On Hope and Evil

"Lack of Hope called world's greatest evil" said the headline at ZENIT. http://www.zenit.org/article-35601?l=english Which made me pause and say, what a wonderful question. What is the greatest evil? Some of this comes from an exercise my daughter recently asked me to complete. There was a series of words which I was asked to number 1 to 7, worst to least bad. It included prostitute, sadist, killer, alcoholic, thief, etc. The point of the exercise was to justify your position. As my daughter pointed out, a killer could be a soldier. As I pointed out a sadist may have the desire to hurt others, but choose not too, much like an alcoholic. The purpose of such a process is to sharpen our thinking skills and help us to consider issues from many angles. It is also revelatory of our own values and our hearts.

As I ponder the evils more prevalent in our midst (i.e. the white, middle-upper middle class world of the Mid-South) many of them are terribly mundane. And that word reminds me of an essay I read in the seminary, circa 1979, written many years before that by Thomas Merton. It was an essay on Nazis and the war criminal trials. I cannot remember the name of the essay or which of his dozens of books contained it. I tried to google a series of words but came up empty. What I do recall, is his assessment of one of the Nazi architects of so much evil and suffering. Merton recalls being disappointed by how ordinary and bureaucratic the man was. He pondered that such malevolence should be wrapped in a sneering, grotesque face, exuding a wretched ugliness. Instead, he looked like an accountant.

Merton's point, spoken from a place of spiritual journey few of us can fathom, is that we are a fallen race. The Christian doctrine of sin means that all are touched by (and embrace willingly) evil. It is hard to deal with such a concept. We like to think of evil being "those guys" (and we all identify different groups). We like to believe we are the "good guys" even if slightly flawed....

My thoughts, as much as I love a top ten list, is that the use of the term "worst" or "greatest" is hyperbole. It is probably not possible to actually figure out the obvious greatest evil. Yet, there are degrees and kinds and some evils are worse than others. The loss of hope certainly deserves conisderation. We live in a post-belief society. Even Christians are weighed down by the assumptions and beliefs of secularity and materialism. I see it at work every day, decaying the faith commitments of church goer and drifters alike. It produces a sense of "what's in it for me" and the mindless pursuit of distractions and pleasure. And it provides a venue for more sinister forces to work. Confronted with a lack of meaning, we are left to our own devices, to spin meaning out of the daily events which we plod through each day. So my team's success (or for me lately, inexplicable failure) determines my happiness (or sends me to bed each night swearing I will not watch another White Sox game ever!). Doing good and getting acknowledgment is a temporary reprieve, but then the poisonous whisper hisses in our mind, "does it matter?"

To follow Christ is to be a cross-carrying Liberator. We are freed from despair and empowered to give hope. Maybe we church folks have failed in the mission. Maybe we need to see the societal wide "pursuit of stuff" as a fruit of our poorly conceived and more poorly executed evangelism. Or maybe we need to recognize that the world is a battle field and our souls are the booty. We need to know that the great evils (loss of hope, love and faith among the worst) are actually the weapons of spiritual forces. We need to "awake from sleep, our salvation is near at hand." We need to be praying more, reading more, thinking more, serving more, focused more. I am glad there are bishops meeting to discuss the loss of  hope. I am glader still that there is a God Who plans to rescue us. And I am glad if this essay provides some fodder for conversion and renewal in someone's life, even if it is only mine!