Lesson 8 of 11 · Chapter: Evil

Do Not Be Surprised

Read time: about 8 minutes · Skill: facing workplace evil with confession and confidence

Lesson 7 said your work carries God's glory. This chapter tells the unvarnished truth: that glory will be opposed. Chapell calls this the most difficult chapter in the book, and he leads us into it on purpose. A tidy theology of work will not survive your actual workplace.

The warning that frames the chapter

The apostle Peter sets the tone for everything here:

From the very first pages of the Bible, God's promise to redeem our work is given inside a world that resists him with weeds and thorns, deception and death. God promised a coming Savior would crush Satan (Gen. 3:15). But woven into that hope was an ominous warning: Satan will strike the heel of the Savior. Until Christ returns, the evil one means to wound those who bear the image of the one who will crush him. And he does it largely through their work.

You know what the wounding looks like. A boss who demeans. Coworkers who ridicule. Being leapfrogged in a promotion by someone operating unethically. Taking heat from a customer who is wrong. Losing a job because of another's lie. The unending pressure of keeping a company alive in a failing economy. None of this is strange. None of it means God has failed.

Evil even from "good people"

Here is the part that stings most. Chapell has led Christian organizations for most of his adult life, and he makes a list of what he has endured: stolen from, lied to, falsely accused, forced out, betrayed by those he trusted, abandoned by friends. Then he delivers two observations that should settle on every leader's chest:

I cannot think of a single instance in which the ones doing such evil were not professing Christians.

We want to believe good people will not be overcome by evil, that if we just manage well and set a good example, the Lord will grant success. Jesus shatters that instinct: "No one is good except God alone" (Mark 10:18). Even Moses, who led Israel out of slavery and through the sea, was opposed and doubted by his own wife, brother, and sister. Exemplary leadership does not exempt you from evil; often it draws it.

So when a company boots out a leader or a board rejects its chair, do not automatically presume the leader was incompetent or did something wrong. Your inadequacy is one possible explanation for your struggle. It is not the only one. Faithful Christians will face persecution, trial, and tragedy because we live in a fallen world and evil will wound. If that happened to Jesus, it may well happen to us.

Work itself can deform you

This is the subtler danger. The very occupations designed to magnify God's glory are also a consistent weapon in Satan's arsenal. Good gifts get twisted. The joy of hard work becomes workaholism that loses touch with family and rest. Zeal to provide becomes pride, or an attempt to feed an approval addiction. Energy and intelligence become tools to compete and move past others, so that patience is perceived as weakness, compassion as marketing, and tenderness as waste.

Stephen Smith, scraping this out of thousands of leaders' hearts, confessed his own descent: "I swallowed the pill that promised success... Life for me was about my work. It became a mistress who promised me everything but in the end delivered nothing." These were not villains. They were good people, many in Christian ministry, who still made mistakes and left carnage behind them.

The evil is in me too

Now Chapell turns the mirror, and this is what makes it possible to bear the evil of others. Two truths, held together. First, from 1 Corinthians 10:13: "No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man." The seed of every sin already exists in every heart. We who judge the wrongs of others are guilty of some dimension of the same. So I am in as much daily need of the cleansing blood of Jesus as those who have betrayed me.

Second: those believers who have done evil to us are as much loved by our Savior as we are. The commonness of our sin should make us slower to judge and quicker to extend the grace we both desperately need. That is not weakness. It is the only soil in which the next truth can grow.

Lead Satan to Calvary

What does confidence in God's faithfulness actually look like when the losses are real? Chapell learned it from miners and farmers in his first working-class church. They told of a young man made an invalid by a mining accident caused by the employer's negligence. As his peers built homes and raised families, he grew old in a crumbling shack. One day a younger man asked him, "Why do you believe that God loves you despite all of the evil that has hurt you?"

The old man smiled. "Yes, it is true that sometimes Satan comes to my bedside and points out my window to the men with whom I worked that now have families, homes, and health that I do not share. Then Satan says to me, 'Does Jesus really love you?'" The young man gasped. "What do you say to Satan, when he asks you that question?"

I take Satan by the hand and lead him to a hill called Calvary. There I point to the thorns on the brow, the nails in the hands and feet, and the spear-pierced side, and I say, "Doesn't Jesus love me!"

That is the whole chapter. When circumstances turn sour, do not believe the lie that your Savior has turned from you. Turn your eyes to Calvary and rest on the undeniable proof proven there: he cares for me.

Forgive, but do not confuse it with pardon

One last clarification keeps this grace from becoming naivety. Biblical forgiveness is not the same as pardon. Forgiveness does not require sheltering wrongdoers from all consequences. It seeks what is best for the eternity of the wrongdoer and the flourishing of the community. To forgive is to be for grace. You may still pursue justice, correction, even discipline, but never vindictively, and always with the ultimate good of the evildoer in mind (Rom. 12:19). Unforgiveness, after all, is the acid that destroys its own container.

Make it real this week

Evil loses its power to define you once you name it and lead it to Calvary. These answers save in this browser.

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Where this is going

Evil asks what you will suffer. Next we ask how you will lead. Chapter 9 turns to Leadership, and Chapell opens with a wry story about President Reagan and the nuclear "football," then turns to Paul's compact manual for leaders in 1 Thessalonians 5. Whether you lead or follow, your calling is the same: respect those over you, and if you lead, labor among your people, admonish, encourage, help, and be patient. The goal is not success. It is flourishing.