What is sin? Consider the following: it is the abuse of freedom. It is a failure to respond to God’s invitation or to God’s challenge. The tap roots that nurture sin include callousness, hardness of heart, and a refusing to understand what is at stake in being alive. Consider that there is a sin which many of us condone – which most of us are guilty of: indifference to evil. I find myself remaining neutral, impartial and all too often I am not easily moved by the wrongs done unto others.
My indifference to evil is more corrupting than evil itself. Indifference to evil is more universal, more contagious and therefore more dangerous to our well-being. As Abraham Joshua Heschel notes, evil is ‘A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.’
The great mystics and prophets did not discover that evil exists; man knew this. Their powerful contribution was the naming of the ‘evil of indifference.’ They remind us that we are ‘our brother’s keeper.’ All mystics and prophets offer us the same refrain, over and over and over: God is not indifferent to evil! So, too, you must not be indifferent to evil!
God is always concerned. Consider that God is truly and deeply affected by what man does to man. God is love and compassion and so God becomes angry when are indifferent in the face of evil. God is also comforter, for evil is not the end; evil will not win out. Yet, we sit with a crucial question: ‘Does God not condone evil?’ Why does God permit evil? Does God not care?
We have choice; this is one of our gifts. God want you-me-us to choose love and compassion and because we have choice we can also choose evil and we can choose to be indifferent to the evil done. Our reaction to evil is disapproval; God’s reaction to evil such that there are no words to capture it.
Perhaps we are indifferent to evil because God is presented to us as a comforter not as a challenger. We are invited and challenged by God to not approach and respond to evil with indifference. When we resist or refuse God’s invitation and challenge then we sin. All of this gives me pause. . . . . .