Evil is not a thing, maybe

Today, I’m pondering the speculations of theologian N.T. Wright on the nature of evil in Chapter 6 of Surprised by Hope. I don’t think I’m alone in the puzzlement that inevitably assails non-theologians or amateur theologians or “ordinary Christians” when reading “the great ones.” Nevertheless, we probably all have understandings/misunderstandings of the great theological concepts, impressions that shape our images of us in the world, us under God, us with our neighbours.

Most head-scratching for me is how past and current theology seems never to have abandoned the reliance on treating evil (or heaven, or hell for that matter) as a thing, or spiritual forces as personalities. Unless, of course, our sages have and continue to assume that belly-scratching pew sitters can only understand the God of whom Jesus spoke as a loving but intolerant, bearded man on a heavenly throne. 

Emmanuel Kant is supposed to have said that “only a scholar is qualified to evaluate another scholar’s work,” or words to that effect. I would argue that a scholar who can’t make his/her insights accessible to others is not a serious scholar or theologian at all, but a scholastic-hobbyist in a scholars’ or theologians' hobby-club. That’s not to say that we shouldn’t all of us strive toward greater and greater understanding by being active, life-long learners, but surely the onus for building the bridge lies mainly with the scholar.

But back to the nature of evil. Obviously, Wright bases his writing on his interpretation of scripture, but variances in what, for instance, Biblical eschatology actually says have dogged the history of the church. Consider the following for a moment as an alternative understanding to that of Wright on the nature of evil:

Dark is not “a thing.”ⁱ Light is the thing, and when light is insufficiently present, we call that quality, dark.

Drought is not “a thing.” Rain is the thing, and what we call drought is a shortage of life-giving rain.

Hate or indifference are not “things.” Love is the thing, and what we call hate or indifference is a failure of love.

Crime is not “a thing.” Justice and mercy are the things. In their absence, criminal behaviour happens, and we erroneously give it recognition as “a thing.”

By the same token, evil is not “a thing” (and Satan is not an immortal personality, is not an alternate god): Goodnessⁱⁱ is the thing and when it’s in short supply, things we describe as evil fill the gap. 

Does such a viewpoint add anything to our understanding of the Christ’s redemptive life and death? When we conceptualize evil as a thing external to us and our lives, it fogs up our perception of what really happens in a world full of life, full of interacting humanity. When we anthropomorphize (visualize as a personality) Satan, we make of him an alternate, competing deity. 

Monotheism—worshiping ONE God and only one—is critical in our struggle toward “goodness,” toward the kingdom Christ sought to initiate.

I repeat, evil is not “a thing”; (Satan is not a person, is not an alternate God): Goodness is the thing and when it’s in short supply, things we describe as “evil” happen. 

Sin is not a thing either; it's a condition. Disobedience to the precepts of good (God) results in actions we call sinful. Men don’t rape women because they’re tempted by Satan; they rape women because, either slowly or suddenly, they’ve succumbed to the abandonment of justice and mercy (goodness, to the prophet Micah) in favour of physical and/or mental gratification. 

The question of why there exists a shortage of the knowledge of goodness is well put. The further question of why we abandon justice and mercy when they are most needed is equally concerning. The nurturing of goodness is the 100% content of our discipleship to Christ, after all, and a mere 50% commitment to insisting on it as the gateway to the kingdom will obviously open the door to the demise of goodness as a someday, worldwide, ruling principle. Half-hearted parenting, schooling, politicking will most likely generate even less than 50% commitment to justice and mercy and . . . and the progression is obvious. I think it’s most commonly called corruption.

But the story is bigger than this. An article in The Walrus poses the question of whether the world is getting better or worse. By my estimation where justice and mercy, where goodness are concerned, our world has made substantial progress. 148 countries struggled against smallpox outbreaks in 1850; in 1979 there were none. Slavery was legal in 193 countries in 1800; in 2017, in only 3. World-wide literacy in 1800 was around 10%; In 2016, it stood at 86%. In 1816, only 1% of the world’s population lived in democracies; by 2015, 56% had slipped the bonds of dictatorship. (Bruce May, “Two Revolutions,” The Walrus: March, 2019) None of these advances came without many people living out impulses for justice and mercy. 

A sure defense against that which we call evil is the overwhelming of it with goodness, with justice and mercy. Evil is easily defeated because God (Good) is a thing and evil isn’t. Fill the pail with goodness and there’s no room for anything else in any case. (And vice versa, of course.) It needs no scholar to tell us this.ⁱⁱⁱ

iI’m using “a thing” as its used in social media banter to mean that a meme or claim is a figment of someone’s imagination and is unattached to reality.

ii“Goodness” here is shorthand for what the prophet Micah in 6:8 says it is, namely a love of mercy, practicing justice and walking humbly before God. You might also include in the term the characteristics of love enumerated by Paul in

I Corinthians 13: 4-8a. The spirit God lives in these attributes.

iiiI find the filling of our children’s lives with books and sports and plain old attention by parents in order to “keep them out of trouble” provides an excellent analogy here.