Faith in Christ gives us strength when confronting depths of evil
By Bishop Woodie W. White
Evil can be so evil!
I recall my earliest encounter in life with what I would soon identify as evil. I must have been about nine or ten years old when, one Sunday morning, I ventured out of the New York apartment building where I grew up. Suddenly, from across the broad avenue, I heard yelling and a crowd running toward the side of the street where I stood.
Stunned, I stood motionless. One man was chasing another with a baseball bat. The man being chased stumbled and fell, and as the man with the bat stood over him, the crowd shouted for him not to hit the fallen man. Some people in the crowd tried to reach them.
Then the unbelievable took place. The man brought the bat down on the other's head with such force that the bat broke! To this day, it is the most horrible event that I have ever personally witnessed.
Traumatized, I ran upstairs, unable even to describe to my parents what I had just seen. But the sound and the sight would haunt me for years. Evil!
A second encounter with what I would identify as evil, was not as personally traumatic, but nonetheless haunted my childhood.
Only blocks from where I lived was a popular bookstore specializing in African and what was then called "Negro" history. In the window were all kinds of posters and photographs depicting life and history of the Black community.
One such poster showed a scene of several black men hanging from a tree, having been hanged and I believe burned. Standing around, looking and laughing at the horrific sight was a group of white men! I would look at that scene many times as a boy. Evil!
As a boy I had witnessed two expressions of evil, personal and corporate. One was the product of individual hate, the other of group or community hate. So deep was the hate in both cases that death was its consequence. Evil can be so Evil.
Sadly, the evidences of evil are even more real and prevalent today, more challenging to mind and spirit than in those innocent and formative years of my youth.
Today the acts of evil boggle the mind, shake faith and challenge theology. Acts of greed by enlightened and trusted citizens leave thousands of people near poverty. Unconscionable acts of despotic and tyrannical political leaders result in the death of tens of thousands. Deep hate persists between peoples, nations and ethnic groups, as they reduce each other to mere things that can be horribly slaughtered and maimed with no qualm of conscience.
In some places in the United States, young men and teen-agers kill each other with no sense of remorse, for gold chains or pricey tennis shoes, or because they belong to rival gangs. A teen-ager kills her grandparents because they object to her choice of companions. A boy not yet ten years of age kills a playmate with a gun. Another throws a friend out of the window of a high-rise building. A suburban teen kills his entire family, and confesses that he knows not why!
Evil. Deep, persistent, pervasive. It is what ethicist, the Rev. J. Philip Wogaman, calls "the depths of human wickedness" in an article titled, "Art, Ethics and the Problem of Evil."
I sometimes wonder how seriously we in the faith community take the power and presence of evil. Does preaching and Christian education, or even our theology, prepare us to encounter the possibility and reality of evil? Dr. Wogaman accurately asserts, "The persistence and hugeness of evil pushes all of us to face real questions of human existence when we allow ourselves to risk confronting our ultimate vulnerability."
To be sure there are natural, social and even economic responses to the presence of evil. But they often leave profound, unanswered questions. So many times in the course of a week, I shake my head in disbelief at the reporting of yet another occurrence of utter evil. One might erroneously conclude that evil is indeed the predominate power or force in life. Undefeatable!
While seated recently in a chapel, I looked through the little song book, The Faith We Sing. My soul and spirit were flooded by events both personal and communal. I gazed upon a page of the opened hymnal and discovered a hymn that I had never seen. It was one offered by Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, with words taken from an African Prayer book.
"Goodness is stronger than evil;
"Love is stronger than hate;
"Light is stronger than darkess;
"Life is stronger than death.
"Victory is ours through him who loved us."
Of course! Of course!
Copyright 2005 United Methodist Reporter. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Retired United Methodist Bishop Woodie W. White currently serves as bishop-in-resident at Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Ga.