^“Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8 New Living Translation) So the writer of the First Epistle of Peter warns his readers. There has been considerable merriment on social media that our government in England is now telling us to stay alert to an invisible virus. Do we hide behind a bush if we see it coming? Nobody as far as I am aware has noticed that the Prime Minister told us to stay alert against a “devilish” virus. Has he or anyone in this government been reading their Bibles?

For Christians the injunction to stay alert has two related meanings; to be waiting and watchful for the Second Coming of Christ in his glory and to resist the “glamour of evil” as a previous generation of Catholics were asked. This warning is embedded in the baptism liturgy as the candidate is asked “Do you renounce the world the flesh and the devil?” and also points us back to the story of the ten bridesmaids awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom in Matthew 25 as well as Jesus’ other warning to his followers to stay awake and watch and wait.

The problem is that evil comes in many forms, not easily recognised and definitely not conveniently and obviously labelled. Stay alert and resist evil has had a chequered history over the Christian millenia. I’m currently re-reading the Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco with its graphic descriptions of the work of the early Inquisition. It would be hard to argue that no evil has ever been done by Christians. If Christians around the world have found it difficult to discern evil for two millenia it is not perhaps suprising that many in England are now confused by what staying alert may mean for us during the next weeks.