Deliver Us From Evil

A friend posted an image the other day depicting dead Syrian children, massacred by who knows who for their own inscrutable reasons. Here's part of it.  Howls of protest. As gadflies do, by way of comment I posted a YouTube link to 'The Battle belongs to the Lord' - a rather cheesy battle hymn around the theme of Proverbs 21:31 which had the desired effect - one poster, by all accounts an Anglican priest, demanding angrily 'what has this got to do with it?' I've deleted additional exclamation marks. If we imagine for one moment that God is unconcerned in our affairs then the right response is 'nothing at all - the song is just a few overexcitable arm-wavers getting wound up and those of us who've grown up don't buy into such silly nonsense any more.' If, on the other, we suspend disbelief for a moment and just dare to speculate that the Evil One whom all right thinking people believe doesn't exist has raised his ugly rebellious head again and carnage and devastation result, then I can think of fewer places in the world where his Babylonian river of evil has surfaced so manifestly clearly. I'm not sure which outrages me more, the disregard for human life in Syria or the willingness of some in the Church to attribute such to nothing more than mankind's inevitable propensity for screwing it up.