Evil in Colorado!

The impact of last Friday’s senseless massacre in Colorado forced me to scrap my planned commentary and address the possible cause of this horrific tragedy.

I sorrow with the families and victims struggling to remain alive. For many people, life will never be the same. The impact of this tragedy will affect politicians, academics, counselors, clergy and every branch of security. The tragedy has taught us that even while engaged in leisurely activities, the vicious claws of evil lurk.

Ironically, it was while viewing a ghastly movie, tragedy struck. The movie, “Batman – The Dark Knight Rises”, is the third of a trilogy on Batman by Christopher Nolan. One reviewer said of the film, “it is the biggest and baddest Batman film ever made.” Actually, “the movie boasts a sense of doom and has the kind of substance only made possible by mortality,” says another reviewer.

That was the context in which evil struck early Friday morning. However, I hasten to add that I do not believe that it is necessarily because of the movie the massacre occurred. The murderous plot was in the making for months. The movie provided an opportunity for the killer’s launch.

So, let’s stop the blame game – one television station has already apologized for making an irresponsible accusation. Answers will not be found by blaming others. The issue is bigger than the Colorado crisis. Colorado is merely the most recent case in an increasing series of barbaric killings in America.

In researching this topic, I came across an excellent resource – Extreme Killing by James Alan Fox and Jack Levin. Both gentlemen are distinguished professors of Criminal Justice. In their 280-page volume they identify five distinct motives for mass killings – power, revenge, loyalty, profit and terror. What seems very obvious in this well-researched book, is the authors’ omission of the word evil in analyzing causes for mass killings.

The truth is, evil is not a preferred term among scholars. Whenever one uses the word evil, one is implying some deviation from a standard. This is what St. Augustine (354-430) would refer to as “a privation of good.”

By privation, Augustine meant a lack of something or an absence of something that should be there. Sickness can be considered a privation in that it is a lack of good health. Similarly, evil could be the lack of good.

I am not referring to human goodness – a worldview that suggests that we are all good and as such we are not responsible for our actions. This view suggests that we are all victims of the circumstances that engulf us. Such reasoning for instance, sees poverty as the cause of crime.

In his Templeton Address at the University of Chicago (1993), the late Chuck Colson argued, “Utopianism assures us that crime can be solved by government policy. On the left, that means rehabilitation; on the right, more and tougher laws to scare people straight. But our efforts prove futile. In the past thirty years, the prison population in America has increased five-fold. Violent crime has increased just as fast.”

In other words, the good from which evil has departed is not a political or sociological matter. Among the many studies that have been done on the subject of crime, allow me to refer to a study that was done in England by Professor Christie Davies. She found that crime was lowest a century ago when three out of four young Britons were enrolled in Sunday school. Since that time, Sunday school attendance has declined, and crime has correspondingly increased.

Social scientist James Wilson did a similar study between crime and social forces in America. He discovered that in the late 19th century, when the nation was rapidly industrializing, crime actually declined. Why? At the time, a powerful spiritual awakening was sweeping across America, inspiring moral revival and social renewal.

By contrast, in the affluent 1920’s, when there should have been less economic incentive for lawlessness, crime increased. Why? In the wake of Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin, religion fell from favor. In Wilson’s words, “The educated classes began to repudiate moral uplift.”

I believe Colson got it right when he said “Crime is a mirror of a community’s moral state.” As a society we cavalierly seek to silence those who advocate the sacredness of life. We relegate such rhetoric to private domain and unsuitable in the marketplace of ideas. Either tacitly or intentionally, our society has chosen to embrace a culture of death – listen to our music, examine our investments in theatre or study the tone of our political rhetoric. Then why should we be shocked with the corresponding increase in crime?

I return to St. Augustine for the closing word: “…evil is the corruption that arises when a good but potentially corruptible creature turns away from the infinite good of the Creator to the lesser good of the creatures.” Go think!