I’ve seen people roll their eyes when I use the word evil anywhere in a conversation about the Bush administration. They think it’s ridiculous at worst, and “Overstating” it at best. But I think they watch too much television, or read too much stuff like “Left Behind”. Because evil is like a virus, and it grows as people deny its prescence.
It’s also not totially embodied in individuals. It is systemic, and collective. It grows in social trends, fears, and as loyalists who benefit, or perceive that they benefit from it, react to defend what they think they have. The justifications are manufactured (Noam Chomsky wrote a book entitled “Maufacturing Consent” on how the various media are used to propogate justifications).
So we’re not talking here about black hats, pitchforks, and the like. To summarily dismiss the attribute of “evil” is ultimately hubristic. It is to fail to recognize the strength and deceptions in which evil hides itself. It hides in “The American Way” , in “capitalism” (and Marxism, and ANY particular “ISM”), for any system can capitalize on the mood and circumstance of a people to convince a population that X must be done in order to achieve Y.
I perceive an EVIL at work in the systems which make it seem impossible to find a way to break out of the cycle of social and political behaviors which separate us from one another; from doing the things which help us to become open to the God who calls us to be a people. Evil is at work , supported by a variety of collectives and conditions and distortions supported by fear, materialism, comfort, and a sense of “safety”. These forces keep even the most “progressive” or the most “ecclesial” to avoid the very things which would help us to be open to the beloved community we really seek. I say “really” seek, because it’s pretty obvious we don’t know much about what it is we’re really needing. And so church becomes and remains a “program” that we go and have “done to us”; it’s a “push” communication instead of interactive. It expects us to “take in ” and find “relevance” that is supposed to “make us feel beter”. But if we don’t feel known, then we’re NOT going to feel better.
The really bothersome thing about this is that when I am frustrated about all this, then I tend to fall into a “reaction” mood where I am angry and feeling hopeless, remembering all that I have tried to do to articulate my own personal search for community, and then come away with the various verdicts that seem to be the answers I’m given: “YOu’re not very good at articulating this”, “Your personal style is off-putting or nerdy or inarticulate”, “Your vision is unrealistic” , “Your vision is too impatient”, “That won’t play in the world of mega-churches and mainline denominations”, “You have no credibility or prior authority to suggest these things; who do you think you are?”
These things testify to me of the prescence of evil in the world, and its infiltration into my own psyche. How, when, and in what way is God going to break through, or where and when and how IS God doing so now?
