Pastor Ryan Gaffney

It’s common, when telling stories about good versus evil to try to make good sound extra special heroic. We want the good guys, whoever they are to seem to have overcome ridiculous odds, because after all a little good can obliterate lots of evil if it needs to, and that’s awesome for good.

This does however create a perception problem. If we are always telling David and Goliath stories, we definitely make a good point that Davids are awesome (and indeed they are), but we also tend to build up Goliaths, more than we need to or should.

What’s more, by consistently making out evil to be Goliath-like, we begin to develop the perception that evil somehow has something to do with strength. It’s the Dark Side of the force that gets to do all the strong, scary stuff like choking people, while the Jedi can “suggest” things only to the weak minded. Dracula is immortal with three evil brides, while VanHelsing… reads a lot. Galactus eats planets, while the Mr Fantastic is just really stretchy

We do this to Satan too. Who is that Rock-n-Roll God up there? He looks mean, but also kind of awesome I wish I was red with a sweet pair of horns like that! That is so Metal!

Satan is not like that, He is not awesome.

Satan is a Loser

And I don’t mean that in a rhetorical sense like when you refer to your little brother as a loser, I mean that Satan is doomed to do nothing for all of eternity except lose. He is a loser, that’s all he does, The events of revelation haven’t even happened yet, and despite that we all already know he loses. Why would we ever give him the credit? Why would we honor that idiot with the satisfaction of respecting his terribleness? Screw terribleness!

Terribleness is sucky and lame.

You know what the face of evil really looks like on the planet today?

If you guessed this Bill Cosby looking guy over here you’d be right.

That’s Robert Mugabe, The president of Zimbabwe. His people live in incomprehensible poverty under a %100,000 inflation rate with %80 unemployment such that people habitually flee the country in order to starve under better conditions in South Africa where they can  live in a hooverville like one of the prawns from District 9.

He silences his dissenters through fear, torture, and deprivation of basic human liberty, all at the ultimate expense of his people suffering. He hates America, Europe, and anyone white, including Zimbabweians. And worst of all, unlike that giant red dude, he exists!

But unlike the giant red dude who’s way cooler than the devil, Mugabe is characterized primarily by incompetence. He doesn’t want people to starve, he’s just really that selfish, and that incompetent. Basically imagine Dubya on steroids.

( But not the kind of steroids that make you stronger, the kind that make you worse at running a country.)

Or perhaps a better example would be Kim Jong Ill, The nuclear powered Man-child/Dictator/Basketball Freak. Or Bin Laden who was found in a comfortable apartment with a computer loaded with porn… I could go on and on talking about uninspiring evil dictators from history and current events. Not a single one of them is endowed with dark power from the overmind. They don’t wake up in the morning aspiring to sow greater discord. Instead they are almost all spoiled brats who fail to value the horrible ramifications for their actions.

But I don’t want to spend all day talking about evil world leaders. If I did that I’d risk contributing to the same kind of misconception I’m trying to combat, and allow you to subconsciously associate evil with political power.

Instead, as we continue our study in the true face of evil, I’d like to submit my candidate for worst person ever “Gaëtan Dugas” also known as Patient Zero.

Dugas was a gay Canadian flight attendant who became one of the first North Americans to be infected with AIDS. He was a handsome man, and extremely sexually promiscuous, averaging (by his own estimate) over 100 sexual partners per year all over the world. Dugas was made aware of his illness, and of his ability to infect others, but he patently refused to stop having unprotected sex with multiple partners.

According to some sources, Dugas would inform his partners afterward that he was infected with what he called the “gay cancer”

Patient Zero is responsible for the “Tipping point” of the AIDS Epidemic, changing it from a bad disease into a worldwide health catastrophe. He infected enough people who infected enough people for the epidemic to take off. He wasn’t the first to get it in North America, he was just the one to make it take off.

Over 25 million people are recorded dead due to complications related to AIDS, more than the total population of New York City.

By 2030 experts project that AIDS will kill another 50 million people.

Dugas won’t be there to see it of course. He’s caused more destruction that the most successful movie villain, but he’s dead now. He died of kidney failure as a result of continual AIDS-related infections.

And that’s the story isn’t it? If you play with fire you get burned, and you may burn lots of other people also. You don’t become president, you don’t get mind control, It doesn’t make your more awesome. You die of AIDS.

This is the face of evil. This is the alternative. This is what we oppose. This is what Christ has given us victory against. Not the red dude. That’s just Tim Curry with makeup on.