I have been taken to task somewhat - again by an anonymous responder - for not developing my differentiation between something that is bad and something that is evil more fully. Anon wrote: "I'm still wondering how you discriminate between evil and just really bad from back on September 7. Apparently you have to ask at least twice to show that you are serious about seeking an answer."
The number of askings have nothing to do with it. I have responded to very few of the comments made to my postings because I started this blog with the primary intent to provide fodder for others to reflect. Additionally, human beings have wrestled with the question of evil for millennia and produced thousands of pages devoted to the topic. I do not think I could adequately address all of the questions related to evil in this brief forum. Finally, I alluded, at least, to my differentiation in my original posting on September 7. In my view, there is a theological component in evil. this means that I hold a theological understanding of evil being related to sin, which certainly would require many thousands more pages to discuss.
With that said, let me attempt a brief response. When a tsunami or an earthquake or a hurricane hits and many hundreds or thousands of people are killed or when a one year old child is diagnosed with a rare brain cancer, that is a bad and tragic thing to happen. I would not, though, classify these things as evil, though there are some theologians who have devised a classification of evil to include such events. I do not, however, because there is no human rebellion against God - that is sin - involved nor is there even a human component in causing the event. Is a flash flood that kills 10 people a bad thing? Yes. Is it evil? I do not think so.
You, of course, can have your own definition of evil. You can even believe that any tragic thing that happens to any person or group of people is the direct result of human sin - since all humans are inherently sinful, anything bad that happens to them is deserved and is a result of their sinfulness. I don't.
I would throw this back to others who might want to comment. Do you see a difference between something bad and something evil? If so, how do you define the difference?
Monday, September 22, 2008
Response to Evil
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1 comment:
Thank you for this, although politics seem to capture your attention these days more than theology, I appreciate your very well qualified thoughts on the latter, and find them far more uplifting and stimulating than your deliberations on the former.
Even without your training, I would have assigned some sort of deliberately bad intent to evil, so your explanation hits home. I do like your inference that without God, there would not be any evil, so therefore, the existence of evil is somewhat paradoxically a proof of Gods existence.
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