The New Neighbor

Last Weekend

A quiet rustle passed through the congregation as Pastor Jeremy Quillerman stepped up to the pulpit. He was in his mid-fifties, with a round belly that pressed against the powder-blue shirt beneath the coat of his dark-gray suit. He walked with a limp, the origin of which was a mystery to everyone at the Christian Fellowship Non-Denominational Church. His right hand had small mangled nubs where his last three fingers used to be. The remaining thumb and forefinger latched over his bible like fleshy hooks as he placed it on the pulpit and smiled at his congregation. His face was soft, gentle, lined with the creases of countless smiles. His silver-streaked black hair was cut short, carefully combed and thinning on top. His thick mustache was dark but had a white stripe below each nostril.

The gentleness of his face, however, was offset by his eyes. The left eye was glass and, as a result, was wider than the right and bulged slightly. From the inside corner of the eye a pale scar, smooth and slightly glossy, crawled up over the bridge of his nose and up the center of his forehead, stopping just short of his receding hairline. The right eye was both hard and sad, as if it had seen too many things that were at once horrifying and heartbreaking.

Pastor Quillerman began his sermon the way he always did: as if he were having a quiet conversation with a dear friend.

"What is evil?" he asked. "Where do you suppose it nests? Is it easy to recognize? Will we always know it when we see it so we can steer clear? Or has the master of deception fooled us with a perfectly executed shell game and led us to believe that evil is lurking just around the corner or right behind us… when it is, in reality, directly under our noses?"

The Pritchards were sitting halfway back from the front in the left column of pews, George with his arm around Jen, who had turned sixteen yesterday and who fidgeted beside her seventeen-year-old brother Robby.

"In I Peter 5:8," Pastor Quillerman said, "and I'm reading from the New International Reader’s Version here, Peter says, 'Control yourselves. Be on your guard. Your enemy the devil is like a roaring lion. He prowls around looking for someone to chew up and swallow.'"

Some of the Pritchards' neighbors were in the church, too. Mr. and Mrs. LaBianco were seated in their usual place: front pew, right column, on the aisle. And behind them were the Weylands, Paul and his wife Denise and their teenage daughters, Caryl and Stephanie.

"Now what, you may ask," the pastor went on, "does self control have to do with being on guard against evil? Isn't it enough simply to watch out for evil? Isn't it enough for us to be constantly on the alert for its traps? Well, my friends, that way of thinking happens to be one of its traps."

Sheri MacNeil sat in the very back pew with her son Christopher. She always sat there, just in case the toddler decided to start up a fuss or needed to go to the bathroom.

"Just as a child molester or a murderer almost never looks like a child molester or murderer, evil is seldom obvious. In the past, evil has been depicted as a red demon with horns and a tail. We’ve become more sophisticated today, but I’m afraid we still expect it to show itself, to look like evil. It's natural. I find myself doing it all the time. We all want something solid and specific to watch for. But when we spend all of our time trying to do away with things that might look questionable, sometimes we completely miss the most insidious forms of evil that are right before us… or, my friends, or… that are growing inside us."

Robby's best friend Dylan Garry was seated with his mother in the opposite column of pews – Mr. Garry never came to church – and the two boys made subtle, snide faces at one another across the center aisle.

"Just as god lives in each of us – just as the kingdom of heaven is within us, as Jesus said – we also have seeds of evil inside us," Pastor Quillerman said. "All those seeds need is a little nurturing, a little care, in order to blossom. Or sometimes, all they need is a little neglect – like weeds in a garden. We so often look outward for the things we need, for the answers to our questions, the solutions to our problems. More often than not, we would save a lot of time by looking inward. The novelist Steven Spruill once said, ‘We are, all of us, all of the things we have ever been.’ And that’s a lot. We have within us so much to draw on, to learn from. But we tend to neglect it while we search outside ourselves.

“In Matthew 7:5, we are told, ‘First take the piece of wood out of your own eye. Then you will be able to see clearly to take the bit of sawdust out of your friend's eye.’ Look to yourself first – you may be guilty of the very thing you’re accusing your friend of, and that makes you a hypocrite. Evil is like that. Before we can recognize it in front of us, we have to be able to recognize it inside of us. Because like everything else… it’s there. That’s where self control comes in. If we cannot manage our own weaknesses and problems, we have no business passing judgment on others for theirs.”

Jen played tic-tac-toe with herself on a scrap of paper and George's head began to nod. Karen poked her elbow in his ribs and his head popped up; after a while, though, it began, ever so slightly at first, to nod again.

The pastor said, "Evil never looks like evil. It looks innocent and harmless… attractive… even alluring. And sometimes… sometimes… it looks like the face we see when we look in the mirror.”