The heart is deceitful above all things… – Jeremiah 17:9, Amplified Bible

The late Chuck Colson was the founder of Prison Fellowship, an evangelical Christian ministry aimed at winning criminals in prison to Christ.  Colson once visited a South Carolina prison where Susan Smith is incarcerated.  In October 1994, Smith drowned her three-year-old and one-year-old sons by letting her car slide into a lake while the boys were still strapped in their car seats.  The case received worldwide attention as it became clear that Smith’s claim of her sons being kidnapped was a cover story for the hard, cold reality of the situation:  Smith had killed her boys because the man she was dating had hinted that the children were obstacles to marrying her.

At the meeting, Colson searched the crowd for Smith, but he could never find her.  After the meeting, Colson asked the local Prison Fellowship director whether Smith had even attended, and the director told Colson that she had been in the front row, staring at him the whole time.  In writing of this event, Colson remarked, “The face of evil is frighteningly ordinary.” * Colson had expected Smith to stand out as a beacon of evil, but instead she blended in with the rest of the crowd.

At the time Susan Smith murdered her precious children, I was living in Georgia.  Not long after, I moved to South Carolina, and I’ve made business visits to Union, SC – the scene of Smith’s horrific crime – on several occasions.  If you were to sit at the local McDonald’s or walk at the local Walmart or visit the town square in Union, you’d see ordinary people.  They get up, go to work, raise their families, and try to make the world around them a better place.  Smith was no different, and I know this because on one occasion years ago, I met a woman who had known Smith personally since she was a child.  When she learned the truth about Smith’s crime, the words she used to describe her reaction were, “total shock.” Never in a million years would she have thought Smith capable of such wickedness, but, tragically, she was.

The face of evil stares at Smith every day when she looks in the mirror. But, that same face of evil stares at you and me as well.  Lying within us is the potential for evil, and if you don’t believe me, believe God.  God tells us through the prophet Jeremiah:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly perverse and corrupt and severely, mortally sick! Who can know it [perceive, understand, be acquainted with his own heart and mind]? – Jeremiah 17:9, Amplified Bible

When our heart begins to desire something, the seed of passion will grow into a mighty oak of sin if we do not rely on God to restrain us.  If we do not guard our heart with the aid of the Holy Spirit, we become the impatient Abraham who desires a son so much that he doesn’t wait on God’s provision, takes matters into his own hands, and causes horrific family strife and suffering as a result.  We become the jealous Cain who kills his brother so that he might receive the glory.  We become the deceitful Jacob who schemes his brother out of his birthright and his blessing.  We become King David (whom God Himself called a man after His own heart), the adulterer and murderer who abandoned God’s heart in order to satisfy his own.

Don’t ever think you are incapable of deep evil.  If you let your guard down, dear Christian, you are indeed capable of the utmost wickedness, and it will consume you, if you let it.  Bury yourself in God’s presence. Meditate on God’s Word without fail, and pray without ceasing.  Beg the Holy Spirit that dwells within you to keep restrained your wicked heart.  If you don’t, the face of evil that stares at you in the mirror will someday devastate you, your God, and your loved ones.

*Colson, Charles and Pearcey, Nancy, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1999), 185.