avatar4321
05-01-2007, 05:35 AM
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070423/COLUMNISTS16/704230305/1047/COLUMNISTS16
Grappling with evil begins with noting its existence
There is a word we fancy ourselves too sophisticated to use today. We're too evolved, too progressive, too educated, too intellectual, too therapeutic.
It is a word some find offensive, insensitive and controversial. That word is -- evil.
Evil was the word that came to mind as news of the mass murder at Virginia Tech began crossing the television screen.
Evil was the word formed by the dark clouds of smoke and ash that hovered over the ruins of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Evil has a long history. Even a short look back in time finds it swooping low over Pearl Harbor and forming the foundation of the Holocaust.
When President Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire, many tongues in the free world wagged in disgust. Those in the gulags appreciated his candor.
When President Bush lamented the Axis of Evil, he, too, was taken to the woodshed.
Evil is a concept considered outdated and provincial. Yet you can hardly go a week without picking up the paper and seeing some hideous manifestation of it.
When our jaws drop at the mother who has taken the lives of her children, we are gaping at evil. When we learn of another drunk driver speeding the wrong way on the interstate, killing innocents in the path, we see the face of
evil.
If only evil had a geographic place of origin, some tiny spot on the planet we could pinpoint, we could take a scorched-earth policy and nuke it.
Instead, we confront evil with SWAT teams shrouded in black vests, black pants, black boots and black hoods, gripping black weapons. All appropriately dark and dramatic in a grisly way.
In the 4th century, St. Augustine contended that the things we call bad are simply good things perverted. Good is the tree and evil is the ivy. A thinking friend puts it even simpler: Evil is the absence of good.
I do not believe you can become a fully mature individual without grappling with the problem of evil. Further, I don't think you can have these "talks with children" the experts encourage, without discussing the nature of evil -- where it comes from, how it takes root, the path it charts, and the things that help it grow.
The sobering part is that the potential for evil resides in every one of us. Nobody is immune.
C.S. Lewis offered an excellent caution when he said good and evil both increase at compound interest. "That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance."
Driving that truth home to our children, and to ourselves, may be the first step in bringing good out of evil.
Grappling with evil begins with noting its existence
There is a word we fancy ourselves too sophisticated to use today. We're too evolved, too progressive, too educated, too intellectual, too therapeutic.
It is a word some find offensive, insensitive and controversial. That word is -- evil.
Evil was the word that came to mind as news of the mass murder at Virginia Tech began crossing the television screen.
Evil was the word formed by the dark clouds of smoke and ash that hovered over the ruins of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
Evil has a long history. Even a short look back in time finds it swooping low over Pearl Harbor and forming the foundation of the Holocaust.
When President Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire, many tongues in the free world wagged in disgust. Those in the gulags appreciated his candor.
When President Bush lamented the Axis of Evil, he, too, was taken to the woodshed.
Evil is a concept considered outdated and provincial. Yet you can hardly go a week without picking up the paper and seeing some hideous manifestation of it.
When our jaws drop at the mother who has taken the lives of her children, we are gaping at evil. When we learn of another drunk driver speeding the wrong way on the interstate, killing innocents in the path, we see the face of
evil.
If only evil had a geographic place of origin, some tiny spot on the planet we could pinpoint, we could take a scorched-earth policy and nuke it.
Instead, we confront evil with SWAT teams shrouded in black vests, black pants, black boots and black hoods, gripping black weapons. All appropriately dark and dramatic in a grisly way.
In the 4th century, St. Augustine contended that the things we call bad are simply good things perverted. Good is the tree and evil is the ivy. A thinking friend puts it even simpler: Evil is the absence of good.
I do not believe you can become a fully mature individual without grappling with the problem of evil. Further, I don't think you can have these "talks with children" the experts encourage, without discussing the nature of evil -- where it comes from, how it takes root, the path it charts, and the things that help it grow.
The sobering part is that the potential for evil resides in every one of us. Nobody is immune.
C.S. Lewis offered an excellent caution when he said good and evil both increase at compound interest. "That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance."
Driving that truth home to our children, and to ourselves, may be the first step in bringing good out of evil.