No disaster overcomes the righteous, but the wicked are full of misery – Proverbs 12:21
That is obviously not true. We all know, don’t we, that doing the right thing is no guarantee of success or of protection from evil. Good people are murdered in their sleep. Bad people get MBA’s and law degrees.
At least that is what I think at first glance, especially if I read it in the King James -- There shall no evil happen to the just. If, though we consider the second phrase which states that the wicked are filled with trouble and misery, this is true. I hope I don’t know what goes on in the mind of a psychopath, but in general, the wicked are miserable. One look at the face of Bill Maher (reputed bastard spawn of Marty Feldman and Hooker Smurf) should convince most anyone of that. Since I use Maher as an example, you can understand that by wicked I am not talking about some kid smoking reefer down on the corner, or those who make mistakes and do things that are foolish. The unrighteous are possessed of a filthy, degrading spirit, a warped, self-aggrandizing sense of justice. They are hate-filled bearers of false witness, mockers, and traitors.
Among the wicked are those who purposely remove all the old landmarks because they do not like boundaries. They reject the foundational moral truths of society as hindrances to their desires. They do this not realizing these delimiters create the patterns for deriving meaning from life. By casting away the markers they become lost in a pointless world of excess and emotion. Liketakingoutallthespacesbetweenwordsandthennotcontentwiththatfurthergimnorzadni.
And we wonder why they are petty, ugly, confused, and crazy.
OK, so the wicked are miserable losers. What about the righteous? Does disaster or evil overcome the just?
As Petey often says, there is none good but God. Jesus, the Righteous One, was crucified by the sins of man. Yet He overcame evil. In Romans 12:21, Paul tells us, Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good. I know I reference this verse frequently, and I repeat so often because it is possibly the most difficult for me to internalize. I want to overcome evil the way John McClane did in Die Hard. I want to beat it at its own game. I want to smack it down and gloat over it. And sometimes it is necessary to fight back in a physical way when the innocent are threatened. When a person with a weapon goes berserk, the proper response is to put him down as rapidly and efficiently as possible.
By far, though, most conflicts with evil are not like that. Wickedness takes many forms apart from bloodshed and death. Far better, on a personal level, to respond to slights, insults, and unfairness with truth, love, and forgiveness – not necessarily in that order – than to climb into the pit with one’s attacker.
So once again God is right and I am wrong. The righteous are never conquered by evil for they see beyond today's trials and failures. At the end of the road is another road. We trust in the ultimate justice of God, in His wisdom, grace, and power, first to see us through this life and enable us to overcome in Christ, and then to ultimately set things right where "the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest".
