Origins of Evil

He posed to question to me: "Where do you think it comes from?  Evil, where does it come from?"  My boyfriend wasn't referring to the catastrophes and illnesses that behalf all of us (more or less), but to what many have called "moral evil."  He was referring to the drive that has lead humans to create structures that favor few while depriving many, to build institutions that perpetuate the horrors of violence, to insatiably consume the earth's abundant resources and create unsustainable economies.  How did we become enslaved to a momentum that only seems to multiply the cruelties in the world?  What's the origin that gives rise to enslaving black bodies and dispossessing American Indians?  Or to violence against women or to totalitarian regimes?  Or to exploitation and economic inequality?  What's the source of [moral] evil?

There's no answer to this question.  No psychology, history, or philosophy has or can adequately answer this question.  And, despite our interpretations, the Bible doesn't pretend to give answer to this question either.  By definition, evil is meaningless and without rationality.  This is the case even in instances when evil can be executed by highly rational and precise movements--for example in the Holocaust, war, or slavery.  Many of these executions of evil are very strategic and justify themselves by use of science, political theory, or some other discipline.  But the reason for the evil--why such conditions are brought about--remains beyond reason.  It's my belief, however, that the non-rationality of evil can only be rivaled by the non-rationality of grace and the madness of faith that it commands.  The meaninglessness of cruelty that lies beyond all logic can only be overcome by a grace that exceeds all calculation or horizons.  And those who respond to that grace in faith, respond with a generosity that can only appear as madness.

"Land of the free, home of the hungry"

Always insightful and bold, Gary Younge's articles in the Guardian's Comment is Free section are terrific commentaries on America's social realities.  He often times addresses sensitive matters carefully while not shying from strong statements against commonly held opinions.  Check out his latest article about poverty, food stamps, and the Republican aspirations "to balance the budget on the stomachs of the hungry."

The Joy of Being Wrong by James Alison

Book recommendation:  The Joy of Being Wrong by James Alison.  Once the opening pages grabbed me, it didn't take me too long to burn through this one.  In this book, Alison relies on René Girard's theories of mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism to shine new light on the New Testament witness.  His most important contribution through this book is his insistence that theology must begin with the Resurrection of Christ, which is the key to understanding salvation, theological anthropology, and original sin.  Not only is the resurrection the moment when our salvation is revealed, but it's also the moment when our sin is made known, as well.  In being forgiven, that which we are being forgiven of is made known, namely, our complicity in violence and exclusion.  Though I cringed at a few places throughout this work, the insights offered are very rich and well worth the journey.

"Al human sociality is born thanks to the victim, and particularly, to ignorance of the victim(s) that gave it birth.  Human language and thought are already utterly inflected by this ur-violence from their conception."

-James Allison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 16.

"The risen Jesus did not need to say to those who had run away, 'I forgive you': his presence to them was a forgiving presence, was forgiveneness as a person.  So in Luke and John he gives them power and commands them to forgive others as the way of spreading this presence dynamically in human form.  To the disciples themselves the very fact of his gratuitous presence was forgiveness."

-James Allison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 75.

"Sin is recast entirely in the light of the casting out of Jesus... Sin is revealed a the mechanicism of expulsion which is murderous, and those are blind sinners who are involved in that mechanism without being aware of what they're doing."

-James Allison, The Joy of Being Wrong, 122.

Eros and Pseudo-Dionysius

I am moved when I read the great Christian theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius.  For him God is the transcendent and overflowing Good which surpasses all intelligibility and form--even surpassing Being-itself.  The Good is the source of all things, gives light to all, and sets all things in motion with erotic (yes, erotic!) yearning for the Good.  I find the lure of Pseudo-Dionysius in this:  rather than seeing the universe as simply ordered by static forms, or as governed by cold rationality and mechanic movement, or as a threatening chaos that has to be mastered (for example, consider the modernity), Pseudo-Dionysius sees the entire universe as fundamentally erotic--propelled and drawn by superabundant desire that overflows to beings and non-beings alike.

Pseudo-Dionysius is adamant that all things in the universe (celestial, human, inanimate and otherwise) are moved by God to desire and all things desire God.  Then, bucking against his Neoplatonic inclinations, the theologian affirms that, in God's excess, God erotically yearns for all things.  Then, he takes yet another step to assert that God is not only the foundation and the object of our desire, but God is desire itself in motion.  We don't have to accept all the Neoplatonic trappings to benefit from this joyous and erotic theology.

"And we may be so bold as to claim also that the Cause of all things loves all things in the superabundance of his goodness, that because of this goodness he makes all things, brings all things to perfection, holds all things together, returns all things.  The divine longing is Good seeking good for the sake of the Good.  That yearning (eros) which creates all the goodness of the world preexisted superabundantly within the Good and did not allow it to remain without issue."

-Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, Ch. 4.10

"This divine yearning (eros) brings ecstasy so that the lover belongs not to self but to the beloved... And, in truth, it must be said too that the very cause of the universe in the beautiful, good superabundance of his benign yearning for all is also carried outside of himself in the loving care he has for everything.  He is, as it were, beguiled by goodness, by love, and by yearning and is enticed away from his transcendent dwelling place and comes to abide within all things, and he does so by virtue of his supernatural and ecstatic capacity to remain, nevertheless, within himself... In short, both the yearning and the object of that yearning belong to the Beautiful and the Good."

-Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, Ch. 4.13

"He is yearning on the move, simple, self-moved, self-acting, preexistent in the Good, flowing out from the Good onto all that is and returning once again to the Good."

-Pseudo-Dionysius, Divine Names, Ch. 4.14