A radio theater presentation I listened to when I was younger was about an Anglican Vicar who used to be a Scotland Yard Detective. All fictional, but brought up interesting subject matters, often dealing with the paranormal.

There is one episode I remember listening to that really struck me at the time. Father Gilbert, the main character (and name) of the series is dealing with a case that he worked on at Scotland Yard that is coming back to haunt him. Within this episode, there is someone who seems to be doing some things that mimic this last case. Fast-forward to the end, there is a part where this man who is committing these crimes is leaving a message on Father Gilbert’s home phone.

I don’t remember the exact narrative of the message, but the man talking over the message seems clearly to be in the control of someone else or perhaps a demon or something. He says something to the effect of “evil will always win because there are no limits or rules to it. There are rules to being good, but being evil means there is nothing that is not on the table.”

I started to realize that in some ways that’s true. If you have only a picture of this world and the hope in it then evil will always have the upper hand because it has no rules to it. It’s a relief to know that in the end, God will have the ultimate victory over this evil.

As I was listening to a podcast today about the Japanese during WW2 it seems they had some of the same kind of evil. Perhaps not straight-up evil, but it seems they weren’t afraid to do anything to win. Nothing was a good excuse for them. They employed techniques that basically forced their own troops to surround themselves and then have a huge deadly impact on the opposing side.

They are commonly famous for the Kamikaze pilots that would sacrifice their life for the “greater good.”

While not exact parallels, it reminds me that often when we go outside what is good and how God has created us, there are no limits in how far that direction we can go. There is only one truth, but there are millions of other ways to live your life.