Evil
Don: This has been an emotional week. I was impressed and deeply moved by Faten’s response to last week’s discussion. It was a lusty, full-throated defense of her faith and of God, and I found it incredibly inspiring. The only thing I disagreed with was her worry that she might be embarrassing her mother by her pronouncement of faith.
I thought Ramesh’s response was very well put; on a par with the excellence of Faten’s defense of her faith. His recognition that she was teaching us all was a wonderful statement. It also impressed on me that each of us tends to make God in our own image. Doing so may not be a bad or an unnatural thing. Indeed, it may be the best we can do. We are all a product of our upbringing and our life experiences, all of which tend to shine in our hearts as an evidence of who and what God is to us.
In the 2nd Commandment, God talks about not making graven images. We tend to think of it as an injunction against idolatry, but it’s also a caution about making God in our own image, because in so doing we will tend to portray just one aspect of God, or even a misconception of God. We tend to picture God as just a bigger, stronger, wiser, smarter, etc., version of ourselves, but that is not so. Isaiah 55:8-9:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Faten’s view of God may not be entirely mine, but I respect and appreciate it as I respect and appreciate the natural, God-given opportunity we all have to picture God in our own way. Faten’s attitude towards evil and her own condition almost convinced me that evil is in the eye of the beholder; that there is no such thing as inherent evil or base evil; that evil is something we label as such even though in God’s eyes or the eyes of others it may not be.
My budding conviction was shattered by the events of Friday – the killing of the little schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut. Here was a dramatic instance of something we have been discussing in our recent meetings. Last week we talked about natural evil over which we have no control. The Newtown tragedy stopped me in my tracks and made me think again about what evil is and why evil is in the world.
Connecticut governor Dan Mallory said on Friday: “Evil has visited this community today.” Even though we have become rather accustomed to these kind of events (at least, we see them with enough frequency that we are somewhat less shocked at each new horror) this one stood out as even more despicable, inexplicable, and troubling than the other school shootings.
It struck me that there is something else different about this tragedy compared to other tragedies generally: Despite our individual differences in education, ethnicity, politics, economic status, etc., there is one thing that unites us all, and that is: We all love our children. We all view children as precious and innocent and vulnerable. These traits draw us all to children, and that seems to make this tragedy even more compelling than most.
Moments after it happened, of course, the question was asked: Where is God? Why did he let this happen? Since we have just been discussing the issue in our recent meetings, it seems to me it would be insensitive and unwise not to re-examine the question in the light of this tragedy.
(Incidentally, Mike Huckabee’s answer was that since public schools have eliminated prayer and God from the classroom, the schools are left unprotected by God, so this kind of thing is bound to happen.)
Jesus talked about evil in relation to the historical and personal view that people have of God. In John 8:42-47, Jesus labeled the Pharisees as evil:
Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me. Which one of you convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear them, because you are not of God.”
Here, Jesus distinguishes between two types of people. Our own discussion of this topic began with the relationship between metaphors for two types of people: sheep and goats, and wheat and tares. Now, we are directly confronted by two case studies: Faten and her illness, and the school shooting. Is there an explanation, an understanding, of God in them?
One easy answer might be that God has nothing to do with such cases; that evil people exist and will do evil things; and that we shouldn’t be surprised even if the degree of evil is incomprehensible. But still, why isn’t God around? Why doesn’t he intervene to mitigate this kind of evil? Another explanation—that incidents like this are not really evil; that there is even some benefit, some good, in them, some benefit—falls rather heavily on the heart, and seems to most of us a completely inadequate explanation. At the same time, though, I can’t imagine that this act could be done by anyone in his right mind. So might one say that this is a mental health issue?
Is it possible to put some meaning into all this?
Robin: Mr. Huckabee is evidently ignorant of the killing of the Amish children in a school a few years ago. Amish schools are awash in prayer, but that circumstance did not avert the tragedy there. Huckabee makes no sense.
Eb: We do not know the End from the Beginning. Only God knows the whole plan. Why did he allow Abel to be killed by Cain? We may ask, but there is no answer. Why did God ask Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice? What logical reason is there? There isn’t one! So there is no point asking the question. One must simply believe, have faith. Without faith in God, one asks these questions, such as why these children had to die, to which there is no answer. Why was the murderer born? Why was Saddam, Stalin, and other dictators born? Why was I born? Who knows? There is no answer, so why bother? Just believe!
Don: But is that answer satisfactory to the parents of the dead children, or to anyone? It seems a natural human response to ask the question. Maybe we won’t get the answer, but not trying to answer it seems wrong.
Eb: What good would have resulted if Abraham had asked God why he wanted him to sacrifice Isaac? When Isaac asked Abraham “Where is the sacrifice?” why did Abraham say “God will provide”? He said that because he knew God had a plan. It’s hard to come to that conclusion; it comes only through experience. One must learn not to doubt God.
Sudesh [did I get your name right? Please correct and forgive me if not!]: I don’t feel it’s fair to drag God into this. It is not God who allows lax gun laws and the proliferation of guns. It’s America’s fault, not God’s fault. The murderer reportedly comes from a broken family. God said not to put married people asunder, but we allow divorce.
Dr. Singh: All creatures on earth have one life, except humans, who have two: a worldly life and a spiritual life. Satan is everywhere in the worldly life. God is only concerned with our spiritual life. But people are more concerned to teach their children how to live the worldly life—how to get money, how to spend it, and so on. Jesus was concerned about the spiritual life after death.
Harry: Don mentioned the graven images of the 2nd Commandment. Constructing an image of God means more than building an idol, it means constructing him from everything we know, it means constructing him to fit our personality, our values. The problem for Adam and Eve was not in eating the apple: See Genesis 3:22:
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever…”
The problem philosophically was that Adam and Eve now had the knowledge of good and evil. Since they were already like Gods—living in heaven and with eternal life—why was this a problem?
We place value on good and evil [and imbue] our images of God with them. When something happens that does not fit the image of God we have created, we grow perplexed and even angry.
The problem is we don’t know how to define evil. We’ve created an image—a paradigm—of a God who is like us; yet he is not like us. We want him to have the same sympathies and feelings as us, and to come to our defense when our sensibilities are offended. But look at the evidence that he does not, in fact, do so: In just recent history, Hitler and Pol Pot killed six and seven million people respectively! There was evil and destruction on a massive scale, yet God did not intervene. We want him to, but throughout history, he has never intervened.
It does not mean he does not exist. But our perception of who God is and how he functions is our problem. The last six of the Ten Commandments are pretty simple: love your mother and father, don’t steal, commit adultery, murder, etc. These are things that create anger and pain etc. Obeying the commandments results in a peaceful life. But you are still going to die.
The magic pill of a God in the classroom to protect children is a myth. The evidence is flat against it. God wants us to survive and to do good to others, but evil is with us: We sell guns to people, we do things that create pain. God has nothing to do with that. God is about telling us how to live. This is not to say there is not something magical about God. As Faten said, God is within us, and there are magical moments when we are on the same plane with him. But the image of God we have created through theology is poisonous.
Emma: It’s like the woman who lost one of her children in the Newtown tragedy, who said through her tears: “He’s with God now.” It is a very comforting thought. She must have been a religious person to say that. Perhaps there is some comfort also in the notion that the children will not have to go through the pain and sorrow that growing up brings.
Sudesh: We can ask why didn’t God intervene, but we can equally claim he did intervene to prevent even more children dying. We just don’t know how God works. Maybe he intervened at just the right time. Maybe he will intervene when he allows us to wake up over gun control, divorce, and marital problems.
Robin: As a divorcee and as the child of a divorce, I know the effects of it. There are ministers who have lived long, faithful, happily married lives yet have had children who grew up, in that stable environment, to be evil. Adam and Eve were married by God and certainly taught their children about God, yet one of their children (Cain) grew up to be evil, while the other grew up to be good.
Every day when we get up we have a choice to do good or evil. If we choose evil, it is because of mental illness, and the mental illness is the evil. Evil simply exists. It is present inside us and sometimes prevails in all of us, struggle as we might.
Don: You are in good company with Paul, in Romans 7. He was conflicted because he wanted to do good but did wrong anyway.
Harry: The shooting on Friday was evil. A person who can be so angry or sick is a psychopath, and a psychopath does not share our sense of right and wrong. As a young man, I hurt people. It’s a terrible feeling and it stays with you. It’s an adrenalin-filled event at the time, but when it’s over you feel horrible.
To continue hurting people [after the adrenaline subsides] is evil. If this guy was a psychopath, the act was not evil for him. Some people would consider some aspects of my lifestyle to be evil. It depends on how we define evil. The problem is when we try to say how God defines it. Why did God not want Adam and Eve to live in heaven for eternity with the knowledge of Good and Evil? Maybe it’s because we don’t know what Good and Evil mean to God. Maybe this act was not evil in God’s mind.
David: I agree with Eb that there are questions to which there are no answers. One of them is “What is evil?” We cannot pretend to understand either God or evil. We think we can – we point to Friday’s events and say “See? That’s got to be evil.”
Why doesn’t God respond? Maybe he does! There has been evidence of goodness galore in the reaction of people to the tragedy. Therein lies the evidence that God exists and was intensely present, and his presence is the intervention, and it is what makes life bearable. How unbearable would life be, if everyone had reacted coldly, without caring? Where does that care come from? It comes from God.
Making God after our image? I’m not sure that is what is happening. What I saw in Fay’s email was God shining through her, [not her construction of God.] Yes, he had to come through her personality and may therefore be bound to have been refracted somewhat but it he was and is still noticeably God, and that is uplifting and all the evidence I need to retain my faith.
Eb: Satan challenged Job’s belief in God over and over, but Job stuck with his faith. We have to do likewise. Questioning leads to doubt leads to no peace.
Don: There seems to be always a flood of goodness following an evil event. That is remarkable, yet seldom remarked! There is always a response to evil that is manifestly good and is universal. How often do we hear that a storm tore down someone’s house and no-one stepped up to help? People do invariably help, often consciously sacrificing something to do so.
Eb: But we bomb countries then send in the Red Cross. God doesn’t operate on that basis.
Harry: What impressed me the most about Faten’s journey is her conviction that she is sometimes in total union with God. I think we all feel that sometimes, but Faten is lucky enough to recognize it.
We all want to do good, to help others — at least we who are “normal,” not brain damaged. God comes to all people, and all people do good things. It makes God happy. And yet in the midst of this present tragedy that is destroying lives still, selfish humanity is already starting to use it to score political points over gun control, etc.
Jazlin: God intervened in the life of Jesus. Jesus was saved for a special reason. Moses was also saved for a special reason. And in this instance in Newtown, God saved the majority of the children, even though 20 of them died.
Mr. Singh: Long ago, a businessman friend he invited me to a party where people were drinking. Many of them have since died, of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and so on. One day my friend asked me to pray to my God for him. I told him my God was his God also, and that he was the God even of bad people. My own children didn’t believe in God, and one of them started drinking. After a while she repented and is now attending church regularly.
Alice: I wonder why people blame God. It’s so clear that Satan is to blame. Evil has been Satan’s purpose since the minute he left Heaven. Much as Jesus said in John 8. God does not interfere because the day for him to put an end to all evil is not here yet. But such a day is promised in the Bible. I am comforted by seeing my end to be the same as Job’s end. Job could not see his own end, yet so strong was his faith, he remained faithful anyway.
Turkish brother: We make such a big fuss if the evil befalls children. We know that every day, Palestinian children are among the dead killed by Israeli actions. And we know it will happen again tomorrow. Why aren’t we talking about this?
Don: Yes, in the name of our own country, or God, or our personal interests, we and our governments are involved in the perpetration of evil and the deaths of children and other innocent lives.
David: This points us to the real evil of this world. It is not in the head of the murderer. It is something much deeper, and it lies behind Palestine, and Iraq, and Pol Pot, etc. It is a much greater evil. Maybe it emanates from Satan. But it seems to me we can no more understand Satan than we can understand God. Perhaps know Satan when we see him, or we know him through his reflection in events like Newtown, in the same way that we know God when see his light shining through Fay. But in both cases, we are seeing through a glass darkly.
Don: It has been a sobering and emotional week. I personally feel slightly better for having discussed the events.
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