Inner Beast

Every week the news gets more grim. What’s going on in America?

“Sunday School Teacher Abducts, Abuses and Murders Daughter’s Friend.” “Medical Student Robs and Kills Women.” “Murder-Suicide Discovered in Maryland Hotel.”

Troubling headlines like these make us doubt the goodness of humankind. Until these events, the alleged perpetrators seemed normal to many of their friends. What’s wrong with people?

What’s wrong is human nature! If we’re honest with ourselves, we must all admit that we have an “inner beast” whose bent is evil and not good.

“Now hold on for just a minute! Aren’t most people basically good at heart?”

Many people think so, but the evidence is quite to the contrary. And if we ignore the obvious we do ourselves a disservice. As author Joel C. Rosenberg observes, “To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.”

In “The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me,” poet Delmore Schwartz implies that being human has a beastly side to it. The poem shows us a violent and unflattering picture of humanity.

The “Heavy Bear” represents both our bodies and the uncivilized primitive core of the human personality. It is the “id” of Freud, the “unconscious mind” of psychologists and the hard-to-control brute within each one of us. And it is always with us.

Saints and poets through the ages have chronicled the endless struggle between the flesh and the spirit. And nowhere in modern verse has this struggle been portrayed with greater power than it is in “The Heavy Bear.”

The amazing message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that God can tame your “inner beast.” But not everyone wants to be tamed. Why? Because there is a frightening, intoxicating exhilaration to venting our rage and indulging our evil side.

Now go back and read the headlines above. Ponder the damage and destruction wrought by human wrath. Think of the lives and property ruined every year.

The inner beast needs taming. But how?

Lasting inner peace is the solution. And that peace has only one source--God.

The Apostle Paul writes in the Bible, “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” And once you have peace WITH God he adds, “The peace OF God…will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Paul knew whereof he spoke. He was a former religious zealot and a murderer of Christians (by his own admission). But then he became a compassionate evangelist following a personal encounter with the risen Christ. And he was not alone.

After warning Christians, “the wicked will not inherit the Kingdom of God,” Paul adds, “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified [made holy], you were justified [made righteous], in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

God alone has an amazing track record of taking angry, violent, evil, hopeless people and turning them into saints. The Bible is full of such success stories. Read it sometime.

While we can’t personally do much about the grim headlines we hear, we can do something about our own “inner beasts.” God offers the only solution that works every time it’s tried.

God says “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Saved from sin and saved from your “beast.”

Listen to the Bible; it’s great for your soul!