Power of evil
Wednesday February 27, 2008
Powers of good and evil
Out of the blue, the woman said, “When I look around the world, I have trouble believing in a power of good. But I have no difficulty believing in a power of evil.”
I was a bit startled.
Partly because it’s sort of a taboo thing to say.
And partly because it expressed a thought I had been trying hard not to think.
I convinced myself long ago that the legendary figure of Satan, dressed in red flame-proof tights and wielding a trident – presumably used to skewer poor souls so that they could barbecue over the fires of hell like a pot roast on a rotisserie – had no more reality than the tooth fairy.
I had no sympathy for excuses like, “The devil made me do it.” I saw them as a tacit admission of failure to accept responsibility for one’s own actions.
Besides, belief in a devil seemed very like dualism. Zoroastrianism has two gods, one good, one evil. But Christianity proclaims one God only. I called myself Christian. Therefore, I believed, God cannot have an evil counterpart.
Omnipotent God
But as regular readers may have noticed, I too have been having trouble lately believing in a traditional God.
In the United Church’s national magazine, The Observer, Sara Jewell wrote about a disillusioned friend of hers. “What’s the point of praying before a meeting about making good decisions?” Sara’s friend demanded. “At the same time, someone’s praying that someone will stop raping them. If there is a Being who has the personal authority to help us have a better meeting, why isn’t that Being helping people in real distress?”
Precisely. About 13 million people will die of AIDS this year, leaving perhaps three times that many children orphaned… Floods drown thousands in Bangladesh… Rising ocean levels threaten island nations in the Pacific… Suicide bombers disrupt a Baghdad funeral…
Earthquakes, fires, wars and civil wars, tribal massacres, corruption, crime, drug dealing, child pornography – they make it hard to believe in an omnipotent God who could stop these things but won’t.
Not necessarily
But it’s increasing easy to believe in a power of evil that subverts our best intentions. Such a power doesn’t have to cause earthquakes or tsunamis. It doesn’t have to trigger volcanoes or landslides. It doesn’t have to manipulate nature at all.
It merely has to affect our responses. It weasels into human hearts and minds. Like a parasite or a cancer cell, it takes over our normal reactions and uses them against us. It turns generosity into selfishness, respect into envy, ambition into greed.
Then it occurs to me. If I can believe in a power of evil that doesn’t have to be all-powerful to achieve its ends, why do I need the power of good to be omnipotent?
Maybe a power of good doesn’t have to be omnipotent either. Maybe it can work the same way, by infiltrating our hearts and minds, by turning selfish emotions into altruism, and apathy into energy.
Maybe…
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Copyright © 2007 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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