Sin and Evil

I used to believe that people were basically good. I loved Anne Frank's quote, "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." Now I wonder if she would have written that a week before her death, or it it was a naive expression of the same youthful idealism that collapsed under me.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau popularized the idea that people are good by nature in the 16th century. He believed that society, with its notion of property, was the root cause of corruption and unhappiness. The more primitive people and societies were, the more pure and undefiled they were. Yet he himself acknowledged that "the principles with regard to which I differ from other writers (i.e. the natural human goodness) are not matters of indifference; we must know whether they are true or false, for on them depends the happiness or the misery of mankind." If people are not naturally good, we must face the fact, like it or not.

I was extremely reluctant to abandon the premise that people are naturally good, that I am naturally good. It was a central, core, foundational belief and it helped me feel good about myself. But all my efforts could not keep truth at bay. Despite my best efforts, I fell short; I "missed the mark." The word "sin" is an archery term meaning just that, "missing the mark." The word has taken on heavier connotations over time, but basically it means any failure to fulfil our potential, whether intentional or unintentional. It includes anything motivated by greed, selfishness or laziness. I came to understand that we all naturally sin, just as the Bible claims. We don't relish doing things for others when there's nothing in it for us. It's easier to gain weight than to lose it. It's easier to sink into an easy chair and watch TV than to reach out and help a neighbor in need. It's easier to take a nap than to take a hike. For most of us, trying to consistently do what's right is like swimming against a current. Our nature pulls us the other way.

We secretly enjoy pointing out the shortcomings of others, but can justify our own because we're aware of our good intentions. We are acutely aware of when other people hurt our feelings and offend us, fail to do what they promise, let us down when we're depending on them, and otherwise "miss the mark." It's much harder to acknowledge that we hurt others. From early childhood, we want to be the boss, to call the shots and have someone else to blame or pick up the pieces when things don't go our way. This is natural. It's not evil, but it's sin.

Evil is also sin, but there's a difference. Evil is intentional. Sin harms, evil seeks to harm. Sin misses the mark, evil doesn't even aim at the target. Lack of consideration for others is sin; lying about others maliciously is evil. Wrecking the Exxon Valdez was a mistake, a sin. Crashing jets into the World Trade Center was intentional, an evil. The consequences of jets crashing accidentally into buildings are the same as the consequences of intentionally doing it. To those harmed, the difference is academic.

Like many people, I was once contemptuous of Christianity because of the horrible hypocrisy and acts attributable to Christians in the past and present. Until I came to terms with that, I was not open to even looking at Christianity. I wanted to stay as far away from it as I could. It was Scott Peck's book, People of the Lie, that helped me gain the perspective I needed to take a second look. The following quote was an eye-opener for me:

Since the primary motive of evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture? In India I would suppose that the evil would demonstrate a similar tendency to be "good" Hindus or "good" Muslims. I do not mean to imply that the evil are anything other than a small minority among the religious or that the religious motives of most people are in any way spurious. I mean only that evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them.

It occurred to me that if there is indeed a universal struggle between good and evil, and if the front line of the battle is the church, evil could find no better strategy than to infiltrate and discredit Christianity. Oddly, this insight convinced me there may be more validity to Christianity than I'd previously suspected! I decided to ignore the people and focus on what the Bible itself had to say.