The Yetzer Hara War

(The war against the negative impulse)

"Don't you understand?" Jesus asked him. "Anything you eat passes through the stomach and then goes out of the body. But evil words come from an evil heart and defile the person who says them. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all other sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander. These are what defile you. Eating with unwashed hands could never defile you and make you unacceptable to God!" – Matthew 15:16-20

The yetzer hara is the human heart’s inner impulse or tendency to sin. We find the first occurrence of the word yetzer in Genesis 6:5, where humanity is described as having every imagination of their thoughts being only evil. Yetzer is also used in Scripture to describe something that has been formed or shaped. Our inner impulses thus form our lives. To paraphrase Jesus, “It is our inner impulse toward evil that defiles us, not our external actions.”

Once, when a tzaddik entered his classroom he noticed that his students stopped conversing and then started again. He asked them what it was they were talking about. They told the teacher that they were saying how they were afraid that the Yetzer Hara, evil inclination, would pursue them. The elder responded “Don't worry. You haven’t reached such a high level. You’re still pursuing it!”

James, Jesus’ step brother, put it this way, “Temptation comes from the lure of our own evil desires. These evil desires lead to evil actions, and evil actions lead to death.” (James 1:14-15). The problem is that most of us are too quick to lay the blame elsewhere saying, “The devil made me do it.”

We need to admit that deep within us there is a powerful dark force that is constantly driving us to do the evil that we don’t want to do. Further, it constrains us from doing the good things that we know we should. The sooner we identify and claim this spiritual cancer as our own, the sooner we can fight it.

We need the chemo of salvation to wash through our minds and hearts, reducing the effects of yetzer hara. We need the incisive scalpel of the Word, separating the thoughts and intents of our hearts and cutting out all that would keep us from being holy. We need the radiation of the Spirit glowing in our souls, shrinking the devil’s toe hold on our lives and placing Christ on his throne in our hearts.

This is war, people. We need to fight this tendency tooth and nail. The enemy will fight tough and he will fight dirty. We will use weapons both subtle and shocking. He will be constantly looking for a chink in our armor. Be on the lookout for opportunities to put yetzer hara down. Even insignificant decisions can be useful as practice for the big ones. We need to be taking this battle seriously, because even if we don’t - the enemy does.