NOTES for Luk 11:23-26

There is a type of person, especially common among intellectuals, who call themselves agnostics and in their own way take pride in their spiritual neutrality. As a rule, these are people of high morality and deep education, people who are worthy in the highest degree. Such a position seems very attractive in its noninvolvement, its hovering above the fray, and its visible purity.

But the Lord does not accept such a position, and in today's Gospel He explains why: because there is only the appearance of neutrality in it. Pontius Pilate also thought he was washing his hands. Yet in the main text of our confession of faith, the Creed, he alone bears responsibility for the evil that was done.

There is deep meaning in this. Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not do good, by that alone we do evil. If we do not fill our soul with faith in God, it will be filled with faith in the principle opposed to God. Agnostics think that inside them everything has been swept and put in order, that there is no disorder, no tossing about, no searching, and they do not notice how they let in still worse demons: demons of indifference, demons of insensibility and egoism.