Modern Evil

Sev­eral years ago, I read an arti­cle about the “new evil” of our times (which is really just an old evil mak­ing another round). It was writ­ten by a youth min­is­ter that is now in his six­ties. He has worked with huge churches, and his career has spanned many decades. Mod­ern evil is pet­ti­ness. He noticed that, in the absence of per­se­cu­tion, there were end­less com­mit­tee meet­ings about who got offended over what. It took up time and dis­tracted what­ever com­mit­tee was involved from their pri­mary tasks.

I have pon­dered that lit­tle arti­cle every so often over the last few years. I think the sit­u­a­tion has got­ten bet­ter. The power of tak­ing offense at oth­ers’ actions seems to be dimin­ish­ing. We have big­ger prob­lems now. We can­not afford to be petty. The world econ­omy has brought a new threat that is quite a bit big­ger than some triv­ial lit­tle annoy­ance. Huge real prob­lems bring out the best in us. Bet­ter days are ahead. There is noth­ing worse for the soul than hav­ing all its needs met.

Pet­ti­ness and polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness go hand in hand. You can change the labels but not the heart. True spir­i­tu­al­ity has to do with the heart — not the super­fi­cial terms. The real issue is not whether we can find the most polit­i­cally accu­rate term for some group but whether we love peo­ple uncon­di­tion­ally. You can use the right terms and still dis­dain the sub­ject (Isn’t this what the Phar­isees of old were all about?).

I am glad that the world faces a real threat. There is noth­ing like a major dis­as­ter to lift the gaze from the petty to the absolutely nec­es­sary. Jude char­ac­ter­ized the false spir­i­tual peo­ple as “grum­blers and fault-finders.” Whin­ing really is the ulti­mate sin. It indi­cates a total loss of per­spec­tive mixed with ter­mi­nal nar­cis­sism.

Life is a mess. All of your needs are not going to be met by peo­ple bring­ing them to you on a sil­ver plat­ter. Your body will even­tu­ally fail you. You have a lim­ited time on this earth. Get a life while you are here — one that is worth extend­ing, in prin­ci­ple, for an eternity.