This is a continuation of a series entitled History in the Making. Please see “my latest posts” on the lefthand side of the page for the previous blogs in the series.
History in the Making IV: The Triumph of Evil
I cannot explain what it feels like to come face to face with grand-scale tragedies of our time. Starvation. Orphans. AIDS. Human Trafficking. The residue of genocide. It always leaves me speechless. I tend to be an optimistic person, alway seeing the glass half full and the blue skies through the rain. I believe wholeheartedly in the hope of Jesus Christ. Yet when I look at such things, it all seems grey. And I am left with many questions.
Jesus Christ is victorious. Why, then, does evil seem to triumph? Gary Haughn quotes Edmund Burke (a saying I am quite familar with as it is always on the bottom of my friend Abby’s emails). “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” In ethics class, we call this negative responsibility. It means that we can be held responsible for our inaction, or I daresay, ignorance. After his extensive work investigating the Rwandan genocide, Haughn concludes, “the histories now written make one thing clear: It could have been stopped. And we missed it…”
Why do we do nothing? Why do we fail to act when tragedies of epic proportions are unfolding before us? Haughn says the following, “As I consider this question, I find three deep sources of poverty that consipire to keep me and my good neighbors on the sidelines in the great struggle against evil.”
“Tolerable Disasters of Bearable Proportions”
The first is a poverty of compassion. “Aleksander Solzhenitsyn said there are two standards by which we judge events in the world: near or far. If it is near to us, we care about it. If an event is happening on the other side of the world, I have a hard time working up concern or compassion about it. It’s how overwhelming tragedies such as Rwanda become tolerable disasters of bearable proportions… Am I touched by the stories I hear of suffering in other parts of the world? Do I find my heart softening when confronted with troubling stories of the suffering and oppression of people from other countries, different cultures?”
I echo his thoughts: “As I expand my exposure to other peoples, other traditions, other problems, I better identify with the pain in others’ lives and develop a more magnanimous compassion. I am discovering the mysterious joy of opening my heart to the world.”
I touched on this question already in Seven Miles. How close do we have to get? Are we willing to open our hearts to the suffering of others, even if it is far away?
“Unworthy Battles”
The second is a poverty of purpose. “I marvel at the way forces conspire to bend the purpose of my life toward increasingly petty things and away from the grander purposes outside myself for which I sense I was truly fashioned by my Maker. I am amazed at my capacity to be distracted by small and unworthy things… I am equally amazed at my capacity to wage scorched-earth war over the petty things – battles that diminish others even as they diminish me. Jesus rebuked the leaders of his day, especially the religious leaders, for neglecting the weightier matters of the law – justice, mercy, and the love of God. That stings me…What might it mean to our country if the readers of this book resolved to abandon every petty, small, and unworthy battle this year? What if they resolved to give themselves fully to larger things that matter, to things of God and his kingdom?
We have spent much time on the World Race talking about dreams. At the beginning of the year, I read Bruce Wilkenson’s DreamGiver, and I began to realize that these big dreams I have of changing the world are from God. AND if I will take the risk and run after them, my God wants to give me these dreams, for they are in their simplist forms, dreams of His Kingdom. What are your dreams? What has hindered you from pursuing them?
“Paralyzing Powerlessness”
The third is a poverty of hope. This resonates in my heart. I have found myself so overwhelmed and discouraged by the sheer magnitude of despair that I am paralyzed. From Terrified No More, “When the problems are so big and so bad, can we really make a difference anyway? Should we even try? We are paralyzed in a poverty of hope because, first, we underestimate the value of what god has given us to transform lives. Second, we underestimate the value of a single life. And third, we underestimate God’s determination to rescue us from a trivial existence if we will just free up our hands and our hearts from unworthy distractions and apply them to matters that make a difference in someone else’s life…When our grandchildren ask us where we were when the weak and the voiceless and the vulnerable of our era needed a leader of compassion and purpose and hope – I hope we can say that we showed up, and that we showed up on time.”
The purpose of asking why “good men do nothing,” is not to project feelings of guilt and shame on ourselves. It is, however, to help us recognize the barriers that hold us back. If we recognize these barriers in our lives, then maybe we can overcome them. Maybe we can open our hearts to the hurting in the world. Maybe we can dream again. And maybe we can HOPE. Maybe we can change the world.
