The Mystery of Evil

When my kids were young they were perfect little angels … NOT! And I am sure yours were not the angels we try to remember them to be. We simply explain the selfishness of our children by saying it is because they don’t know any better and because they are just learning. But isn’t it interesting that they need to LEARN to do good but EVIL comes naturally? Isn’t it interesting that they KNOW how to be selfish but need to be taught unselfishness?

We try to explain the mystery of evil in many ways. We call evil poor upbringing, but what caused that poor upbringing? We call evil just being misunderstood; but the results of that misunderstanding is still evil. We call evil the natural consequence of abuse; but what brought about that abuse? We call evil emotional or psychological miss-wiring; but the people they killed are still dead.

We KNOW that murder is wrong but we struggle with whether to include war and abortion in the category of murder. We KNOW that abuse is wrong and yet we struggle with the reasoning behind why the abuser abuses. We KNOW that bad things happen in the world and yet we scream at how a GOOD God could allow it to happen; but we don’t wonder why we call some things that happen: “evil”.

There is evil in the world, just like there is good in the world. We try to nuance it away as a misunderstanding or a chemical imbalance but it is still there: the mystery of evil. Is evil a “thing” or is it a “person” like the devil or Satan who whispers in your ear just the right temptation to feed your selfish desires and cause that evil in the world?

There is evil in the world, but since it is a mystery and we don’t understand it we try to let our kids be free to “explore” those desires, for we “cannot punish those innocent little ones for just exploring”. So we don’t discipline or teach SELF discipline and reap the evil rewards of a teenager taking a tool of convenience and killing other kids with it.

Evil is real and it is a mystery. Only Christianity can get you further down the road to explaining this mystery. Only Christianity tells you how to ward off this mystery through discipline, self-discipline, and even tough love by allowing the loved one alone to wallow in this mystery until they look up again to GOOD.

Evil’s tentacles continue to grasp even the best of us for our whole life, we can keep it at bay but it is in our nature to let it go. It won’t disappear by redefining or renaming it: evil is evil. AND it is a mystery.