Read: Mark 5:1-20

. . . there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. (v. 2)

Who is to blame for this poor man’s problems? When you are possessed, and you keep hurting yourself and hurting others, whose fault is that? Is the Gerasene demoniac himself to blame, or is he at the mercy of external forces that make him do hurtful things that he doesn’t want to do?

A young boy watches, daily, as his mother is abused by his drunken father. The boy grows up, becomes a man, begins to drink, and now he abuses his wife. Whose fault is that? Whose sin is to blame?

The apostle Paul seems to suggest that there are forces that make people do what they don’t want to do: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me” (Rom. 7:19-20). That sounds good, and I believe it, but try telling that to the judge: “Your honor, it wasn’t me who committed that crime; it was the sin in me that did it!”

The source of our sins is from within and without. There are evil forces outside ourselves that have shaped us into what we are, and which to some degree make us do what we do. But whether or not we cooperate with those forces is our choice. What will you choose today?

Prayer:

Lord, deliver me from evil.

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