Last month, I (re)listened to Eugene Peterson’s book, The Pastor. This book has been hugely formative for my ministry, with different sections speaking to different seasons of my life. One passing comment Peterson made, while in conversation with a Catholic nun, struck me this time.

The nun told Peterson—a Reformed Presbyterian church planter who also happened to be a marathon runner—that, “You Protestants like to talk a lot about sin but not evil.”

What she was getting at is that, as American Protestants, we love to talk about sin and then provide sin management techniques because it helps us feel like there is something we can do. Like a marathon runner who sets up a training plan and nutrition strategy, we devise mechanisms to avoid sinful behavior. We like that approach because it makes it seem as though, through willpower and determination, we can will ourselves to healthier habits, better living, and ultimately righteousness. Sin suggests there is something we can do.

Therefore, we like to focus on sin but avoid talking about evil.

We live in a worldview that dismisses the reality of evil because to admit the reality of evil is to acknowledge that it is beyond our control. Evil implies that there are forces greater than us at work—forces actively seeking to thwart God’s plan in our lives.

When confronted with evil, the only option we have is prayer.

And, truth be told, this kind of prayer is uncomfortable for many of us. This type of prayer exposes our limitations. It is an act of surrender, a posture of dependency. It declares that without the Lord’s strength, we are nothing.

But it is precisely this kind of prayer that draws us to the foot of the cross, where we see that it was only through Christ’s death and resurrection that evil was conquered, and our sin was ultimately dealt with once and for all. It is this kind of prayer that David echoes in the Psalms, when he cries out:

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging…
He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’
The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

Psalm 46:1-3, 10-11