The reality of things is that there is much evil in the world. This is nothing new really. A quick look to our history textbooks, and I'm going to guesstimate that 75% of the content deals with some sort of evil. History textbooks don't tend to report the good happy times. They report wars and revolutions and crisises.
Evil is both wide and deep. Evil occurs in every nation, city, household, and the depth of evil can be seen in multiple situations. Just look at any news media, tv or internet news. Our senses are infiltrated with knowledge of evil again, and again, and again.
I'm kind of wondering why news outlets like to stick to reporting mostly evil things and events. It's not all bad, but the majority of focus is spent reporting on child molestors, murders, rapes, wars, fires, sicknesses, depressions, relationships gone bad (personal and business ones), greed...the list goes on and on and on.
A possible answer to that question might be that it's probably related to another evil - greed...those news "suppliers" want to make a profit and the best way to do that is ratchet up the stories that portray evil and abuse and heartbreak.
Why is it that evil continues to "get us"? Why do we continue to pay attention to the high volume of it that's out there. Yes, there's a lot of it out there, but why haven't news "suppliers" changed the substance of what they report? We continue to pay attention to evil, time and time again, I think for one principal reason.
Deep down, in the intricate fabric of every human being, we know that hearing or seeing or experiencing evil -- there's something wrong with that. It makes our ears perk up and our eyes grow wider when we read of evil or hear about it. The inner places of our hearts recognize that's not the way it should be, and so we pay attention to evil event A because we are intrigued as to why something went wrong where it shouldn't have.
Over the past couple of adys, I've been struck by how much evil is in our world. I think we often de-sensitize ourselves to the volume and intensity of evil in our world, probably so we can continue functioning as human beings without being overwhelmed...but I've been somewhat undoing the de-sensitizing, and it's really awful to try and grasp the magnitude of evil in our world (I know I really am not coming close).
In the face of understanding evil a bit more, I'm so thankful I can trust a promise from Jesus the Great Savior: "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33 NASB)
No comments:
Post a Comment