Ever since the Southport horrors I’ve been thinking a lot about the power, the reality of cosmic evil. The killings themselves – how could such an outrage happen?. But also the subsequent riots which spread throughout the country.
What was truly frightening was how ordinary people, not your usual thugs, were caught up in the violence. One of those caught up in the violence in Southport told the court that “he did not know what took hold of him when he threw that one missile from the back of the group". Many subsequently openly wept for their behaviour.
Clearly our spiritual undergrowth is, so to speak, scorched and tinderbox dry. All it needs for a huge conflagration. is for a single spark.
But there is a sense abroad that something is terribly amiss. Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan. Oppression is tightening in China and Iran, the breakdown of law and order in southern Africa. Wherever, there seems to be a substantive threat to our comfortable way of life.
In fact, only this morning I read an article in Seen & Unseen on Canada of all places, as the recent forest fires are emblematic for the nation as a whole. “Now metaphorical fires of all sorts – breaking of the healthcare system, surging housing costs, immigration without a plan, and decreasing civility in political debate – are spreading across Canada.”
And tellingly the author, Emerson Csorba, observes: “We are, of course, in a darkening period in world history. Evil appears to be more strongly at work in the world now than in recent memory.”
Strangely, popular culture has chosen to ignore or at best downgrade evil as a hostile force in some way rooted in ordinary, everyday life.
So Joseph Conrad, who in his Heart of Darkness written in 1902 provided a haunting study in evil, actually writes: “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.”
And I guess that is what most people think, that there is no power of evil external to us, no wicked realm out there which is out to get us. This is certainly the view of Richard Dawkins, one of the so-called new atheists. “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
But this view seems strangely unrealistic. Evil seems too powerful, too pervasive to be simply a human construct. We feel what scientist Vinoth Ramachandra calls “the weight of cosmic evil,” something outside of us against which we have minimal defence.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was one of the original new atheists, regarded by Christopher Hitchens as "the most important public intellectual probably ever to come out of Africa".
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism,” she wrote. “It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell.”
So it came as somewhat of a shock when last November Ali converted to Christianity.
She came to the conclusion that facing all that would subdue us, atheism offers no security. She wrote of her conversion: “Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realisation that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes.”
She goes on to say that “I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable — indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?”
So faced with the reality of evil, what can we do? Not a lot, if the truth be known. Eventually we all will succumb. The reality is, as Ali realised is to turn to the man who on the cross defeated the full force of evil, totally. Jesus: our only hope of rescue from the power of the devil.
So the apostle Paul writes of Jesus and him crucified, ”who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.” (Galatians 1:4)
It is the cross of Christ, his defeat of evil, which makes all the difference. “He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.” (Colossians 2:15)
Whether we avail ourselves of his rescue is our choice but once we do we find ourselves secure in Christ, we’re safe. And more, we are called to enter the fight. As C S Lewis commented, to become a Christian is not so much choosing sides as changing sides!
Even so, we are so easily vulnerable. That is the apostle Paul urges us, as in this Sunday’s lectionary: “Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” (Ephesians 6:11).
It may be saying the obvious but clearly Paul understands that this is something we continually decide to do – or not to do. Each day we need to accept the protection which spiritual armour provides “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (v12)
In other words, remember to wear your helmet.
Comments