No wise person can deny the existence of evil in this world. We are all familiar with the evil of death. Evil is a perversion of mind and spirit, swerving from the way of true virtue , which frequently overtakes the unwary. The enemy [of evil] is within us. Within us is the progenitor of our error; within us, I say, dwells our adversary. Hence, we must examine our aims, explore the habits of our minds, be watchful over our thoughts and over the desires of our hearts.

—Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, The Six Days of Creation, 1:31

This kind of stuff makes us feel badly,  doesn’t it? So why should we engage reading and thinking about it? As long as we fool ourselves into thinking we are not all that bad, that we really don’t need any help in living good and purposeful lives, we will never have room in our thinking or lives for God. That’s the nature of human sin. We were created to have a relationship with God as his creatures, not his equals or to be independent from him. But we want to be his equal or at least be independent from him! We don’t have to look very far to see how life without God is working for us, do we? That is why Lent is an important, if not necessarily pleasant, season in our faith journey. It helps bring us a much-needed reality check.