In this op-ed, Rev. Jerry DeVine grapples with the spiral of injustice and human destructiveness in our country today and provides some theological reflections on the role of holy resistance.
REV. DR. JERRY DEVINE
Retired Pastor, Michigan Conference
“The devil led [Jesus] up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to [Jesus], ‘. . . If you worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’ . . . When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time” (Luke 4:5-8, 13, NIV).
If I were to ask you, “Do you believe in Satan or the devil?”, what might your response be? Where did you develop that perspective? Does evil have a name and a face?
During my first year of seminary, I quickly discovered the need to wrestle with and articulate my understanding of faith, rather than simply repeating what had been given to me in my earlier formative years. The political and social arena of that time saw the full emergence of two very different pathways for interpreting faith and social engagement.
The so-called Moral Majority took shape, creating a murky marriage between political conservatives and some evangelical Christian leaders. In contrast, another movement of evangelical Christians organized around tangible engagement in public policymaking to support marginalized populations. This group was exemplified by movements such as the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., and the “Sojourners” publication. I felt strongly drawn to tangible engagement and was suspicious of the Moral Majority’s ideology and cheap moralizing.
However, that meant I had to dig into my own theology. My faculty mentor, who was also my spiritual mentor, was someone I deeply trusted and admired. So, one day, I asked him, “Do you believe in Satan?” My mentor paused, then looked directly at me and said, “If you mean, do I believe in personified evil, then yes. I have seen it face-to-face.”
To understand the depth and impact of that response, you would need to know that my mentor had been on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. He had traveled with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., often to places where the color of his skin could cost him his life. He bore the physical and emotional scars of the abusive misuse of policing power during that time in our national history. He knew more deeply than most what the face of evil looked like.
Personified evil, embodied in a human being and an oppressive system of policies supporting that human being, is deadlier to most people’s lives and communities than a spiritualized concept of a devil or evil being. That doesn’t negate the existence of that evil entity, but it does call into question the relationship between that entity and its incarnate form in this world.
One of the clearest lessons of faith I learned from my mentor was the central importance of naming and resisting evil when we see it enfleshed in behaviors and systems that seek to crush the life out of entire groups of people. There is no hope of redemption for the oppressor unless they finally see how they have lost the imago Dei (image of God) within themselves because of how they have tried to deny the imago Dei in the person or group they are oppressing.
The Gospel stories of the temptations Jesus faced after his baptism (Luke 4:1-13; Matthew 4:1-11) portray sacred resistance to paths that lead to evil outcomes. Jesus resolutely refused to be intimidated by power and revealed the weakness of misused power. In so doing, abusive power was cowed and had to go away for another day. Evil has a name in these stories: greed, hunger for power, and the loss of one’s soul to gain influence. Resistance rooted in knowing oneself in connection to the one holy God of all creation is Jesus’ method and model.
Like many of you, I have been wrestling deeply, sometimes in anguish, about how to intervene and transform the downward spiral of injustice and human destructiveness in our current sociopolitical arena. This is most evident in the violent tactics of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. While every sovereign nation needs a reliable and effective legal immigration policy, ICE’s current practices have come under scrutiny for ethical and legal violations. So when Bishop Rob Hirschfeld, the bishop of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, recently asked the clergy there to “get their affairs in order” because it may be time “to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable,” we know we have entered a critical time of faith as resistance to embodied evil. It is not a time to be naïve. My mentor once told me, “When you shine a mirror at a growling dog, the dog will bite.”
We have seen multiple references to how similar the activities of some within our federal government mirror those that took place in Germany and across Europe in the 1930s and 40s. As part of an essay on the role of the church in confronting injustice, the late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggested that there are three clear actions that the church and individuals within the body of Christ could and should engage in. Read this analysis of Bonhoeffer’s essay.
The first two are likely more familiar to members of mainline Christian denominations. First, be willing to question the government about the character and legitimacy of its actions. Second, engage in the ministry of compassion for victims of the state’s actions. The third action goes further, contending, “We are not simply to bandage the wounds of the victims beneath the wheels of injustice, [but] we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
While taking a seminary course on Bonhoeffer’s ethics and other writings, I had the opportunity to spend time with two of Bonhoeffer’s family members, Renate and Eberhard Bethge. During our conversation, my recollection is that one of them reframed the above quote this way: “When a madman is driving a car dangerously through a crowd, it is not enough to pray for the victims. Someone must also take the wheel from his hands.” They spoke of faith as resistance to evil embodied in the behaviors of individuals and the systems that support them.
Comparing the violent, dehumanizing activities of ICE to those of Nazi Germany as if they were borrowed does not tell the truth of the whole story. These acts are not new to us here in this nation. As one blogger puts it: “People reach for the Gestapo comparison because it sounds extreme and foreign. It lets white Americans pretend this kind of policing came from somewhere else. But ICE looks closer to slave patrols because that’s our history. Local enforcement. Racialized suspicion. Vague authority. Taking people first, justifying it later. Gestapo is a warning. Slave patrols are a mirror.”
The dangerous and distinctive aspect of the current expression is that it has explicit support from those in the highest offices of our government. The agents carrying out the violence have been given full military protective gear and assault weaponry, yet have not received proper training. While most of the people being whisked away secretly are people of color, any white person who does not comply or cower before their demands is now also a target of aggression.
My creative imagination goes back to those men who were “guarding” Jesus before his execution. Some punched him and laughed. Some pulled on his beard. Others pushed painful thorns down onto his head. They, too, like ICE, were agents of the state and acted with impunity. Their behavior, intended to dehumanize Jesus, actually dehumanized themselves.
Resistance to evil is holy work. It is an embrace of the God who breathes life into all and celebrates the richness of creation’s diversity. Resistance to evil is the incarnational act of giving oneself on behalf of others so that the ultimate love of God may be revealed in and through us.
There are times when I am weary, and there are times when I am fearful. We need one another for encouragement and support. Benjamin Cremer, a Wesleyan pastor popular on social media, shared this encouragement in a recent post. I offer it as my prayer for all of us: “If your heart is broken and your soul is deeply heavy in these days, that means you haven’t lost your humanity. Even though it is painful, holding onto our humanity is what is urgently needed right now. Don’t allow cynicism or the cruelty we are witnessing take that away from you. Love all the more fiercely.”
Then Cremer reminds us of the comfort found in Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Amen and amen.
The publication of this article was made possible thanks to generous financial gifts from local United Methodist churches in Michigan through Ministry Shares. Thank you! Learn about the impact of Ministry Shares on mission and ministry in Michigan and around the world.
Last Updated on February 2, 2026