin or how to resolve it, but we generally agree on its existence. In this article I will be reflecting on how the Bible exhorts Christians to seek deliverance from evil, in relation to the temptation to combine African traditional religions with the Christian faith.
In traditional African religions, as Adamo says, evil is both moral and physical; it “concerns any misfortune that befalls an individual or community or any voluntary antisocial behaviour or any infringement of the decrees of God, the deity or the ancestors.” This is why “propitiatory sacrifices become one of the major ways by which Africans deliver themselves from the effects of evil in the world.” Because the need for sacrifices are embedded both in many Africans’ religious outlook as well as culture, it’s a very difficult practice to abandon.
In this article I reflect on the biblical solution for seeking deliverance from evil, and how this speaks into our traditional practices. Can Africans be in Christ and continue with sacrifices? Should African Christians consult the ancestors or the local sangoma for deliverance? How does the Bible exhort Africans to seek deliverance from the problem of evil? Will we find salvation through a blend of the Christian faith and traditional practices?
The Lord’s Prayer: “Deliver Us from Evil”
The Bible gives one solution for seeking deliverance from evil: prayer (Matthew 6:13). Now, this can be difficult for us to hear, especially considering that our worldview provides us with various alternatives that promise to resolve our problems. Practices handed down by our forefathers, which we’ve implemented and seen fruits from. When we ask our neighbours or family, they recommend one thing when we’re suffering. But Jesus teaches that prayer is foundational. It is the greatest tool at our disposal, when seeking deliverance from evil.
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Five Books to Help You Give Your Children God’s Word
Parents of young children feel the pressure of Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he shall not depart from it.” This word of encouragement can easily be twisted to a word of guilt—as if my children’s belief in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and their love for his word and his saints is all up to me.
But there’s good news: you, dear parent, you are not alone! God has given you his word, and wherever God’s word is, there Jesus is! God is with you in his word.
Here are five books that can help you give your children the word of God and the faith that comes through hearing the word of God (Rom. 10:17). Make a routine of reading books like these—or the very words of the Bible—with your children. You may not see it right away, but you’re planting the seeds of God’s word in your children’s heart (Mk. 4:26–32; Is. 55:10–11).
1. The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible
Age range: 2–5 years old (Click to View Product)
There’s no shortage of children’s storybook Bibles, but The Beginner’s Gospel Story Bible stands out among the crowd. In short, friendly, and bright prose, Jared Kennedy recounts fifty-two Bible stories (twenty-six from the Old Testament and twenty-six from the New Testament). Every story ends by pointing to Jesus: how does this story show our Lord Jesus and the good news that he forgives our sins and gives us his life through his death and resurrection. Trish Mahoney’s vibrant illustrations provide children enough to look at and wonder while they listen.
Each story takes about two minutes to read, so it’s easy to read a whole story every day. (Although my own children like to interact with some of the stories and so sometimes it’s more like three or four minutes.) Jared’s words help draw out the reader in every parent—helping us to read with energy and excitement.
2. Jesus and the Lions’ Den: A True Story about How Daniel Points Us to Jesus
Age range: 3–6 years old (Click to View Product)
Each book in the The Good Book Company’s Tales That Tell the Truth series presents a simple and friendly biblical theology—sometimes by telling a specific Bible story (e.g. when Jesus calmed the storm), sometimes by presenting the full arc of the Bible (e.g. creation, fall, redemption), sometimes by focusing on a Christian practice (e.g. prayer). All of the books are filled with Catalina Echeverri’s vibrant colors and inviting imagery!
In Jesus and the Lion’s Den, Alison Mitchell shows children and their parents how to read the Bible as a book that gives us Jesus. Mitchell walks through the story of Daniel being sent to and delivered from the lions’ den. Throughout the story Escheverri has hidden a lion symbol that lets readers know a “Jesus moment” is present. The book ends by setting each Jesus moment in the story of Daniel next to a story from Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Now parents and their children can try finding the Jesus moments in the Bible on their own!
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Heeding the Warning
We belong to God and his desire is for us. That is stronger than any desire sin may have. As we seek to heed God’s warnings and avoid the danger of sin crouching at our door, we do not do so in our strength but in his mighty power, knowing that we are his.
If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it. Genesis 4:7
Last Friday was Mountain Day in Japan, a public holiday to encourage people to take some time off in the summer and enjoy the mountains. I decided to brave the heat and climb a mid-sized mountain. At the entrance to the trail, however, I was faced with a warning sign: Beware of Bears! On average bears kill 1 or 2 people every year in Japan and injure several others. As I pondered whether to risk climbing the mountain, another climber appeared so I figured it was safe if I followed him. Some others had obviously heeded the warning and had bells hanging from their rucksacks to warn any bears off.
For the past few days in Japan we have been hearing warnings about a typhoon making landfall today in the west of the country. Flights and trains in that area have been cancelled and people have been urged to take precautions and stay alert. Japan is a country with a lot of natural dangers such as earthquakes, flooding, mudslides, tsunamis and tornados, so it has developed sophisticated warning systems, including alarms on our phones and loud public announcements. Giving people warnings about a coming danger means that they can take action to try to stay safe.
Recently I was reading the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 and was struck there by the warning that God gave Cain. I imagine that most of you know the story of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain, the older son, worked the soil and his younger brother, Abel, kept flocks. In the course of time the two brothers brought offerings to the Lord. Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil and Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.
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In Praise of the Boring, Uncool Church
In a world of dizzyingly disposable trends, so much seems to collapse as quickly as it arrives: brands, celebrities, movements, institutions, ideas. When we misconstrue faith as just another thing in the consumerist stew, it too becomes a flash-in-the-pan fashion, as fragile and fickle as the latest viral trend on TikTok. The life of Christian faith should be altogether different: a long obedience, a slow burn, a quiet diligence to pursue Jesus faithfully, with others in community, in good times and bad, for better or for worse.
“Hillsong, Once a Leader of Christian Cool, Loses Footing in America.”
By now, headlines like this one (from a March 29 New York Times article by Ruth Graham) have become sadly predictable. It seems almost every “leader of Christian cool”—whether a tattooed celebrity pastor or a buzzy nightclub church—flames out and loses its footing fairly quickly. Which is not at all surprising. By their very nature, things that are cool are ephemeral. What’s fashionable is, by the necessity of the rules of fashion, quickly obsolete.
This is one of many reasons why chasing cool is a fool’s errand for churches and pastors, as I argue in my book Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide. If you prioritize short-term trendiness, your ministry impact will likely be short-lived. If you care too much about being “relatable” and attractive to the fickle tastes of any given generation or cultural context, the transcendence of Christianity and the prophetic power of the gospel will be shrunk and shaped to the contours of the zeitgeist. Relevance-focused Christianity sows the seeds of its own obsolescence. It’s a bad idea. It rarely ends well.
Lament and Learn
From the Mars Hills to the Hillsongs (and countless others), it’s tragic to see churches fail—however predictable and ill-advised the “cool church” arc may be. We don’t rejoice over this. We should lament and learn.
What are the lessons?
For one, these headlines ought to remind us that relevance is no substitute for reverence and indeed may compromise it. The Christian life shouldn’t be oriented around being liked; it should be oriented around loving God and loving others. Far more important than being fashionable is being faithful. Far more crucial than keeping up with the Joneses is staying rooted in God’s unchanging Word.
Things like confession and repentance, daily obedience to the whole counsel of Scripture, and quiet commitment to spiritual disciplines aren’t cutting edge and won’t land you in a GQ profile about “hypepriests.” But these are the things that make up a healthy, sustainable, “long obedience in the same direction” faith. And with every hip church that closes and celebrity pastor who falls, more and more Christians are hopefully waking up to this fact.
Maybe boring, uncool, unabashedly churchy church is actually a good thing. Maybe a Christianity that doesn’t appeal to my consumer preferences and take its cues from Twitter is exactly the sort of faith I need.
Short-Term Success, Long-Term Failure
It’s counterintuitive, though. In the moment, a large church crowded with 20-somethings—eager to hear the celebrity pastor’s sermon and enthusiastic in their singing of arena-rock worship songs—seems like an unassailable triumph. Because our metrics for success in the American church have for so long mirrored the metrics of market-driven capitalism (bigger is always better; audience is king), we assume if a “cool church” is packed to the gills with cool kids, it’s working.
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