NOTES for Luk 11:23-26

There is a type of person, especially common among the intelligentsia, who calls oneself an agnostic and takes a certain pride in one’s spiritual neutrality. As a rule, these are people of high moral standards and profound education, people who are worthy in the highest degree. Such a position seems very attractive in its noninterference, its hovering above the fray, and its apparent purity. But the Lord does not accept this position, and in today’s Gospel He explains why: because it offers only the appearance of neutrality. Pontius Pilate also thought that he was washing his hands. Yet in the principal text of our confession of faith, the Creed, he alone bears responsibility for the evil committed. There is a profound meaning in this. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not do good, by that fact alone we do evil. If we do not fill our soul with faith in God, it will be filled with faith in a principle opposed to God. Agnostics think that everything within them has been swept and put in order, that there is no disorder, no wavering, no searching; yet without noticing it themselves, they let in even worse demons—the demons of indifference, insensibility, and selfishness.