Is anything worse than nothing?

Jezebel his wife said, “Is this how you act as king over Israel? Get up and eat! Cheer up. I'll get you the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite”.... As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned to death, she said to Ahab, “Get up and take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that he refused to sell you. He is no longer alive, but dead.” 1 Kings 21:7, 15

You know ... in a sense, Jezebel wouldn’t be “Jezebel” if not for her husband Ahab. This is not to say she wasn’t answerable for her heart or culpable for her deeds – she was! But it was Ahab who held all authority as king over Israel. And it was Ahab, weak in character and rudderless in spirit, who abrogated free rein to Jezebel for her expressions of evil. From Baal worship in the temple … to death threats … to murder, she pretty much got her wicked way.

Jezebel’s name remains today – thousands of years later – as a proper noun for wickedness personified. But couldn’t Ahab’s name just as well continue on as a synonym for naïveté? Or cluelessness? Or spinelessness? Or apathy? Truth is, any one of these character deficiencies makes for a terrible marriage with evil. As the eighteenth-century Irish statesman, Edmund Burke, observed, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

It is the nature of evil to seek expression through the destruction of people, a task made easier through the acquiescence of bystanders. When the serpent found an “open-minded” Eve, for instance, he also found a close-mouthed Adam. When Satan recruited a disloyal Judas, he also enlisted an appeasing Pilate. And when false teachings arose in the church in Thyatira,¹ the people simply tolerated them. In the parlance of the parliamentarian, “good men did nothing.”

So now it’s our watch. And evil still lurks. What does it look like today? And how do we respond?

When the gospel of Christ is shelved in favor of relativism, do we speak the truth in love, or remain mute in false peace? When individual happiness is asserted as the litmus test of right and wrong, do we point to a higher authority, or smile weakly in awkward silence?

We are all called to step up to the occasion at times. Our enemy would rather we look on like Adam as he taints our Eve’s. He prefers we abrogate like Ahab as he kills our Naboth’s. And it delights him when we tolerate like Thyatira the deceptive teachings of destruction.

So we need to make a decision. Will we come alongside the victims of Satan’s deceit and speak truth in love, or will we do nothing at all?

¹ Revelation 2:18-29

[Click here to see the daily reading in 1 Kings 21:5-16.]