Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And today, in this election season, when it's not always easy to tell the righteous from the wicked, the good from the bad, we want to focus today a little bit on what does evil government look like and how can we spot it? How can we know it when we see it? Now, few people have done a more thorough job of portraying the classic struggle between good and evil in our generation, at least in my opinion, than George Lucas in Star Wars.

Is anything more clearly evil than the Dark Empire ruled by Emperor Palpatine, who was a fallen Jedi Knight, Darth Sidious? If all evil governments were as transparently wicked as the Empire with dust stars, pale faceless stormtroopers, devilish creature, rulers, one who's a half man, half machine in black plastic, whose every breath sounds as if it comes through a dysfunctional respirator, that's Darth Vader, and the other a dwarf warlock in a black hood, that's Emperor Palpatine. Why, if we could spot evil government like this, it'd be no problem to say, that's an evil government.

But once we understand that these movies are not only rollicking good tales that entertain and spellbind us, but also they are vivid, tangible pictures of intangible spiritual realities that are spiritually discerned. Once we recognize this, we're able to look for the truths, the principles, the realities, and then apply them to our time. Now, I admire Lucas for his commitment to study the ancient myths of history in order to create one that fast-forwards into the future of space. Lucas was a close friend of Joseph Campbell.

Now, some of you may recognize him as a mythologist, the author of books like Masks of God and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Campbell incorporated these things. Lucas incorporated what he learned from Campbell in our DNA regarding good and evil that last week we saw to be natural law. Evil can be crisply biblically defined. Here is my short definition of evil, and I've taken this once again, just telescope this from men like Lucas and Campbell and other writers that we'll explore here a little bit later today.

Evil, the active personal state of the soul consciously set against God and his program characterized by narcissism, rebellion, and deceit. This is evil, a short definition of evil. The active personal state of the soul consciously set against God and his program characterized by narcissism, rebellion, and deceit. Yet without the stark contrast of the absolute good personified in the living God of the Bible, evil, no satisfactory definition of evil can be obtained or seen. All other definitions descend into triviality or relativism, like William James' definition of evil without God.

Evil is a disease, he said, which became the byword of modern psychiatry. And I submit to you, dear listener, behold, the fruit of such treatment in the 20th century, which is perhaps the most evil century in history. The only true account of an active personal state of the soul is a personification of evil, the supernatural creature, the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil or Satan, as Revelation 21 verse 2 says.

Just as all good men take as their model of life and behavior the God of righteousness who made them, so all evil men, that is those who have given themselves over to serving wickedness, take as their model of life and behavior the Lord of evil who has seduced them. Good and evil do not contend on a neutral evolutionary stage, but rather within the grand pageant of history, a history that the Bible assures us will be found victorious by the eternal God of the Bible who will defeat the created being, Satan.

The devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, the Bible says, where the beast and the false prophet have been thrown. They will be tormented day and night forever and ever. This is the ultimate end of evil. But until then, we human beings contend upon this stage of history, good versus evil, righteousness versus wickedness, God versus Lucifer. And before we can properly combat evil without becoming evil ourselves, we must have a clear and distinct definition of evil.

The active personal state of the soul consciously set against God and his program, characterized by narcissism, rebellion, and deceit. In this regard, note with me, I speak here of a deep theological evil in which some men willingly go to hell, consciously practice evil, exultantly indulge in what they know in their super ego to be wickedness, knowing full well they serve a Lord at war with God. I also want to emphasize with you that evil is characterized by narcissism. Satan is absorbed in self. His minions are likewise absorbed in self.

When God created that sweet angel of light, Lucifer, the Bible says, you were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, anointed a guardian cherub, blameless in all your ways, the Bible says. And like Lucifer, the narcissist cannot put down the mirror. He cannot put down the megaphone speaking of himself, and he cannot tolerate any put down either of what he is and what he does. Also, evil is characterized by rebellion. Satan was a rebel against God from the beginning.

Revelation tells us that there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The dragon being Satan. The great dragon was hurled down, that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray.

As Revelation 12 tells us, and ever since, evil men are opponents of God and his program. Rebels against righteousness, rebels against the good, rebels against the salvation offered to lost mankind. Well, evil is not only rebellion and narcissism, but evil is also characterized by lies and deceit. Jesus got it right when he said that the devil is a liar and the father of lies. The devil lied to our first parents, Adam and Eve, and the devil persists in lying to his subsequent children, you and me.

The devil promises life and blessing and truth and delivers only death, curse, and lies. He masquerades as an angel of light, as Paul says, but brings only spiritual darkness. All Christians owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. M. Scott Peck, from whom I have derived part of my definition of evil. M. Scott Peck, who was a psychiatrist who wrote what still must be considered the definitive modern perspective on evil, people of the lie, the hope for healing human evil, unquote. The title of M. Scott Book's classic book, People of the Lie.

Dr. Peck is a Christian and professional psychiatrist. He's not afraid to look into the human soul and say, there is evil there. Peck has done pioneering work in defining for the modern mind the nature not only of evil in the individual soul, but also that of the group, which I want to focus on here today. Groups commit evil. How could an entire nation like early 20th century Germany visit upon the earth the atrocities of World War II and the Holocaust?

How could the small ruling circle of the Soviet Union's Politburo under Joseph Stalin perpetuate the evils of famine and war and torture, confinement in the gulags, and sheer brutal murder of some 56 million of its own citizens? And how could Army C Company of 1st Battalion under Lieutenant William Calley slaughter defenseless men, women, and children of the village of Mai Lai in Vietnam in 1968? This latter group action was the purview of then Army psychiatrist M. Scott Peck. In his research, Peck analyzed the psychology of group dynamics, which we apply to government, group dynamics.

And he came to some startling and revealing conclusion as to how and why an individual who would shrink from committing evil as an individual, nevertheless willingly, enthusiastically commit evil as part of a group. This is why governments commit evil. Peck points out, number one, individuals in groups and governments experience a fragmentation of conscience, a fragmentation of conscience. Individuals in groups and governments experience a fragmentation of their conscience. Each individual within the group contributes to the overall purpose of the group with his or her own specialized role.

That might be confiscation of the public's wealth in the Internal Revenue Service, seizure and control of the public's resources in the Environmental Protection Agency, or maybe propagandistic control of the media by the Federal Communications Commission. All these kinds of government actions implicit within the very nature of a group task is a diffusion of the responsibility amongst all the members of the group, leading to what Peck describes as a fragmentation of conscience. Under such circumstances, Peck says it becomes both possible and easy for the individual to pass the moral buck to some other part of the group.

Peck goes on to say, in this way, not only does the individual forsake his conscience, but the conscience of the group as a whole can become so fragmented and diluted as to be non-existent. Unquote. A non-existent conscience in government. Evil becomes no longer the exception of government, but the rule, the norm, the expected of every member of the group. Thus, the Internal Revenue Service can target political enemies for audit and status denials without conscience.

The ATF, the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau can slaughter men, women, and children in a holocaust at Waco without conscience. And your military will be used against you, dear listener, as it was in Ferguson, Missouri, the citizen to brutalize and terrorize your home, family, and business without conscience. The fragmentation of conscience is a tactic employed by government leaders for centuries, and it is happening here, dear listener. Your government and all of its bureaus and agencies and SWAT teams and police and tactical units are being groomed to plunder, abuse, and tyrannize you with a fragmented conscience.

Secondly, Peck also points out that narcissism not only characterizes individuals, but government agencies issuing in evil defensive actions. Narcissism plays a role in government as well. One of Peck's most concise and effective insights is that of the narcissism of the evil personality, whether individual or collective, as in the Soviet Union's Politburo, the Jewish Sanhedrin that crucified Jesus, or even President Obama's White House staff, the narcissism resident within these groups. Narcissism is love of and desire for the self.

It is egotism personified, the beautiful youth of Greek mythology, Narcissus, who ignores his equally beautiful female consort in order to gaze with love and desire at his own reflection in the surface of a pool. Narcissus eventually falls into the pool and drowns, highly emblematic of the emotional and spiritual effect of narcissism. The narcissist is unable to see beyond the importance and exaltation of anyone or anything than himself. He must have Greek pillars at his nomination. He must have fainting women at his speeches.

He must have fawning sycophants in the media who get a thrill up their leg. All must be sacrificed to the narcissist's needs and desires. The narcissist cannot put down the mirror, cannot put down the megaphone speaking of himself, and he cannot tolerate any put down either of what he is and what he does. No whiff of criticism or rejection can be tolerated, especially critical media, which we must monitor and control. Rage and tears and stammering protest, excuse-making, it's George Bush's fault.

Blame-setting, it's still George Bush's fault. And brooding fury characterized the response of the narcissist to criticism. Perhaps the most fearful aspect of the narcissistic personality is an inability for empathy, the impossibility of putting oneself in another's place to imagine their human experience, empathy. For example, the five to six million people who have lost health insurance because of Obamacare, the narcissist is so self-absorbed that he cannot imagine another feeling, another suffering, another in pleasure, pain, happiness, or misery other than himself. All that is real is how they experienced these things.

Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein were two torturers who were said to be incapable of imagining their victims as human beings, feeling pain while if experienced in a paper cut or burn from a match themselves would howl in pain and demand immediate sympathy and treatment. Such narcissism is labeled malignant narcissism and is characteristic of the evil personality. One of Peck's insights is that government agencies and groups also experience this phenomenon as well. In fact, he calls it the most powerful group cohesive force. Peck says that as the members feel proud of their group, so the group feels proud of itself, unquote.

A variety of means are used by leaders of groups to foster this pride, lavish internal revenue service retreats. We've seen film of this where ridiculous childish skits portray the agency as heroic in American society or perhaps the sure thing rage staged by the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Bureau upon innocent families in a religious compound in Waco, Texas that would burnish the agency's image ostensibly. One of the most significant elements of the malignant narcissism found within government agencies is that which Peck calls enemy creation, quote-unquote, or hatred of the out-group, quote-unquote.

The potential for evil is very great here. Enemy creation. Peck says the best way to cement group cohesiveness is to ferment the group's hatred of an external enemy. Deficiencies within the group can be easily and painlessly overlooked by focusing attention on the deficiencies or sins of the out-group, like the American public. Almost any malevolent act can be committed here.

Once the enemy has been created, the out-group identified, and so the gas chambers in the ovens were justified by the Nazis for the Jews, the lynch mob was justified by the Ku Klux Klan for the Negro, and the SWAT team is justified by homeland security for the Tea Party. Enemy creation, out-group identification, fosters pride in the government agency. It bolsters the narcissism of the federal group. Behold your future, America. We already observe a growing, metastasizing cancer of a federal leviathan, convinced it is God's gift to the American people.

Narcissism at its overweening height. Your parasitic federal government, sleeping American public, is increasingly self-absorbed, self-justified, and self-sustained from the host of the body politic of the American people. Well, number three, not only is it narcissistic evil, not only is it rebellious evil, evil is characterized by the soul of rebellion against God and his program. Evil is characterized by the soul of rebellion against God and his program. Wired into the very soul of the first president of man after his creator was the character of the rebel.

There was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. Ever since the so-called light-bearer, Lucifer, has led the followers in rebellion all against for which God stands. And this includes individuals, but also it includes governments.

It's not the history of human government, the history of rebellion against God. Ever since the construction of the Tower of Babel, which was, in fact, the first government works project, ever since the Tower of Babel, the general run of human government is opposed to God and his kingdom. Michael Bakunin, the Russian Marxist anarchist who worked for a short time on behalf of the Russian Revolution, he declared brazenly, the evil one is the satanic revolt against divine authority. Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker, the emancipator of worlds. How Bakunin captures incisively the spirit of the progressive.

It is precisely as Bakunin characterizes it, the spirit of the progressive, the satanic revolt against divine authority. That which God asserts, the progressive denies. That which God declares righteous, the progressive declares wicked. That which God declares just, the progressive declares unjust. God declares, you shall have no other gods before me, while the progressive declares any god, but the god of the Bible will do.

God says, you shall not murder, while the progressive says, you shall abort your child. God says, you shall not commit adultery, while the progressive says, you shall do it with anyone, anywhere, anytime, and with any species, gender, or number of creatures imaginable. God says, you shall not steal, while the progressive says, the government may inflate your currency, tax to the max your earnings, and borrow against your, your children's, and your children's children's future. God says, you shall not lie to your neighbor, while the progressive says, if you like your health plan, you can keep it, period.

If you like your doctor, you can keep him, period. God says, you shall not covet your neighbor's stuff. While the progressive says, your neighbor has more than you, it's not fair. Let me help you get it through government redistribution. So, whatever God says, evil government will say the opposite in rebellion to God's plan.

One blatant exponent of progressive tactics is a man named Saul Alinsky, who wrote Rules for Radicals. In this book, Alinsky outlines perhaps the most successful path to power ever designed by the evil human mind. In fact, not coincidentally, Rules for Radicals is dedicated to Lucifer, the first rebel. Alinsky and his lackeys are true to the form of their rebellious father. In order to bring about the Marxist paradise envisioned by the progressive, he must first, as Alinsky says, stir up dissatisfaction and discontent with the things, with the way things are, no matter how good the people may have it.

They must be persuaded of their misery, the people, real or imagined. And the community organizer, recognize that term, the community organizer must agitate to the point of conflict with the powers that be. The community organizer, as Barack Obama learned in Chicago, must dramatize injustices. He must make trouble by stirring up angers, frustration, and resentments, Alinsky says, quote unquote. Here is the work of Satan and the rebel.

Although America was the land of opportunity for all men, the progressive nevertheless practices evil by deliberately fostering covetousness in the hearts of the people, such that they are prepared to rebel against godly government. Behold the disciples of such a man, both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who wrote her master's thesis on Saul Alinsky. Well, number four, when government becomes evil, it is characterized by lies. Number four, when government becomes evil, it is also characterized by lies, not only narcissism and rebellion, but lies. Jesus was spot on when he unmasked the true father of corrupt government.

There is no truth in him, Jesus said. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies, unquote. And Dr. Peck also discovered this about the nature of evil. He said, and I quote, lying is simultaneously one of the symptoms and one of the causes of evil, one of the blossoms and one of the roots, unquote. Very perceptive.

One of the greatest antidotes to evil is the truth. If Satan is unmasked as mankind's enemy rather than his friend, the game is over. But as it stands, his lies to mankind have been quite successful, especially to those who seek power. What an irresistible bauble for so many men, power. Do you remember one of the three temptations of Christ?

Satan said to Christ, I will give you authority over all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor for has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours. Oh, such is the blandishment by which Satan has dazzled the souls of so many pharaohs and his priests of Egypt, kings and popes of Europe, presidents and illumined ones of our own day. Satan is the father of lies and the apples do not rot far from the tree, listener, for his disciples also lie. It is their native language.

Ed Klein, in his book, The Amateur, about Obama, recounts the interview he conducted with Reverend Wright. Obama to Wright. You know what your problem is. You have to tell the truth. Because Wright's a preacher, of course.

Obama was saying this to him. The faith leader maintained that this isn't a bad problem to have and that Obama, being a politician, is transformed into an individual who's not necessarily rooted in truth. Politicians don't have to tell the truth, Obama responded. Truth is what we say it is. Well, I somehow can't live with that, right, told Klein.

That's why I could never be a politician. I think that the transformed Barack has become a politician, unquote, says the Reverend Wright. Therefore, we have the indignity of the litany of lies visited upon us by our evil president, insulting our intelligence that we should believe those lies. If you like your health plan, you can keep it, period. If you like your doctor, you can keep him, period.

As now vindicated Congressman Joe Wilson exclaimed at Obama's first State of the Union speech, liar. My White House has no knowledge that the Internal Revenue Service was targeting conservatives before the 2012 elections. We certainly were not coordinating with them. In the words of Congressman Wilson, liar. The Benghazi attack upon our consulate, resulting in the death of four Americans, was the result of an anti-Muslim video and not a terror attack.

In the word of Congressman Wilson, liar. America has always had Israel's back and we will do all that is necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Ha! In the word of Congressman Wilson, liar. Time prevents us from cataloging all of these lies.

That would take at least another full message. Suffice it to say that when government becomes evil, it is characterized by lies and deceit. Secrecy is the oxygen of evil. Lies are the currency of evil, that in which evildoers buy and sell amongst the deceived. And then deceit is the disguise in which evil seems to be other than it is.

All of this we see before us today in the federal dragon, the Leviathan, the beast in Washington, D.C. before us. Well, what are we to do, dear believer? How do we combat such evil? Or can we? Well, know this.

Our battle is first and foremost a spiritual battle. Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms, Paul says. Or in modern parlance of the secret societies is against the dragons, wizards, and warlocks. Therefore, use the spiritual weapons that are provided you, listener, the Bible, a life of righteousness and goodness, and be prepared with the gospel of peace on your tongue. In this way, you will be, as that spiritual warrior Paul put it, strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

These weapons have been provided you courtesy of Christ's labors on the cross, so use them. A favorite saying of the evil practitioners of Marxism is the maxim of Chairman Mao. Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun. But know this, O Christian, spiritual power comes out of the blood of the cross. It is the only weapon that will defeat evil.

And unless evil is destroyed in the heavenly realms in spiritual government, it will continue to thrive on the physical plane in human government. And conversely, unless evil is destroyed in human government on the physical plane, you will preach only a partially applied gospel. So preach Christ applied. Victory is certain, listener, though difficult, but know whose you are. The reason, John says, the apostle, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

So be about using these spiritual weapons to destroy the evil around us and its spiritual power first, and then and only then will you begin to see change in the physical realm, the places of political, social, and cultural power. This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. We meet for holy worship at 10 a.m. on Sunday at 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Come and see us. Come and visit us.

Come out of the shadows. You know you need to be with us. We meet for holy worship 10 a.m. on Sunday, 101 4th Street on the corner of 4th and Boulevard. Call us at 523-0196 for more information and feedback, 523-0196.