Fear No Evil
April 17, 2013
When atrocities happen, like the one this week in Boston, our gaze is forced back to the evil that is all too everyday in our world. We can go through many days barely conscious of it, though there isn’t a day we don’t experience it.
No, there may not be a terrorist attack every day, or a mass shooting, or a threat of nuclear war. But evil is always with us, in anything that is not good. The not-good may be as routine as a cup of coffee cooled off before we finish it, as unavoidable as the rush hour traffic jam, or as subtle as the dust that settles on our shelves. Some days it intrudes a bit more, with an illness that breaks our plans, a piercing unkind word from a friend, or our own resentment that cuts off a relationship. Some evils hit with hurricane force death and destruction.
As many have pointed out since the Marathon bombing, look how many people ran to the destruction rather than away from it.
We know instinctively that evil isn’t all there is. In fact, it is an aberration of what is. It isn’t the way things are supposed to be. We all know it – and we flee from it, or we fight it. We get angry about it. We work to eliminate it. Because we have hope.
Augustine said, “Hope has two beautiful daughters – their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”
Many thanks to those whose courage saw to it that the bomber didn’t have the last word in Boston. And while we rightly feel anger about a world gone awry, we can all take courage to make today better than it would otherwise be.
No, there may not be a terrorist attack every day, or a mass shooting, or a threat of nuclear war. But evil is always with us, in anything that is not good. The not-good may be as routine as a cup of coffee cooled off before we finish it, as unavoidable as the rush hour traffic jam, or as subtle as the dust that settles on our shelves. Some days it intrudes a bit more, with an illness that breaks our plans, a piercing unkind word from a friend, or our own resentment that cuts off a relationship. Some evils hit with hurricane force death and destruction.
As many have pointed out since the Marathon bombing, look how many people ran to the destruction rather than away from it.
We know instinctively that evil isn’t all there is. In fact, it is an aberration of what is. It isn’t the way things are supposed to be. We all know it – and we flee from it, or we fight it. We get angry about it. We work to eliminate it. Because we have hope.
Augustine said, “Hope has two beautiful daughters – their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”
Many thanks to those whose courage saw to it that the bomber didn’t have the last word in Boston. And while we rightly feel anger about a world gone awry, we can all take courage to make today better than it would otherwise be.
