Protecting the Soul Against Wickedness and Snares
“My mother’s sons turned their anger on me, they made me look after the vineyards. Had I only looked after my own!” (Song of Songs 1:6)
It’s crucial to protect our hearts and souls against, in the words of the Prayer to St. Michael, “the wickedness and snares of the evil one.” However, protecting the soul against any and all incursions of evil isn’t just a spiritual battle, but a physical one as well. Evil is a twisting of God’s created good into degradation and abuse, a murderous attempt to focus on the self without any concern for the good of others. In the words of M. Scott Peck in People of the Lie:
When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life—particularly human life—such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body. Thus we may ‘break’ a horse or even a child without harming a hair on its head … Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.
How do we protect our soul against the toxic attacks of evil people, or against the covert manipulations of those personalities the Bible calls a “fool”?
A troublemaker, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, winks with his eyes, scrapes with his feet, points with his finger, with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord; therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.
(Prov. 6:12-15)
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion … A foul’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to himself.
(Prov. 18:2,7)
All of us sin, and we’re capable of doing evil things. The difference between an everyday sinner—or even a fool—and an evil person is a matter of hard-heartedness. There’s no shred of remorse in an evil soul, even if they play the victim and try to appear contrite for the sake of further manipulation. Instead, they’re driven by their own self-centered needs in a thoroughly heartless and cruel way. Evil delights in evil, and perpetuates evil. The hardened heart of someone of this caliber is completely unwilling to let God—or other people—into their self-focused bubble, and they don’t care how many people they hurt in order to get whatever they want. Think of Pharaoh in the book of Exodus: “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, he refuses to let the people go (Ex. 7:14). He’s only concerned about his own perceived needs and expectations; in his mindset, everyone else is on a lower rung than himself.
The fool can also do evil things, but their heart isn’t dominated with purposely hurting others. Their actions tend to be cyclical; there are times when they seem to be contrite, but with an unpredictable predictability they’ll soon fly into another silent or explosive rage. Their poor behavior activates the shame response, causing remorse and self-reproach. However, the feelings of shame are too intense to face, so they’re covered up by another bout of silent or explosive raging.
