"An Evil Generation"

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

I always worry about religious meditations on evil.  It's probably the lingering bad taste in my mouth from St. Francis in Staunton -- the homily on which I walked out.  (The first, there have been two.)  And I've written before about my suspicion of the "frog in boiling water" parable (not one of Jesus's).

But the reflection book did pretty well staying away from moral denouncements, just invited us to examine our world for the modern temptations and tendencies toward evil.

What I really found interesting was the definition of evil (thrown in haphazardly) as "the opposite of good".  Not an entity onto itself, just the absence and opponent of good.  No one really sets out deliberately to be evil.  Villainy is not an aspect people pursue intentionally.  There's a great quote about how no one ever saw themselves as the villain.  Alan Rickman explained it beautifully and simply: when asked what it was like to always play the villain, he replied simply that he has never played a villain.  No one ever casts themselves as the villain.

But we do evil when we do the opposite of good.  It's not about our intentions -- the road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all -- but whether we do good in the world or the opposite of good.  In big and small ways, do we add to the good of the world, do we take concise, concrete actions that effect good in the world?  Or do we not?  Do we do the opposite, by doing nothing or by doing what we justify as a kind of good?

I'm drawn again back to the poster I made for my classroom: We are judged by our actions, not our intentions.  That's all very well and good, that you had good intentions, but did you do good in the world?

A question we should ask ourselves every day.