Spoiled fruit....

 

The Fruits of Darkness: How Evil Slowly Pulls Us Away From God

We talk a lot about the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self control. We know what a person who is trying to follow Christ should look like. Not perfect, because none of us are, but there should be something in the way we treat people, the way we speak, the way we forgive, the way we control ourselves, and the way we respond when we are wrong that shows that the Spirit of God is working in us. But I started thinking about the opposite. If good produces fruit, then evil produces fruit too. So what do the fruits of darkness look like? What happens to a person when pride, anger, lust, dishonesty, envy, hatred, selfishness, or resentment are allowed to stay long enough? And maybe more importantly, can we recognize those fruits before we start producing them ourselves?

I think one of the biggest mistakes we make is imagining evil as something obvious. We picture a terrible person doing terrible things and think, I would never become like that. But Satan normally does not work that way. He does not walk into our lives and say, “I am going to destroy your relationship with God.” He gives us reasons. He gives us excuses. He tells us, You deserve this. They hurt you first. Everybody does it. It is not that serious. God understands. You can repent later. You are just protecting yourself. You are only doing what makes you happy. That is what makes temptation so dangerous. It usually comes with an explanation that makes it sound reasonable.

One of my favorite authors, C. S. Lewis, understood this very well. In The Screwtape Letters, he described the safest road to hell as the gradual one. That has always stood out to me because I do not think most people wake up one morning and decide they no longer want God in their lives. It happens little by little. One compromise, one lie, one thing we hide, one prompting we ignore, one prayer we skip, one thing we used to feel guilty about that somehow does not bother us as much anymore. Eventually the things that once made us uncomfortable become normal.

The Book of Mormon describes this perfectly. Nephi says Satan leads people with a “flaxen cord” until eventually he binds them with strong cords. I love that description because a flaxen cord is not a chain. At first it is light. It seems harmless. It almost feels like something we could break anytime we wanted to. That is how a lot of sin begins. It is one little thing. One conversation we know we should not be having, one lie that seems easier than telling the truth, one compromise with our covenants, one time choosing anger instead of forgiveness, or one time ignoring what we already know God wants us to do. At first it is only a thread, but another thread gets added, and then another. Eventually what looked like something as weak as a spider's web becomes something that feels like a chain.

That is what scares me about sin. Not only the sin itself, but the way we can become numb to it. The first time we do something that goes against our conscience, we usually feel it. Something inside tells us it is wrong. We feel uncomfortable. We feel guilt. Maybe we even try to justify it because deep down we already know. But if we keep doing it long enough, eventually that feeling can become quieter. Psychology even has a term for part of this. It is called moral disengagement. It is when we start changing the way we think about something so that we no longer have to feel as guilty about doing it. We justify it, minimize it, blame somebody else, or convince ourselves that our circumstances make it acceptable. Scripture has been warning us about this for thousands of years. We can become hardened. We can become past feeling. And I think one of Satan's greatest victories is not when he convinces us that evil is good. Sometimes it is simply when he gets us to stop being bothered by evil.

Something that would have shocked us years ago becomes entertainment. Dishonesty becomes strategy. Cruelty becomes “just being honest.” Lust becomes “living your truth.” Revenge becomes “protecting my peace.” Pride becomes “knowing my worth.” Abandoning responsibilities becomes “putting myself first.” Hatred becomes acceptable because we have convinced ourselves the other person deserves it. We can slowly rename things until the new name makes the behavior easier to accept. The action may not have changed, but the language around it has, and sometimes changing the language is enough to make our conscience quieter.

We see this everywhere now. Politics is probably one of the easiest places to see it. I am not talking about one party or another because evil does not have a political party. A politician can discover that anger keeps people loyal, so every speech has to have an enemy. An influencer learns that outrage, humiliation, sexuality, controversy, and drama bring more views than humility or goodness. A media personality discovers that keeping people angry keeps them watching. Eventually we can spend hours every day listening to people who constantly make us angry, suspicious, jealous, lustful, prideful, or hateful, and then wonder why we do not feel peace. That should make us stop and think.

There is actually research showing that moral outrage and attacks against opposing groups can spread more widely on social media, and that likes and shares can reinforce people to express even more outrage. Think about that spiritually. We have created systems where anger can bring attention, division can bring followers, scandal can bring money, and hatred can bring engagement. The algorithm does not care whether something brings us closer to Christ. It only cares whether we keep watching. And Satan does not need us to worship him. He just needs to keep us distracted long enough that we stop worshipping God.

That is another part of this that I think we miss. We imagine Satan constantly trying to get us to do horrible things. But sometimes he does not need us to do anything horrible. Sometimes he only needs us to do nothing good. Do not pray tonight. Do not read your scriptures today. Do not apologize yet. Do not forgive yet. Do not call that person. Do not go serve. Do not act on that prompting. Do not go to church this Sunday. Do not confess what you know needs to be confessed. Do not change today. Tomorrow will be fine. The Book of Mormon says the evil spirit does not teach a man to pray. That says so much to me. Satan does not always need to tell us, “Do not believe in God.” Sometimes all he has to say is, “Not right now.” And that distance adds up.

I also think there is something very important about suffering that we do not talk about enough. I do not believe Satan simply does not want us to suffer, because evil obviously causes enormous suffering. What I believe is that Satan does not want suffering to bring us closer to God. If suffering comes, he wants us to become bitter. He wants us angry. He wants us blaming God. He wants us to find something to numb the pain. He wants us to seek revenge. He wants the pain to destroy our faith instead of refining it. If he cannot remove the suffering, then he will try to make sure we learn the wrong lesson from it.

But God can use the same pain completely differently. Pain can humble us. Failure can expose pride. Losing something can remind us what really matters. Betrayal can teach us where we placed too much trust. Loneliness can make our prayers completely different. Consequences can finally force us to face something we had spent years avoiding. C. S. Lewis called pain God's megaphone to a deaf world. I understand why. Sometimes when life is comfortable, we can convince ourselves that we are doing fine without God. We pray less because everything is going well. We stop depending on Him because we think we have everything under control. Then something happens that reminds us how little control we really have.

That does not mean suffering automatically makes us better. It can make us bitter too. The question is what we allow it to produce in us. God can use suffering to produce humility, compassion, patience, wisdom, repentance, and dependence on Him. Satan wants the same suffering to produce resentment, isolation, addiction, anger, revenge, and hopelessness. The experience may be the same, but the fruit can be completely different depending on what we allow to happen inside of us.

Again, look at the fruit. God produces love, while evil produces contempt. God produces peace, while evil constantly needs conflict. God produces humility, while evil has to prove that it is always right. God produces truth, while evil survives on distortion. God produces repentance, while evil produces excuses. God produces mercy, while evil enjoys humiliation. God produces self control, while evil tells us every desire deserves to be satisfied. God produces gratitude, while evil keeps us constantly comparing ourselves to everyone else. And God produces people who are able to say, “I was wrong.” Evil hates those words.

That last one is especially important to me because I think one of the clearest signs that pride has taken over is when a person becomes incapable of admitting they were wrong. Everything becomes somebody else's fault. Every action has an excuse. Every bad decision has a justification. If they hurt somebody, they explain why that person deserved it. If they lie, they explain why they had to. If they betray someone, they rewrite the story until they become the victim. Eventually a person can tell a story so many times that they may actually begin believing their own version of it.

That is why we have to be careful about who influences us. A Christian should never give his conscience to a politician, influencer, celebrity, preacher, political party, friend, or even a religious leader. Nobody should have that kind of control over our conscience except God. Jesus gave us a very simple way to judge influence: look at the fruit. Does listening to this person make me more loving or more hateful? Does this person make me more peaceful or constantly angry? Am I becoming more truthful, or am I becoming willing to spread things simply because they support what I already believe? Am I becoming more compassionate, or do I enjoy watching people I dislike get humiliated? Am I becoming more humble, or am I becoming convinced that everyone who disagrees with me is stupid or evil? Am I becoming more prayerful? Am I becoming more faithful to my covenants? Am I becoming a better disciple of Christ?

Those questions can be uncomfortable because sometimes we realize that the person influencing us is doing more than changing our opinions. They may be changing our character. And character changes slowly. That brings me back to the thread. Satan usually does not begin with the chain because if we saw the chain, most of us would run from it. He begins with something small enough that we think we are still completely in control. One compromise becomes another, then it becomes a habit. The habit needs an excuse. The excuse becomes a belief. Then eventually the belief begins defending the behavior. Soon we may actually become angry at the people who remind us of what we used to believe.

The thread eventually becomes a cord, and the cord eventually becomes a chain. Then one day a person may look at their life and wonder, How did I get here? Probably not because of one decision, but because of a thousand small ones. That is what makes the gradual nature of sin so dangerous. We keep thinking we can stop whenever we want because every individual step seems small. But repeated choices shape habits, habits shape character, and character eventually shapes the direction of our life.

But that is also where the message of Jesus Christ becomes so beautiful. The gospel is not just a warning about chains. It is the message that chains can be broken. Repentance can make us sensitive again. Prayer can reconnect us with Heaven. Scripture can clear our minds. The Holy Ghost can make us uncomfortable again with things we had slowly learned to accept. Christ can give us enough humility to say, “I was wrong.” He can give us enough strength to leave something that has controlled us for years. He can take suffering and turn it into something that brings us closer to Him instead of farther away.

So maybe the most important question is not whether evil exists in the world. Of course it does. The real question is whether we can recognize its fruit before we begin producing it ourselves. Satan does not need us to wake up tomorrow and choose evil. He only needs us to make one little decision that moves us away from God, then another, and then another. A thread becomes another thread, and another, until what once looked like a spider's web has become a chain. Maybe one of the most important things we can learn spiritually is how to recognize the thread while it is still only a thread.