Grappling with evil

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http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dl...7/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Evil is a concept considered outdated and provincial.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.

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Interestingly, I'm noticing that people who aren't even Christians are making comments that seem to indicate that even they are considering the possibility that evil can exist or that human beings can be beset with or be evil in nature.

Just a few weeks ago, I was listening to a little bit of the Dr. Laura, radio show, and she mentioned about a person being evil, and the woman caller questioned Dr. Laura's comment. Dr. Laura came back rather quickly and said that she believed that some folks have an "evil" bent right from childhood. She then mentioned well-know names of some people as examples of this. I remember Jeffrey Dalmer being mentioned. She/Dr. Laura said, that Dalmer as a very little child was killing animals. ( Please don't try to tie in those that hunt or fish in this class, as that is classless, and so naive.)

Interestly, in my average middle class neighborhood that I grew up in in Cupertino, California, back in the 1950's, there was a kid about my age who was forever torturing and killing animals. As you might surmise, he wasn't too popular with the other kids. In fact even the guys in my neighborhood who were considered bullys seemed to "key in" on him and pick on him as they even had moral scruples about animal torturing, and killing.

For all practical purposes, this kid was just an average guy in elementary school (second through 4th grade), but he had this obsession when he was alone where he just plain did some bad stuff to animals.

We had a creek that ran through our neighborhood, and many of us kids would play down in it during the Summer as it always went dry. We threw rocks, built forts, and got lost of bad Poison Oak rashes from being down there. This strange kid would use the creek to do his torturing of animals. Once a bunch of the neighborhood kids found a poor little cat that this twisted kids had hung/strangled by a rope from a tree limb.

We had a few backyard pets ourselves, and our backyard bordered the creek. This kid climbed up an old oak tree in the creek and shot our pet Mallard Duck in the head with a BB gun. Fortunately it didn't kill our duck, but our 14 year old pet duck did lose the sight in one eye from the BB.
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Also I read a book by a fellow named Scott Peck, called, "People Of The Lie".

Scott Peck was a psychologist, and was not a religious person at all when he first started writing this book. Interestingly, I believe that he became a Christian while finishing the above-named book. The basic idea or theme of this book was his case-studies of people that he counseled in therapy in his practice, and how he started to see "something" in certain folk's behaviors and ways that started him wondering if there was such a thing or entity called "evil". Peck didn't mention examples like the kid I grew up with, but actually wondered about more subtle behaviors that he thought might be "red flags" to something not being right. He also had the opportunity as a non-Christian to witness what was supposed to be an exorcism too. These examples, weren't folks with outlandish, abborant behaviors, but folks that we would meet in everyday life and assume nothing out of the ordinary in them.

Remember that this man/author was not a Christian, but a secular psychologist, so his observations can have a lot of impact on validating a lot of biblical statements concerning evil too in respect to folks that avoid anything written by Christians as being "biased".

Anyway, his observations of counseling different people, and what he deduced from these encounters is very intriguing.

He also wrote a book called, "The Road Less Traveled" I believe, after becoming a Christian.
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I think before much more world-time or history has past by, a lot more secular or non-Christians will be convinced that "evil" is not always a by-product of how we were raised, and just may be a very ensnaring, real entity that is working overtime in our world through people of all classes, cultures, religions, and politics.

Sadly, folks think that the personage of "Satan" or the "Devil" is rather humorous or non-important, or that his footprints/fingerprints are easy to see/identify. The bible describes this being as very cunning, most intelligent, and not to be overlooked. The bible also says that this created personage was a fallen angel of very, very high rank or order in heaven.......Some have even surmised that he was one of the many winged creatures (Seraphim) that surrounded God's throne in depictions from the O.T. book of Isaiah. In other words Satan/the Devil was not some red bodied, pitch forked carrying creature, but a beautiful creature, of great power, intelligence, influence, and magnificence.

People think that evil is easy to find, destroy or identify, but after reading Scott Peck's book/s, the cunning and subtlety of "evil" is indicative of great intelligence, and not a "hap hazard" type of occurrence by any measure.

In fact a true enemy, to be trully cunning must convince it's prey that it is not an enemy to it.

Also Peck believed that people could be in the snare of evil and not realize it too. He, Peck, actually indicated personally inthese books of really having a great deal of sorrow for people in whom he saw or observed a vacuousness of conscience that he deduced was a type of evil presence controlling or shrouding their souls. Yes, this was a secular psychologist folks, and not some fly by night guy with minimal degrees or experience in behavioral work with humans.
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The sad part of this is that "evil" can take the role of "Goodness" yet it's ultimate results or aim is destruction of humanity, and an abhorance of anything that attributes positive credit to God or Godly principles.

In fact true evil is so intelligent, so cunning, that it can enshroud and fool, the most intellectually astute of human beings. It is no respecter of education, but preys on one's will, and reason when one exercises one's innate or learned intelligence. Human pride is it's best petri dish, as it gives it/evil, a gestation area of safety from both the host and those that come in contact with the host.
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