Like all of you, I awoke this morning to the news of the slaughter of innocents. Apparently, a lone man with a machine gun wrought devastation upon hundreds, killing more than any mass murderer in modern American history. It was the kind of news that tightened the chest and grieved the heart. While I am one who spends time with history and perspective, so this kind of thing can be catalogued with all of the others like it, it still stops me in my tracks. My mind struggled in those early moments to grasp ahold of it, seeing it ripple out in waves through the lives of the victims, their families, their community and all those who are so viscerally repulsed. I chose not to immediately go to details, fearing among other things that I would be faced with all sorts of explanations, some of which would be linked with this or that political cause.

As my heart hurt, my mind went to that elusive but ever-present source that we can call evil.

I have written about this before and I have pondered the nature of evil time and again over the years. People far smarter and wiser than I have offered up all sorts of explanations, many of which I’ve found valuable as I try to make sense of it all.

The question of evil is so challenging that some large belief systems don’t even engage it. Many people don’t even like the word. Well, perhaps. I imagine those who don’t like the word have never confronted it directly, face to face, in a way that will make one’s hair stand on end while a sense of cold and dread enters through the pores.

In other words, I think that there are many with modern sensibilities who treat evil as a kind of theoretical thing as in, “I’d know it if I saw it but I can’t say as I really understand it.”

To be honest, the problem of evil is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to belief in the Christian worldview. Or, for that matter, belief in any kind of a God who is at least partially or fully loving or benevolent. And, that’s quite understandable.

If we dismiss the supernatural, then what we might term evil, like the events of last night, are chalked up to a pure basis in psychology. In keeping with that, the psychology behind the act is a function of all sorts of things, much or most of which is socially constructed. (The term social construction has been around for decades now … one of the most difficult books I ever read was not a long one but dense as dense can be. It was entitled The Social Construction of Reality and sorely tested my mind and will in graduate school. It basically means that we are to a very large degree the product of our environment and the many social forces that frame that environment.) Ultimately, with some great validity, this line of thinking says that all sorts of humanly-generated factors led to the murderer’s heinous act. Who knows yet? Parental treatment? Rejection by peers? Ill-mannered bosses? Political or religious idealism? All of these can and have been contributing forces to acts such as occurred last night.

But, that’s if we dismiss the supernatural. Unfortunately, to dismiss the supernatural is to say that nature is moral. There is justice in nature. Try as I might, I can’t make that one work. Trees, rocks, birds, plankton, asteroids, planets and so forth don’t have a morality. I’d be pleased to listen to those who disagree.

Which leaves us with two choices. We can believe that there is no supernatural and that this thing that occurred was very bad, carried out by a depraved individual. I suspect he would say he was not depraved and I imagine there are many others who cheer his actions. They would say he was justified by some logic that others would find repulsive. But, in that light, it could not be called evil. Because evil implies a standard that rises above the psychology or social construction. It stands all on its own. Evil transcends bad. Everyone is free to believe this.

The other choice is that Evil is a powerful force, an intelligent force, that seeks to invade our sense of things, twist our minds and hearts and acts in the interest of destroying what it means to be human. We are also free to believe this.

I choose to believe that Evil went to the bank last night and in a burst of fire and metal wreaked havoc on what is good and right in this life. As we mourn the lights that were extinguished, we reach out to the light that brings life.