All of you virtuous and even you hedonistic pagans out there....
We interrupt your normal Wednesday rituals to bring you a bulletin from Christian history -- and, to a shrinking group of believers, its present.
Today is the holy day of Ash Wednesday. In the Christian tradition it is a time of contemplation, apology, and repentance (turning around).
And today, as I write my homily, I'm grappling with one of my perpetual unanaswered questions -- are some folks just more mean and evil than others?
And if so, how does that change, or does it change, the basic Christian/Jewish idea that we have all missed the mark.
Are some of us just more evil than others?
What of the dad who refuses to pay child support, moving the kids and mom out of their house and into a shelter?
What of the professor who allegedly shot six colleagues because she didn't get tenure?
Heads of companies who profit from selling cigarettes, proven to vastly increase the odds of getting sick?
The wizards behind health conglamorates (sp) who deny insurance to folks with pre-existing conditions?
Are they badder than those of us who may think about doing wicked things, but never actually go out and do them? Are victims morally less at fault than the victimizers? Is there a domino effect when victims, as in child abuse, then go on to victimize others?
I don't have answers. But I confess to you, readers, that these questions do disturb me. How about you?
6 commentaires:
I think in OUR idea of society yes they are more evil. However in /God's eyes sin is sin, period. That is why he is God and I am not cause even the smallest thing to us could present a Huge chasm between God and the perpetrator of the sin...
Yep. Some are more mean and evil. (Well, you did ask... )
Yes, ash Wed. I suppose one would call ne a pagan, but that would not be accurate. Yes, these questions to come into the mind from time to time but I dismiss them. These are unanswerable. I do not really beleive in EVIL in the classic catholic sense ( in which I was raised), I do think that there are those who are EXREMELY selfish and self centered (Darwin would understand..survial of the fittest and all that), Mean or Evil....maybe, I really think of them as preditors. One thing I have noticed is...these types of folks are VERY unhappy, and seem to spread thier own misery in an attempt to feel better in some way. This saddens me, because they will never find the peace they seek along that path.
I don't like the term "evil". I agree there are people who do bad and even tragic things, and it's unsettling.
What's that line from Will Campbell--"We are all bastards and God loves us anyway."
That's the scary part of the gospel, that God might love even evil people.
I don't know Bob, I think that may be the wonder of the bible and the word. Everyone is loved. Infinite compassion, infinite understanding. We all are created in the image of....even the least amoung us, therefore, all must be treated with the same reverance as any one of us. Difficult, almost immpossible to achieve, yet a worthy, if lofty, goal.
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