Sunday, May 15, 2005

If only evil were Apollyon

There is something about the particulars of the crime committed against the two small girls by the one's father, that makes it particularly insensate. If you've read up on the case, you know of course, I'm referring to the location of the wounds. It curdles the blood, and eventually leads everyone to ask, How?
I'm sure there's some danger in founding my musings on a case that hasn't yet been fully exposed, but it doesn't really matter. It makes it no less true. My first thought was that this was the essence of evil. Only the willful deliberation of true and pure hatred and sadism would suffice to explain this.
Until Devan conjectured the man was hallucinating.
I know, I said this was based on assumptions, but stay with me.
I know that copping an insanity plea will do nothing to effectuate grace in any of our hearts. Whether it was mental instability ( and who is going to seriously suggest the man was in possession of all his faculties) or drug-induced, justice should stand ready to deal with the man.
Insanity naturally garners more sympathy than drug abuse. With drugs, you have the issue of responsibility. For exactly the same reason, and rightly so, we throw the book at intoxicated drivers. The irresponsibility of combining alcohol and driving is considered criminal, as it should be.
Insanity is a little more dicey. If it were truly mental instability, a genetic defect, rendering him incapable of being responsible for anything, then may the psychiatrists do well with him in the padded cell. If it is insanity caused by drug abuse, the drunk driving precedent comes into play again, but still making the issue more muddled than if it were just plain cruelty.
Honestly, I would rather it be stark black and white. I would be glad would this prove to be a missing link between the single-celled organism of evil and the walking, talking, homo sapiens variety we have today.
The evolution of evil, though, is as dismally convoluted and unexciting as it is insidious.
John Bunyan writes allegorically of a man grappling with evil as treacherous terrain, spewing volcanoes, and a winged, fire-breathing beast that hurls lethal fiery darts.
If only. . .
If only the spirit of antichrist did bear real glistening fangs and have sooty black wings.
But the evil we must battle as compared to Bunyan's allegorical monster is as bullets are to cancer.
Consider one of Satan's most vile concoctions; child abuse.
The disease of child abuse is most often inherited.
How could it be that one who was so mistreated could so mistreat?
Our sense of right and wrong rebels against this folly. That the victim becomes the villain, and the innocent prey becomes the brutal predator. We yearn for a moral template. If only the evil were always evil, and demonstrably so, and the good always good, and demonstrably so.
The architect of evil is so competent.
With a computer hacker's adroitness, he introduced a virus to the human race that requires erasing most of our hard drive to eradicate.
Human nature wants to believe that evil is a human device. If we can isolate evil to Adolf Hitlers and John Wayne Gacys then we can all rest easy. Then at least if vanquishing the foe results in any personal injury, we have the solace of a purple heart.
But when eradicating evil begins with us laying down on a cross, surrendering to the nails and the hammer to kill our own evil, human nature drops the subject of killing evil altogether.
I think any of us, as Christians would gladly trade places with Bunyan's Christian, battling the elements, nature and ravenous beasts, but what we have to contend with is far more dangerous, and difficult to fight.
More later.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This particular essay was very deep and thought-provoking...
Keep up the "intellectual" good work!