“Is there evil in the world?”

Well, once again I am writing in response to something I heard someone else say.  This one had me yelling at the television at 7:30 this Sunday morning.  You probably recognize the above question from the “Civil Forum” Saturday, August 16, 2008, at Saddleback Church; it’s the question of Rick Warren to both Presidential candidates in his discussions with them.

But that is not what had me yelling at the TV on a Sunday morning.

Of course the talking heads were slicing and dicing and spinning what the candidates had said the night before.  One of them was asked to answer the question about evil for herself.  “Is there evil in the world?”  What was her answer?  “Evil is just unrefined good.”  AARRH!

This goes to the epistemology of evil.  What IS evil in its essence?  Which leads to the question of: what kind of world do we live in?  Is this a good world, or an evil world?  It leads to the question about human nature, are people innately good or innately evil?

But back to the basic question: What is evil?  In my thinking and reading, I find that there are two forms of evil.  There is natural evil and there is moral evil.  Natural is that which occurs without the interaction of mankind: tornados, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, some diseases.  Moral evil implies the action, inaction, or interaction of people.

I also find that evil, especially moral evil, has no substance of its own.  The substance of evil is the privation of that which is good.  For example, rape is evil; but it is evil because it is a twisting of a good and wonderful gift: human sexuality.  Homosexuality is evil because it is also a twisting, a perversion of that same good and wonderful gift. 

Murder is possibly the ultimate perversion of a good gift.  Could you imagine living forever in the human condition: always aging, more arthritis, dimmer vision, harder of hearing, losing the lust for life?  Even death, the last enemy, is a release from the bad things that accumulate as we live on and on, when it comes in God’s time.  The premature death of a teen in a wreck, death of a child due to some cancer like leukaemia, these are evil, a natural evil; but murder is a moral evil, an intentional taking of the life of another person without warrant or sanction.

The reason I was yelling at the TV at 7:30 on this Sunday morning was this ladies’ reasoning that evil is unrefined good, making evil and good a continuum.  In her thinking, evil is untrained good, uncivilized actions that can be reformed by education.  I would guess that this lady would deny the existence of sin, saying that it is “unrefined righteousness.”  What would God say to that idea?

The second part of Rick Warren’s question was “Do we negotiate with it, confront it, or defeat it?”

In my thinking, evil must be not just confronted, but defeated where possible.  We may be able to negotiate with evil people, but in the end the evil must be defeated.  This is not a task we as a nation can do for the world, we don’t have the resources, much less the moral authority; all we can do as a nation is determine our national interests, measure the degree of evil being perpetrated, and decide at what point to we get involved.  That leads to another topic: “Just War Theory.”  All we can do as individuals is this: Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 ¹³ The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. ¹⁴ For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil (NASB, The Lockman Foundation, used by permission).

God brings judgement on evil, and often, during time, God uses nations to punish the evil of nations, sometimes then punishing the nation He just used to punish because of their excesses in punishing evil.  Ultimately, God will punish evil, God will set all things right, things that even Solomon in all his wisdom could not untangle and set to rights.

“Is there evil in the world?”  Yes, there is.

Now what are we doing about it?  James 4:17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin (NASB).

Because SonnetJoy asked for it, here is my story about InstaVerse:

When I was beta testing the InstaVerse program, it had a coding error that did not recognize line breaks or returns.  This caused an unintended response when I asked our friend’s son for his parent’s mailing address so I could send a birthday card to his mother in Australia.  His response included this:

“Their address is:

47-1 …”

When I paused the mouse cursor over the address to copy it, the beta InstaVerse program read “is: 47-1” as a reference to Isaiah 47:1, which reads:  “Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; Sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no longer be called tender and delicate.”

When I told our friend, who was just turning 60 on that birthday, about this faux pas with her address/ birthday she laughed herself silly.