2:9 Jesus, Dracula, the Dark Side, and the Nature of Evil

In the final petition of the Lord's Prayer, should we pray ‘deliver us from evil’? Or is it ‘deliver us from the evil one’? In popular culture, there are generally 2 ways that evil is portrayed.  On the one hand, evil is presented as a faceless, disembodied power that floats all around us. Think about the Dark Side of the Force in Star Wars. It’s out there. It mysteriously draws people in.  But it doesn’t have any shape or form. Even though there are people who are entirely sold out to the Dark Side, there is no Satan or demons or evil spirits behind it.  On the other hand, evil is often portrayed as something that is personified. This is to say, its not just a force that's out there trying to draw us in. Rather, there’s a spiritual being who is by nature evil - and his very existence threatens our well being.  In Western pop culture, one of the classic examples of this kind of person is Bram Stoker’s Dracula.  The question that we consider in this episode is: which expression of evil is best reflected in the teachings of Jesus?  When Jesus taught his followers to pray for deliverance from evil, was he thinking of evil as a faceless power in the world, a disembodied dark force? Or was he thinking of evil as personified in a bad spiritual being like Satan?