Evil. It’s something with which every human being on Earth must contend. Partially because it is a part of our own existence. In the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn:
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
A lot of us might disagree with him from our lofty estate, clinging to our latest good deeds, yet he spoke these words having lived beneath the crushing weight of an oppressive Soviet Union. It is a wonder not that he says we all possess evil, but rather that he still believed in good. I’d like to dedicate an entire piece to that goodness, to my thoughts on what of God’s likeness runs through the human race, to the beauty of life that will never be extinguished, and I will, but not today.
I just spent half an hour reading the story of Malki Roth, the 15 year-old girl killed in a Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem. She was blown to bits in 2001 when I was five years old, and now I have lived an entire decade longer than she did. I’m not sure why that fact fills my eyes with tears, but it does. Her parents now plead with President Biden for the extradition of the orchestrator of the attack, Ahlam Tamimi, from Jordan where she lives a married life of ease. She was sentenced to 16 life sentences in Israel, but was released in 2011 as part of a deal for the return of an Israeli soldier captured and imprisoned by Hamas. There is certainly a political element within that story, but again, a piece for another time maybe.
My knowledge of the Roths and the attack that claimed their daughter’s life originated from Bari Weiss’ Substack column, and I followed a link to another, more detailed account written by David Horovitz. A YouTube video within the article stopped me in my tracks. Tamimi is interviewed, beaming with pride at her plan and execution of it, smiling with pleasure when told that eight children lost their lives. She says that she suggested the bomber eat a meal, wait 15 minutes, and then detonate the bomb tucked inside his guitar case full of nails, bolts, and screws. He ate a meal. The idea of such a person having an appetite before carrying out an attack is enough to make me lose mine.
Evil doesn’t always affect me in this way. Bad news is broadcasted every day, all day, so I am partially desensitized to it. I might even shrug when hearing of the latest shooting at the gas station down the road. There are days I treat evil as no more than a pesky neighbor. It is commonplace. I have learned to live with it, and much of that is likely because I have been privileged enough to remain distanced from the worst of it, even when it inches ever closer to home.
But this story burned my heart. It ripped open some part of me that was calloused to the forces of evil. I am so angry. It’s the smug smile of Tamimi, the abuse of religion to slaughter innocent people, the age of Malki, the injustice her parents have faced, and the appetite of a coward trying to achieve elevated status by blasting shrapnel into kids. Maybe it takes something so blatantly evil to awaken me.
Regardless, I am filled with renewed hatred for all evil. My own sin that threatens to blacken my heart if not for the grace of God, the evil that devalues human life enough to take it, the evil that manipulates and deceives in high places for the sake of power and money. Evil cloaked as righteousness by the twisting of words and then disseminated to malleable minds through dark marketing schemes. I hate it.
I am so afraid that we denounce violent jihadists, only to excuse other evils in our own culture because it's expedient to us. I am so afraid of people being too afraid to confront evil, letting it fester and in some cases gain popularity. I am so afraid of being half-hearted towards evil, watering it down just enough so that people like me simply turn our heads. I am so afraid of picking and choosing what evil I decide to care about based upon allegiance to some tribe that would likely do nothing for me if I ever broke from their orthodoxy.
I am so afraid of evil becoming the means to a seemingly noble goal. The nobility loses its virtue when it is obtained by dishonest, deceptive, or harmful means. I am wary of those that shrug their shoulders at looting a Target and burning police stations, chalking it up as only a loss of capital. I believe that to be a horrible miscalculation of not just right and wrong as a whole, but also of human nature and patterns of behavior. We wave off the “slippery slope” as an antiquated argument for unenlightened people until we find ourselves at the end of that slope, absorbing what’s coming from above. I use the events of last summer as the example here, but there are plenty others that would cover any given political spectrum.
Principle in all things is the only way, though it is often the more difficult, complex way. We know this. In the course of human history we have tried it all. What was built without principle rarely, if ever, lasted. But evil is sneaky and persistent. It needs only the smallest foothold in each new era to succeed or do considerable damage. I wish we would stop underestimating it.
We don’t like to talk about evil. It feels harsh or overly pious. It’s only reserved for the worst villains. But we must confront it with all the good the other half of our heart possesses, knowing that confrontation is not automatic damnation. People are redeemable. I am of the belief that Christ and His gift of forgiveness is the remedy for our evil and the key to our renewal, but others of the secular mind would likely also generally concur that people can change.
Solzhenitsyn poses a question at the end of the quote, “And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Again, the Christian would answer unequivocally, “Me!”. Our theology is that our hearts are effectively destroyed in Christ and restored with new, better ones, albeit still imperfect ones. Apart from religion, though, I like to believe that most would gladly give up a piece of their heart for what is good and beautiful. I believe we can see our own potential for evil and reject it in ourselves and the world around us, even at great cost. I believe we know how worthy of a sacrifice that would be, how worthy of a sacrifice it is, because it’s one we can certainly make.
So I end with a strange plea: destroy a piece of your heart. Who is willing?