SEEKING TO UNDERSTAND EVIL, PART I

Gentle reader, if you have been following my blog these past 18 months you might have noticed that I am intrigued by what we call ‘Evil.’  In my quest to seek to understand ‘evil’ I periodically stop and take some time to think about it.  These past few months I have been setting aside some time each week to ponder, reflect upon/about, noodle, and consider ‘evil.’  So what follows is some of what has emerged for me during this time.

Whether we explore the past, become aware of the present, or gaze into the future — evil roams about.  I am not a historian, but it does seem to me that it is nearly impossible to delve into any society’s collection of proverbs and not find reference to evil, its causes and its cures.  As human beings, it appears as if we have always, still are and will be intrigued by the riddle of evil.  Many faith traditions, for example, have striven to embrace the paradox of a loving God who permits evil to roam about.  Throughout history many folks have uttered the same words that Jesus uttered: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’  On the other hand, we humans are imperfect and it seems our imperfection opens the pathway to evil.  In spite of what appears to be universal agreements as to what is evil, we humans still choose to inflict evil upon one another.  For example, it appears that most of us humans consider torture to be evil and yet we continue to torture [there are many forms of torture that we employ — physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual].  Most of us, myself included, are repulsed by the thought that we — each of us — do torture others (and at times we even torture ourselves).

Evil is a central and baffling theme of theology and philosophy; it can also be a central theme for many of the other disciplines that directly address we human beings.  For example, my father was a physician and he was committed to combating the ‘physical evils’ that affect us — disease and death.  If we are awake and aware even for a brief time we become aware of the evil that roams about in our world; we might also conclude that within each of us ‘evil resides’ waiting to be called forth onto the stage that is our life.  We are, as Greenleaf noted, at our healthiest living paradoxes of good and evil.

My current thinking is that what we call evil does not exist in nature, say the way lakes and meadows, valleys and mountains exist or in the way human hair grows (or in my case seldom grows) on one’s head.  Consider that NOTHING IS EVIL — not a tornado, a tsunami, a bomb, or even mass murder UNTIL one names it as evil.  Evil would not exist if man did not exist to name it.  What this means to me, is that we are, first of all, dealing with human judgments — we judge something or someone or some event or some situation, etc to be evil the same way we judge an object to be hot or cold or a person to be thin or thick or a political party to be conservative or progressive.  Secondly, we are dealing with ways to help human beings become and remain ‘healthy’ — physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually and socially.

Given this, the cast of characters in the play we call ‘Evil in Life’ is limited to three: Any of us, as individuals, can — and do — play these three roles [we can even play all three roles at the same time].  One role is that of Judge.  Judges are people who possess values and who express value judgments concerning evil.  A second role is that of Evildoer.  The evildoer is the person who commits the evil as judged by him/her self and/or by another.  The third role is that of Victim.  The victim is the person who experiences the effects of what is judged to be evil.  Now there is another element that comes into play and that is Situations.  Situations are circumstances that are frequently judged to be evil because they produce or help produce Evildoers or Victims or both (it seems to me that ‘situations’ also produce or help produce ‘judges;’ but these situations are probably not deemed to be ‘evil.’).

I had a brief conversation with a friend of mine this morning, Jim.  Jim is training his new puppy, ‘Miss Ruby’ and so as I was thinking about evil this morning I wondered if animals should be excluded from a discussion of evil.  From one perspective, there is no good reason to do so — they might be considered to be ‘evildoers;’ dog bites Jim or they might be considered ‘victims’ as in woman beats dog.  In fact, animals in Ancient Greece had to stand trial when they caused a person’s death.  Theologians and Philosophers have stifled this idea because they say that animals don’t have ‘free will’ so they cannot ‘choose to do evil.’  So, perhaps I should continue by focusing on us human beings as Judges, Evildoers and Victims.  I conclude today with these words from the Buddha: ‘It is man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.’