The IM Writers Association. We aim to create a community of writers who share a common faith and passion for writing that advances the Life of Jesus Christ. Consider assisting us with our costs - a safe donor link is available HERE. #84 EVIL in the Modern WorldIDENTITY POLITICS | Mark Boonstra: Evil in our modern world no longer hides in shadows—it walks boldly through culture, media, politics, and even the pulpits of compromised faith.
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EVIL IN THE MODERN WORLDGood vs. Evil. It’s a battle that has been ongoing since the day that Satan fell from Heaven. And it’s a battle that continues to this very day. Yet another skirmish in that conflict occurred just recently in Minneapolis, as evil once again reared its ugly head.There can be no other explanation for the carnage that resulted as bullets ripped into the pews at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis on August 27, 2025, killing two innocent children and wounding many more. Robert (“Robin”) Westman left behind a manifesto of hate. Hate for Jews. Hate for Christians. Hate for blacks. Hate for Hispanics. Obsessed with the idea of killing children. And Donald Trump. Praise for Hitler. And for other mass murderers. It’s simply incomprehensible. At least to anyone with even a sliver of a moral compass. There is much yet to learn about Westman and what led him to pursue such a path of evil. It cannot be ignored, however, that this is not the first incident of its type in recent years, where a transgender individual opened fire on innocent children. This most recent incident followed on the heels of Audrey Hale’s cold-blooded murder of six innocent victims (including three children) at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville in 2023. As one political commentator, Benny Johnson, tweeted at that time:
One thing is VERY clear: the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists. And that was even before Robert (or Robin) Westman opened fire in Minneapolis. Let’s be clear.We should love one another. Everyone. “Let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.” 1 John 4:7. We should have empathy when others encounter difficulties in life. “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Colossians 3:12. And we should provide whatever assistance, including mental health services, is necessary to help those who are struggling. “Let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” 1 John 3:18. But we do not show love or empathy, or provide the assistance that is needed, by normalizing that which is abnormal. Even when we are trying to be “affirming” of others.We can and should “affirm” the person. “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” 1 Thessalonians 5:11. But in doing so we should not “affirm” the sin. “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6: 1-2. What we should instead affirm is the path of restoration. Transformation from evil to good. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. the old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Corinthians 5:17. Our Founding Fathers were men of God. They knew that our liberties came from God. They built our country on that fundamental premise. They gave America a moral compass that guided it for more than two centuries. And they most certainly would decry modern-day society’s frequent deviation from the direction that moral compass would otherwise have us take. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Pennsylvania, aptly described that evil is simply the absence of God’s divine good. In a 1791 essay entitled, “A Thought on the Origin of Evil,” Rush asked, “As cold is the effect of the absence of heat, as darkness is the effect of the absence of light, as ignorance is the effect of the absence of knowledge, . . . so may not moral evil be nothing positive, but an absence only of moral good?” Rush explained that the evils of sin can only be overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit: Free will was necessary to happiness. It was abused. It can be held only by God himself. Therefore Jehovah commits the happiness of his creatures to the will of his Son, who has, in preferring good, established happiness for all his creatures. Sin, like disease, is weakness. It is destroyed by power or strength, as disease is by stimuli. Nothing is annihilated therefore in the destruction of sin. Good, in the form of power and love, fills its space. It is conveyed into the human kind by means of the holy Spirit. This Spirit expels nothing. It only restores strength to weakness and order to disorder, as stimuli cure weakness and convulsions in the human body. Francis Hopkinson, another Declaration-signer from the state of New Jersey, observed that one’s state of happiness “depend[s] on the temper and capacity of the soul of each individual to become an angel of light, or a fiend of darkness.” In an essay entitled “On Adversity,” Hopkinson explained that Good and evil are set before us, and our own wills must determine the choice. Such, indeed, are the infirmities of our nature, that without divine assistance we are unable to persevere in the paths of righteousness. This assistance, however, is it. To will, or not to will, to be good and happy is in our own power; but really to be so, is the gift of God. Hopkinson noted that our child-like senses equate good with pleasure, and evil with pain: In the early periods of life, our senses alone are the touch-stones of good and evil. Whatever is grateful and pleasant to them we denominate good; whatever is painful and uneasy, we denominate evil. But the mature mind, once enlightened by religion, comes to understand that “good” and “evil” have a much deeper meaning: This simple distinction is sufficient for the state of infancy, when the nurture and security of the body is the chief concern: but when the mind comes to be enlightened by reason and religion, it will easily perceive, that an undue attention to present enjoyments, or a misapplication of them, may be productive of much future misery; and that temporal crosses and afflictions fit the soul for eternal happiness and glory. Hopkinson maintained that “the Christian graces and virtues are the only true sources of happiness”: When we find that the pleasures of the world cannot give solid, permanent satisfaction—cannot gratify all our desires, we are induced to turn to that only Being who is the source of true felicity, and in whom alone there is fulness of joy. In the time of distress we feel and know what we only had, perhaps, a transient idea of before, that the Christian graces and virtues are the only true sources of happiness; and will be our comfort in the last inevitable hour: when all the palliating vanities of the world, and the anodynes of pleasure, must entirely lose their effect. And he implored us to follow “the unquestionable path of virtue” that is found only in the filling of our very being with God’s goodness: But if afflictions produce their proper effect, the mind, ever remembering that those things may be, will acquire a calm and steady adherence to the dictates of conscience and the practice of virtue: not as a task imposed by a superior power whose wrath he would deprecate; but as the highest gratification to himself. He will become habituated to do good; and what is duty in others will be nature in him. As we move forward from the evils of Minneapolis, let us indeed love one another. But let us not condone the evil while we support the fallen. Let us, like Henry Laurens—who served as President of the United States in Congress Assembled—ensure that our children are thoroughly educated in religion and virtue. As Laurens placed his son in the tutelage of Rev. Richard Clarke, he implored Rev. Clarke to “impress the fear of God upon his mind, to show him the great difference between good and evil, truth and error, between a useful and a fine man in society.” Let us resolve to reestablish throughout our society a commitment to following that “unquestionable path of virtue,” to being “angels of light” rather than “fiends of darkness,” and to become “habituated to do good” by allowing the indwelling Holy Spirit to direct our every path.Listen to the reading of the United States Constitution: Identity Politics, with Mark Boonstra & Dr. Stephen Phinney, is an extension of IOM America’s IM Christian Writers Association. The mission of the authors is to restore faith in God & country. -Mark | Mark’s Substack | Visit Mark’s Website
IM Writers Association is a collective group of Christian writers who support the advancement of the Gospel of Jesus Christ while sustaining an eschatological view of the Holy Scriptures of God.
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