Could be Evil is NOT Evil

Crude Thinking Misled - Don't be in politics because politics is dirty.

I did not know how come I have the strange and wrong idea that since politics(defined as participation in the activities of forming a government to run the town, city, or country) is dirty therefore good Christians should not be involved in politics.  On the surface, this logic look right. We are taught that we are to abstain from all forms of evil (1 Thes 5:22). Hence, if something is dirty/evil, we should not participate in it.

Refinement Clarifies - Could be vs It is

But we must examine the details. Break into parts, politics and dirty.

Is politics evil or politics could be evil?

Is government evil or government could be evil?

We find that government, politics, businesses are meant for good. But some how in such systems, there are evil people who enter it to misuse it to create evil in it. Such is the job of the devil - enter any good system, exploit the loop holes, and create evil with it, and then keep the good people from eliminating the created evil.

Could be evil (used by evil for evil) is very different from it is evil.

Stealing and murdering are evil per se and we should abstain from them.
But politics and government, economic and business systems are for good. They could be misused for evil. It is not them that are wrong but the people that misuse and abuse them that are evil. Such evil people should be taken out and not the system. Hence, we can say that

The Systems are and meant for good but are not perfect with loopholes for being misuse and abuse by evil people.

Some systems are better than others in the sense of less loopholes for abuse, more tolerances for errors, or more responsive to changes but not over-responsive to create instability, more transparent, more accountable and counter-balancing and so forth.

Withdrawal Encourages Evil

If Christians withdrawn from being in politics then we could not ensure that the government practices the righteous teachings of the Bible.

Withdrawal will result in evil taking over.

May God give us wisdom to design better and better system for good.

Nevertheless, with the presence of sin in men, and evil of the devil, any system will be subjected to abuse for evil. But don't blame the system and withdrawn from it.

The economic, the social, the political systems are designed for good but not perfect to prevent evil. There are some subsystems or schemes within that are designed for evil and for cheating like gambling,  ponzi scheme which we must watch out for. The banking system in not evil per se but could be abuse. They could be improved.


Join in the system to put it right and cast out the evil within.