But in the minds of such people America is the cause of most of the evil in the world, so the list will never be complete.
A variant convenient way of avoiding confrontation with evil is the positing of moral equivalency the claim that an act of such magnitude must have been provoked by some equal injustice. Why else would anyone do such a thing?
A leading guru of the New Age movement gave a presentation in which he talked about himself. He had, he confessed, discovered violent feelings even within himself. Fortunately this gave him the opportunity to take his listeners through a meditation exercise guaranteed to eradicate those feelings. His claim was intriguing because of its incorrigible self-centeredness the guru foreswore all thoughts of vengeance by pretending that the universe is contained within his own head.
A student leader smiled cheerfully on television as she said, “I'm really proud of the way this has been a real growth experience for most students,” as though the havoc were worthwhile because of the challenges it offered.
Among some religious believers evasion took the familiar form of treating evil as a mere personal inadequacy, to be overcome by sincere effort. Thus we were solemnly exhorted to cultivate peaceful attitudes and to “reach out” to others, who would then reciprocate, without even a clue as to why, realistically, attitudes of peacefulness on our part will lead to a change of heart by our enemies.
On the eve of World War II the most influential American theologian of the 20th century, Reinhold Niebuhr, broke with many of his fellow liberal Protestants because of their lack of realism, their inability to recognize the menacing evil which then confronted civilization.
On one level their failure might have been dismissed as pious sentimentality. But Niebuhr understood that it made otherwise good people into apologists for evil, so eager were they to avoid confrontation with it. It was also another manifestation of self-centeredness projecting onto others, who live thousands of miles away both geographically and culturally, our own fondest beliefs.
Crises are a basic test of religion, and our religion passes that test, as shown by the many people who spontaneously turned to faith during the latest crisis. But some spokesmen for religion in fact make it irrelevant, implying that being a believer means dreaming about the world as we would like it to be, the sort of escapism which religion's critics have always charged it with.
Sentimental people persist in seeing a peaceful world just around the corner, so that, when events like those of Sept. 11 occur, they react like a man convinced that one more round of tinkering with his backyard invention will at last produce a working perpetual-motion machine.
The blunt truth is that Christianity teaches us that we will never, short of the end of time, achieve a world of perfect peace and justice. That does not mean that we are absolved from working towards it, nor that in certain periods we might seem closer to it than at others. But the perfect society will never come. That is what Original Sin means.
Those who deny that religion has anything to do with terrorism miss the point. No doubt such terrorism is a perversion of the highest teachings of Islam. But all religions, including Christianity, contain things which are available for such perversion. Those who kill in the name of religion are seldom merely using it as an excuse. Usually they are believers whose sinfulness leads them to turn good into evil.
Perhaps the ultimate evasion is the assumption that the events of Sept. 11 are so extreme that they manifest an exotic reality which need only concern us in times of emergency. But to think that is to miss the most basic reality. Deliberate mass murder is unique only in its magnitude. The events of Sept. 11 unique only in the dramatic way in which they manifested evil. The somber truth is that actions of this kind go on all the time.
There was a startling report by a terrorism expert that each year about 30 pilots deliberately crash their small planes in an attempt to kill themselves and someone they hate – an ex-spouse, a former employer.
“Serial killers,” who kill only for their own gratification, are a recognized category in our society, and every day there are numerous malicious assaults on essentially innocent people. Such things are not of course the whole story of human nature, but they are a necessary part of it.
The idea of moral equivalency is attractive because it seems to lessen evil terrorism occurs only because of injustices done to the terrorists. But believing that requires believing that every violent act, anywhere at any time, must have understandable motives. It ignores the reality of irrational hatred, of malice.
It is in recognizing this that religion begins to show its ultimate relevance. Believing in evil does not automatically dictate any particular course of action in any particular situation. But it ought to be the first condition for anyone claiming to have something to say about terrorism.
(This article courtesy of the Arlington Catholic Herald.)