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.

The Mystery of Good

People who struggle with God send me the most frequently used argument AGAINST God. They ask, “How can God be good when there is so much bad going on in the world?” Or some variation on that theme. They think they have an unassailable argument against there being a God but what they have is betrayed a belief in GOOD.

Anyone who uses the argument that there is too much BAD in the world for a GOOD God to exist is in reality telling you they believe in GOOD and they believe God should measure up to the standard of GOOD. My rhetorical question back to them is: why do you believe there should there be ANY good in the world? Where did you get this sense of GOOD?

Where did this mystery of GOOD come from? We all know of it, we call can’t quite define it, but we are all aware of it somehow. Tell me how a humanist, atheist or an evolutionist would explain the presence of GOOD in the world?

Every Christmas I have a battle with my wife over what kind of gift giving we should have with our children and grandchildren. Should we give them something they NEED or should we give them something they WANT. To me, this struggle is evidence of the mystery of GOOD. How can you really explain Christmas without the mystery of GOOD. Now I don’t mean the Jesus being born thing; that has evolved into a commercial mess and there are more important days on the Christian calendar like Easter and Ascension Day. What I am talking about is the DESIRE and JOY that comes from giving gifts to each other. Christmas is really more about GIVING of gifts than the RECEIVING of gifts. Again, it is the most callous among us who don’t get a deep joy out of watching children open presents.

Explain that to me in humanist, atheist, or evolutionary terms. Sure, we want to give gifts to see our children succeed in life and all humanists do too; but it is more than that, there is a JOY in giving that can only be explained by the mystery of GOOD.

This year I will again pay money along with a few other strangers to go to a foreign country, work for free, sleep on a hard floor, put up with snoring strangers, attempt to speak a foreign language, eat food that doesn’t quite agree with me; all because … why? Because of some evolutionary instinct to help others? NO, because I want to do GOOD.

After 9/11 there we were a nation with an overwhelming sense of GOOD and a need to do something GOOD. It was short lived, but it was there. In any crisis you see that sense of people rushing to do GOOD. Why?

I cleaned my fish tank and totally disrupted the world of my fish. It was as if a tsunami devastated their world. But I did not see the other fish rushing to support each other. Some of them died in the tsunami but I didn’t see the others rushing to prevent or help. In fact they more likely rushed to eat the dead and dying.

Only Christianity can explain GOOD in the world. Even then it is still a mystery about how we were created in God’s image. Far from being a reasonable argument against God, the “why is there evil in the world” debate is proof that there is a mystery of GOOD in the world. Only Christianity can explain the joy I have in giving to others. Only Christianity can explain the successful therapy derived from serving others. Only Christianity can explain the strong desire to help those in crisis. Only Christianity can get you further down the road to explain the mystery of GOOD.

The Mystery of Love

What can explain love? Have you ever tried to explain this mystery?

When my children were born I cried like a baby. When my grandchild was born I cried like a baby. When we celebrated the life of my parents when my dad turned 90, my mom 80, and they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary; I looked at them and I cried.

Every time I see my brothers and sisters I feel something. When I spend time with my wife of 33 years, I feel something.

Tell me, how can you explain this mystery?

I would not hesitate to take a bullet for my wife, children, and grandchildren. Oh, but you evolutionists say, that is survival of the fittest; that is an instinct to preserve your progeny. Fine, and then explain to me why I (and you) would do the same thing for that child if he/she was handicapped in minor or even extreme ways?

Survival of the fittest and evolutionary thought is stumped by love. Especially by love of those physically and mentally challenged who will do nothing but absorb resources that could go to “healthy” children. It is only the most callous of us who would not save the life of those we love even IF their life is not expected to go beyond us or our “world” tells us that their life is not going to be a “quality” life.

Evolution and natural selection can explain how my heart works and evolved but they can never explain how it aches for those I love or is broken with the pain of heartbreak. 

Evolution and science can explain how my eye works and how light is turned into memory by your eyes but they cannot tell me why I cry when I see my grandchild asleep.

Even Christians who cognitively understand that God is love; have a hard time explaining what that means. Christians can define love based on scripture but are still at a loss to understand the WHY of love. We hear “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16) but this still does NOT explain the why of love and why I feel sick or euphoric based on something we define as love. It is a mystery even to Christians.

I know Christianity is true because of the mystery of love. It is probably the greatest and best mystery; but not the only one.

Mystery

We have lost the sense of mystery, true mystery.

We know where babies come from … the mystery is gone.

We know where snow, rain, and sunshine come from … the mystery is gone.

We know how and why the earth shakes, floods happen, and drought drains … the mystery is gone.

Our first response to something we don’t understand is to examine it, to test it, to figure it out. I am not saying this loss of mystery is bad, I am just saying we have lost it. There are many good outcomes to figuring things out scientifically; we can heal people like never before, we can prevent catastrophic death from plagues and weather, we can experiment even further down the rabbit hole to find out about things that we never dreamed of before.

Yet we are missing something. Let me just take a look at the weekly offering of shows on TV right now:

·         Ghost Hunters (SyFy)

·         Haunted Collector (SyFy)

·         My Ghost Story (Bio)

·         Ghost Adventures (Travel)

·         Paranormal State (A&E)

·         A Haunting (Discovery)

·         Most Haunted USA (Travel)

·         Ghost Hunters Academy (SyFy)

·         Fear (MTV)

·         Ancient Aliens (History)

·         Supernatural (CW)

·         Walking Dead (AMC)

·         American Horror Story (FX)

·         Bates Motel (A&E)

You could probably name even more. I see a direct correlation between the LOSS of mystery in our daily lives and the ATTEMPT at mystery in our entertainment.

Why do we seek the unexplained and mysterious in our entertainment yet mock the unexplained and mysterious in our daily lives.

My last trip to the Grand Canyon involved a brief conversation. I breathed, “Isn’t it amazing what an artist our God is?” A man, not part of my group, said, “It has nothing to do with a god of any sort. It is simply water and time. That’s all you need to carve a Grand Canyon.” He sounded honest and earnest in his scientific explanation and many around us agreed by their silence so I, of course, had to speak up. “Yes, I agree, but tell me this: where did the water and time come from?”

There are things in this world that I still consider a mystery. Over the next few columns I will share them with you. Somewhere, deep into that mystery, I found God. But this is the God who reveals himself, not in scripture, but in the world we live in. Shall we descend into the rabbit hole together?