When God Hides Behind Evil?

Many today dismiss spiritual evil as either irrelevant or made-up, opting instead for more natural or scientific explanations for the evil we see and experience. Others, reacting against the overwhelming disenchantment of the 21st century, go too far in the other direction and blame everything they don’t like on the devil or other evil spiritual beings/powers. When bad things happen, or God feels absent, when a giant cosmic ‘No!” is heard, is that necessarily because God has been hindered by the forces of evil? Or could it be God working in a way that lines up with the upside-down kingdom seen time and time again in both testaments? Do both a complete dismissal of spiritual evil and a totalizing embrace of its reality in all things betray an anemic imagination, a lack of discernment, or perhaps a misunderstanding of God?

In 1 Kings 22, the prophet Micaiah is brought to King Ahab to prophesy over the king about whether he should go to Ramoth-gilead to battle (22:15). Every other court prophet already saying they believed he should, and that he would come out victorious. These prophets, however, were nothing more than yes-men. On some level Ahab knew that, and he knew that Micaiah was different, saying that he hates Micaiah because “he never prophesies anything good concerning me” (22:8). (At this point, I like to imagine Ahab as Prince John, the whiny, thumb-sucking villain of Disney’s Robin Hood.) At first, Micaiah humors Ahab by saying he should go to Ramoth-gilead and triumph, but Ahab knows the prophet is not telling the truth and so the king implores him to do so.

This is when things get weird. Micaiah tells King Ahab that he saw the Lord with “all the host of heaven standing beside him” (22:19). When the Lord asks which of them will “entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead” (22:20), a spirit volunteers to do so by becoming a “lying spirit in the mouth of all the prophets” (22:22). God tells the spirit to go ahead, and that the spirit will succeed. This means that God both approved of the lying spirit’s plan to cause Ahab’s downfall, and also allowed Micaiah to see that and warn Ahab that it was so. Of course, Ahab chooses not to heed this warning, and goes to battle to his death. I imagine that this is God’s last resort, that God sighed when he told the spirit to “go ahead,” and mourned the fact that it had come to this.

Ahab would have undoubtedly considered these actions evil. But is that an accurate framing? If we consider that the Gospel of John calls the devil “the father of lies” (8:44), and the spirit uses lies to ”trick” Ahab into his death, it would seem like an easy jump to believe that this spirit was the devil or another “fallen” or “evil” spirit, and that this was an evil act. Even still, it seems like God is in control of the whole thing. God doesn’t come up with the specific mechanism to trick Ahab, but God certainly allows it. God also allows Micaiah to prophesy to Ahab about the plan, giving Ahab another chance to change his mind/repent. An offering of mercy that Ahab refuses. When assessing blame for his defeat, at whom is Ahab to point the finger? He could have easily pinned fault on any number of others, including God. Ultimately, though, it wasn’t the “lying spirit” or God who pushed Ahab to his downfall. Ahab’s actions were his own.

How often do we want to shift the blame for our shortcomings or selfishness to anyone or anything but ourselves? How many times have we failed to notice the pangs of conscience and had to deal with the consequences? Despite knowing full well that we made a mistake, aren’t we often still upset and left scanning for scapegoats including the evil working against us? Not that this should lead one to take a cue from Mick Jagger and feel “Sympathy for the Devil” (evil forces would gladly take credit for any of our misfortunes any time), so we ought to be careful not to give evil credit where it isn’t due.

Of course, ignoring God can only make for more trouble. We want so badly to hear just what we want to hear, that maybe sometimes God has to try different tactics. If God will not be heard, then maybe silence will suffice. Maybe we need to slip on the proverbial banana peel every now and again to remind ourselves that we are not in control. Sometimes God has to push back against everything we supposedly know.

In his commentary on 1 & 2 Kings, Peter Leithart writes that “the word of Yahweh does not affirm us in our plans. It challenges our plans, confronts them, and undoes them.” God’s actions in 1 Kings are not the only instance in scripture that could be read in this light, nor is the Old Testament alone in portraying God’s character this way. Leithart writes that through his “challenging parables, his provocative prophetic actions, his counterintuitive images and exhortations, (and) his shrewdness in debate,” we can see the same characteristics in Jesus, testifying that he is indeed the incarnation of the God “who lured Ahab to the battlefield of Ramoth-gilead.”

When God throws a wrench in our plans, it’s never for selfish reasons. When God seems distant and hidden, it’s not to mess with your head. God resorts to such things when all else fails. When God has no other way to show us what we are missing, like when something we are continually doing or not doing (that we see no problem with) is becoming a hindrance to God’s intentions for us or someone else.

Some of the things we experience as “evil” (or at least name as that) are maybe just the law at work. According to theologian Gerhard Forde the appearance of such evil “should be understood as a concrete and actual ‘voice’ which ‘sounds in the heart’ and ‘conscience,’ a real voice which afflicts man in his isolation from God and demands that he fulfill his humanity.” It is this affliction that we sometimes confuse for evil. Such affliction unveils one’s weakness to soften the heart to the healing of the gospel.

This is not to say that the experience of spiritual evil is trivial. After all, the devil wants nothing but our destruction. But maybe before jumping straight to the conclusion that everything bad that happens is from the devil, prayerful discernment might suggest otherwise. If we attribute to the devil what should be attributed to God, we can miss the God who hides himself. However, if we really take what is discerned in this manner to heart, maybe we’ll find it’s God trying to get our attention, and offering us a different way forward. An unexpected offering of grace after all of our vain efforts have failed.