What is "Evil"?

Recognizing, Realizing, and Resisting Evil, Part 2

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The Trail of Tears

The Holocaust

9/11

Evil exists. 

But defining it is a lot like defining pornography. Nailing it down with an exact definition is nearly impossible, yet as the saying goes, “I know it when I see it.”

Nonetheless, today, I want to at least wrestle with how we can identify it, even if I can't come up with an exact definition for it.

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Evil is discerned through a moral narrative

The reason why it's impossible to define evil once and for all is because the term “evil" is a moral judgment (the same as “good”, for that matter). Everybody's morality will be somewhat different because your morality flows from your personal narrative, your story. 

Your story isn't just about your experience in the world. It's actually a combination of your personal experience and your cultural experience. 

Sometimes, your own experience tells you what is good and what is evil, and in other cases, you have to lean on your culture to determine that.

For example, think about this for a moment…

Imagine raising a child 200 years ago. If the child was disobedient, dad could grab a switch or even a belt and literally beat the child with it. Tjhat was perfectly acceptable parenting behavior back then. Indeed, it would even be expected. It's also how the father was raised. After all, disciplining a young child was just part of being a good dad.

Today, however, that kind of behavior would get the father into hot water with the law. That's because our cultural understanding of morality has shifted. What used to be acceptable and responsible parenting is now considered child abuse.

It's important to note that the father from 200 years ago may have even said, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you”. It's an admission that the father doesn't really want to do this, but doesn't know what else to do. He's not trying to be a bad dad, but rather doing the best he can. According to his narratives (personal and cultural) by which he lived, it was necessary for the sake of the son’s development into a “real man”.

Evil is relative

Morality is personal and contextual because our narratives determine what is good and what is evil. Consider for a moment the terrorist attack of 9/11. Surely, those who supported the terrorist act did not see it as evil, but rather as serving a greater good. Evil, as a moral category. is inherently relative.

Or, to bring it home a little bit more, consider this. What we see as evil today is not necessarily something that our ancestors considered to be evil. And what future generations consider to be evil may include things that we do not consider to be evil today. 

So while I seek to understand evil, I do so knowing full well that my conclusions are contextual and relative to my personal truth.  

The source of evil 

In my last article, I talked about the development of Satan as the personification of evil. We saw that early theologians struggled with this whole idea that God was the source of not only good, but also evil. Eventually, it stopped making sense to them, so they separated the source of evil from God in their sacred stories.

The theological word for wrestling with the problem of evil is “theodicy”. Different theologies have different theodicies. More conservative theologies tend to say that Satan is real and he is the source of evil in this world. That being said, they also give a nod to the idea that God puts us (or allows us to be) in situations where we experience evil so we can grow. 

Progressive theologians tend to reject the idea that God is in any way connected with evil or even that there is a singular spiritual source of evil. Rather, we tend to say the source of evil is part of the created order. So rather than passing the buck and saying “the devil made me do it” in one form or another, we prefer to say “We are responsible for it.”

But why? 

As an American, I look at the events of 9/11 and have to ask, “How could human beings even consider doing this?” 

Or, I could look at the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and wonder the same thing.

Indeed, why would any human being engage in any evil act in the first place? 

It isn't enough to fall back on my usual understanding: human evolution. Science shows us that human beings are wired to survive. When we feel threatened, we act in ways designed to protect ourselves from potential threats. As a result, we do terrible things to each other. In most cases, this evolutionary framework helps me to make sense of those terrible occurrences.

But the intentional destruction in these two events pushes the boundaries of that explanation, if it doesn’t outright defy it. It doesn't seem like it can go far enough to explain them. The degree of destruction of human life goes so far beyond humans just doing terrible things to one another for the sake of empowerment or defense. The only way I can describe those two events is to say they are just “downright evil” and admit that I can’t wrap my brain around them.