Thanksgiving might not the best time to talk about evil. Or maybe it is. Perhaps acknowledging what seems lately to be an overabundance of evil in the world makes me even more grateful for the good I do see and the good I can create.
It overwhelms me how huge some problems seem – systems of violence, inequity and greed. Maybe I’m watching too many shockingly real episodes of “The Wire.” Or maybe it’s because my favorite character on “Private Practice,” Charlotte, was brutally raped. In real life, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted every two minutes. My current obsession with the dark side could also be driven by my disbelief at the inequitable opportunities that exist for children to succeed. I need only check the “most viewed” articles in my local paper to see a daily list of shootings, murders and cases of abuse.
“What a bummer of a message,” you might be saying! I felt the same way the other night while trying to decompress from “The Wire” Season 4. I decided that even though I want to lessen the bad in the world and will work to do so, I can choose to focus on what is good in my life. Sometimes, I just need to notice how pretty the golden leaves are on my street, and take a minute to be in awe at the magnificent full moon or mindlessly silly with my boyfriend. It’s rejuvenating.
I do wish though that God would just eradicate evil – all of it. I’m beginning to wonder if that’s not what God is for. Wouldn’t He have already done so if He were going to? There’s certainly been plenty of monumental suffering in the history of time that could have been stopped were that God’s job.
A friend of mine, a funny, wise, lawyerly woman, believes in the devil. She believes there is a force intentionally creating and orchestrating evil in the world. I’m not quite there yet, but I do think it might just be semantics. I can understand that there are deep psychological and sociological reasons that may cause a person or a society to commit atrocities against other living beings. Even though I understand where it might come from, I will never get over the fact that it actually happens.
Sometimes I think evil exists so that we will continue to evolve as humans into our higher selves. I heard Rob Bell say in an interview, “Your divine calling is to meet the world at its greatest points of suffering.” Maybe God is waiting for us to do the good we are capable of doing. Maybe that’s what we are for.
I believe there are solutions to the issues we face – many have already been identified, just not fully implemented. I think God will indeed help us when we help each other. Maybe this is our job. The point of being here. In the face of evil in our world, we are not helpless and we are not powerless. I’m grateful for that.
Happy Thanksgiving.
