Has Evil Gone Out of Style?

Spirituality Column #130
May 5, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Has Evil Gone Out of Style?
By Bob Walters

Nationally syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts recently took great pains in print to beg the forgiveness of his readers that, despite what a backward idea he knows it is to those whom he evidently considers his intellectual peers, 10 years later he still can find no explanation for the Columbine massacre except to call it an act of evil.

Evil. I’m not sure I can come up with a more easy to understand concept than evil. Love takes work. Forgiveness takes discipline. Faith takes perseverance. Kindness takes sacrifice.

But evil. Evil’s easy. Evil is 100 percent about “me,” to the exclusion of God or others. Our society, our culture, our cult of self-esteem, is ever loosening its grip on the reality of evil.

Pitts’ problem with evil seems to be that it’s a sign of intellectual resignation to actually believe evil exists.

And for way too many people, evil is a small mind’s opinion, not a controlling cosmic fact.

To go back to the basics, God is good and Satan is evil. God exists and Satan exists. There is absolute good and perfection in the divine person of Jesus Christ. Satan is a miserable fact of our existence whose sole aim is to separate us from God and good by means of death and sin.

Why did God allow there to be evil when Genesis 1 and 2 tell us He created a perfect world without sin or – more importantly – death?

Now there is a great question. Maybe it’s because that without evil, there would be no challenge, choice or freedom about loving God, and therefore no true love, no faith, no triumph, nothing to prove and nothing to overcome.

Pitts cowered to mention evil as an acceptable explanation of life’s unexplainable horrors, but I was entertained a few paragraphs later in the same column to find his assertion that “(evil) flies in the face of our innate belief in the perfectibility of human beings.”

Huh? If history, humanity, Christianity, politics, celebrity culture and maybe even our most recent family reunion have taught us anything, wouldn’t we all universally agree that human beings are not perfectible?

Certainly not in this life.

We humans are a magnificent mess and hardly perfectible by our own effort. Evil is our life’s combat. But we have hope of eternal perfection, and the name of that hope – and perfection – is Jesus Christ.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) reads liberal and conservative columnists; liberals make him laugh, and conservatives make him cry.

Nothing Left to Ask For

Spirituality Column #118
February 10, 2009
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper
Current in Westfield (IN) newspaper

Nothing Left to Ask For
By Bob Walters

Fifth in a series on The Lord’s Prayer

After the salutation, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” – essentially, “Hello, Creator God Almighty” – there are seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer. Three are “thy” requests about God; four are “us” requests about people.

Hallowed be thy name: God please let me care for Your holy name enough to lift myself and others up toward You, to recognize Your love for this world, and not drag You down into our earthly filth.

Thy Kingdom come: Your kingdom is truth and good. If You are absent, O God, nothing can be good, our hope is gone, and the world will be in ruins. Give us a listening heart; it is Your kingdom, not ours.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven: With the freedom you alone give to us, help us learn to love You and our neighbors, not just ourselves. Help us to make Your will our first priority. In heaven, Your will is absolute; may earth become heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread: You acknowledge our earthly needs; how can the presence of Jesus, the bread of His body, teach us a greater truth than this? Help us to turn our cares over to You, and to renew our trust and faith in You each day.

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us: Forgiveness is what You give us through Christ and, to honor You, what we must learn to continually give to others. Whether we say trespasses, debts, or sins, only Your loving forgiveness solves the destructive guilt of our human and earthly transgressions.

And lead us not into temptation: Jesus, Job and countless saints have suffered, but the Great Tempter is Satan … and Satan alone, for the Evil One hates God’s righteousness. In our human suffering, O God, You purify our lives or glorify Your name with trials, but let our faith in You reside steadfastly. You are the source of all strength.

But deliver us from evil: O Lord, do not give the Evil One more room to maneuver than we can bear; we can only lose ourselves when we have lost You. Our faith enables us to see You; do not let evil take faith from us.

As St. Cyprian famously said, “When we pray, ‘deliver us from evil,’ there is nothing left to ask for.”

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) recommends a thoughtful read of Chapter 5 (on The Lord’s Prayer) in Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 book, Jesus of Nazareth, which inspired this five-part series and heavily informed this final installment.

9/11 - Faith and Clarity and Choice

Spirituality Column #44
September 11, 2007
Current In Carmel (IN) newspaper

9/11 - Faith and Clarity and Choice
By Bob Walters

In early September 2002 PBS Frontline aired “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero,” chronicling America’s and specifically New York’s religious take on the previous year’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

The show truly wasn’t about faith in God; it was about doubting God. It perpetuated the myth that those four hijacked airliners and the resulting loss of life and peace were a “senseless act.” It suggested morality is in the eye of the beholder. It said confusion about faith is normal. It indicted cultural misunderstandings.

Now six years later, if we remember nothing else about 9/11, with great clarity we must remember this: those violent attacks had clear moral purpose and made perfect sense to the perpetrators. Theirs was the ultimate act of faith. Those people attacked us because they most definitely understand our culture, which represents evil to them.

Since then we have all had to make choices about God and about our faith in the light, or perhaps I should say, in the dark, of that tragedy.

My choice was to learn all I could about God. My choice was to learn all I could about Islam. My choice was to study the philosophical and practical foundation and implications of religious and personal freedom in America.

My choice remains to love and fear God, to have faith in his plan on earth and in heaven, and to rejoice in our salvation through Jesus Christ. My choice is to fight evil where I find it, and when it finds me or those I love. My choice is to love my country.

Evil found the United States that day. God didn’t take the day off. It was a day He put us on His shoulders. It was a day to remember that God loves all mankind, and proof that our fallen world can be just awful.

I do know this: I stopped being confused about 9/11 long ago, and am able to make choices.

I choose God. I choose America. And I choose faith.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) wrote a newspaper editorial, partially excerpted here, that was published in the Indianapolis Star on the one-year anniversary of 9/11.  In Bob's book Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary (2011), the clip of the original Star article from 9/11/02 is on page 243.

Evil Is as Evil Does - The VT Murderer

Spirituality Column #25
May 1, 2007
Current! In Carmel (IN) newspaper

Evil Is as Evil Does
By Bob Walters

I’m thinking of the Virginia Tech murderer.

We are each of us, every human being, made in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). We are inherently good.

We are also each of us, thanks to Adam and Eve, possessed of a heart that is “desperately wicked” (Genesis 6:5, Jeremiah 17:9). We are inherently evil.

Modern psychology describes complex social and behavioral patterns, externalizing our individual behavior and removing blame from our actions. Secular psychology endeavors to locate blame either in the past, outside of the self, or both; the media searches for blame where psychology leads it.

The Bible describes good and evil in absolute personal terms, locates Good in God and Evil in our hearts, and makes us personally accountable to God and to each other for our social and behavioral manifestations.

Pull God out of the equation and psychological description melts into a stew of non-absolutes. Psychology doesn’t like the E-word. Neither does the mass media.

Evil is a hard word to say. It makes Satan real. It makes God real. It gives voice to the truth of the Bible and the truth of our hearts. It makes that church stuff nearly everyone used to learn – Christ, crucifixion, resurrection – real.

It makes the inadequacy of our secular-dominated society real.

It’s sad to think that our individual destiny is determined by our capacity for evil, or that our thriving for goodness can be defeated so easily by the evil of a gunman bursting into a busy classroom.

Current national statistics indicate 90 percent of American teenagers are “unchurched.” That is frightening because they are missing exposure to immensely important concepts like, “do unto others as you would have them to unto you,” “love your neighbor” and – critically, a Bible exclusive – “love your enemies.”

Mankind’s great capacity for goodness is revealed when we use our freedom to seek God. Our wickedness and evil is when we use our freedom to define ourselves as God (Genesis 3:5).

Seek God, or Be God? Which do you think was in Cho Seung-hui’s black heart that day?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com), a Carmel resident, grieves for the unspeakable loss of young lives at Virginia Tech, and cries for their parents.

Good Friday - One Really Hard Day

Spirituality Column #21
April 3, 2007
Current in Carmel (IN) newspaper

Good Friday - One Really Hard Day
By Bob Walters
Author of the book: Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Eternal Life for all mankind is the Good News of the Gospel and the reason we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter. Christ defeated death for all of us so, in faith, we live eternally with God the Father in Heaven.

But as Easter Sunday celebrates Christ’s rising from the dead and promise of Eternal Life, Good Friday marks perhaps the most evil day in the history of humanity; the day Man killed Christ, the Incarnate Son of God.

I hate Good Friday.

Crucifixion is a horrendous death. As one's body weight hangs from outstretched arms tied or nailed to a crossbeam, the lungs cannot function and suffocation comes in agonizing minutes. The foot pedestal (or nailed feet) on the cross allows one to painfully brace ones body weight enough to allow excruciating breaths that prolong the death process for agonizing hours.

Christ breathed his last … “It is finished” (John 19:30) … and died before the Roman soldiers had to hasten death by breaking His legs with a club.  So His bones were not broken (John 19:36).

God’s perfect Eden for mankind was undone by Adam’s sin in the Garden, and because of that sin death came into the world (Genesis 3:22). Christ, God’s Son on the Cross, provided mankind with “forgiveness” – which means not the ignoring of our sin as the word is commonly misunderstood today, but the renewal of life.

Christ died for our sins, indeed, but our sins are not the ultimate point. Christ died to defeat death itself, giving us eternal hope and communion with God.

That’s the point.

As we contemplate the horror of Christ’s death on the cross, and the horror of our own sin which separates us from God, ask this question about the crucifixion: Why did Christ do that for us?

Those in faith have the answer: So we can live forever, sinless, with Him, in Heaven, for His Glory.

God loves and values each of our lives that much, but Good Friday is still a rough deal.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) often prays the Orthodox "Jesus Prayer": Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.