Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Sinned

 

Yesterday I wrote on the nature of original sin and “original blessedness.” “Man is born to love, but learns fear,” the theme of a recent talk I attended, is wrong. Man is born with an inclination to sin.  Nor is this inclination eliminated b baptism, nor by faith in Christ. As the Bible says, we must “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.” 

Even leaving aside the Bible, consider the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

“Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.”

“The whole of man's history has been the story of dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God's grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.” (Gaudium et Spes, 37 § 2). 

Of the heresy of Pelagianism, the Catechism notes: “Pelagius held that man could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God's grace, lead a morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam's fault to bad example.”

Which is what our sermonizer of the last post did: he reduced original sin to the example of our parents.

“Ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature, inclined to evil,” the Catechism warns, “gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action and morals.”

This is the fatal flaw in left-wing thinking since Rousseau. His notion of original blessedness led to the excesses of the French Revolution, Romanticism, Marx and Communism. It fosters the tragic mirage of a paradise on earth, created by human effort. It has killed tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions in the attempt.

To give the Devil his turn at the podium, our speaker cited the parable of the Prodigal Son as evidence of God’s readiness to forgive.

The prodigal spent all his inheritance. Yet his father, representing God the Father, did not reject him, but welcomed him home and killed a fatted calf in his honour.

The first common misunderstanding is that the son’s fault was in taking his inheritance and leaving home. No, it was being prodigal—that is, he spent all his inheritance. ”He squandered his property in reckless living.”

And it is essential to notice that he did not just come running to Abba to be embraced. Like Job, he repented in dust and ashes. He prepared this speech for his father, and delivered it: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” 

God cannot forgive our sins unless we are both fully repentant and prepared to accept just punishment. No Get out of Jail Free. This is the step the evil ones always elide in the telling.

Compare the Good Thief, who died on a cross next to Jesus. He was granted heaven despite his sins. 

Why? 

Because he accepted that his punishment was deserved and just. He rebuked the third thief, who mocked Jesus: “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes.”

This is why the sacrament of Confession/Reconciliation includes penance. This is why there is a purgatory, or we must believe there is. Only then can we hope for God’s forgiveness. We cannot expect it. “Thou shalt not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Nor is the repentant prodigal of the parable, significantly, going to get another inheritance to replace the one he squandered. Too many miss this, wanting to stress forgiveness. He does not achieve equal standing with the brother who had not sinned. When the son who had remained objected to the feast his errant sibling was getting in his honour, the father responded by telling him, “all that is mine is yours.” 

That, surely, suggests that the prodigal gets no second inheritance. He gets, no doubt, secure food and lodging; but will remain now forever a lodger.

In terms of the afterlife, this suggests that the repentant sinner achieves heaven, the Divine Presence, reconciled to God. But there are ranks in heaven. We know this from the listed ranks of angels, the reference in Revelations to those “close to the throne,” and Jesus’s reference to “the least in heaven” when speaking of John the Baptist. 

He, the repentant sinner, will be given no authority.

God does not spoil his children.

Dirty Feet

 

There has been a lot of ink already on the “He gets us” Superbowl ad showing people washing one another’s feet. I think the objections to it, from both left and right, are overreactions. It is at least well-intentioned.

“Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”

That seems to want to speak of God’s offer of forgiveness. Washing does imply the feet are dirty.

However, it seems to promote the troublesome recent redefinition of the word “hate” to mean “disapproval.” Just as “love” has been redefined to mean “coitus.” It shows a woman washing the feet of another woman outside an abortion clinic: seeming to imply that killing someone is not hateful, but objecting to killing someone is. A troublesome miscommunication, if not intended. Similarly, presumably, scolding your child for playing in traffic would mean you hate your child. And an umpire calling a ball player out at second base does so out of hatred.

Such messages do not make the world a better place. The road to Hell is paved with such good intentions.

The Voice of One Calling in the Wilderness

 

In a real sense, lying is the worst sin. It is a sin not just against man, but against God. It is direct defiance of God; for God is Truth: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Consistently lying to another under our control—gaslighting—causes the worst tortures known to man, the tortures we call depression and schizophrenia.

 I cannot stomach politicians like Erin O’Toole, who lie without evident shame. Or Richard Nixon, or Bill and Hilary Clinton, or Justin Trudeau. Not much better are those who are deliberately ambiguous, so they can play games with the truth: Pope Francis falls into this category.

I cannot stomach men who claim to be women, or women who claim to be men, or those who claim to be non-binary. It is at base a moral issue.

Give me those clean, straight lines. The clarity of a Ratzinger, a Trump, an Orwell, a Michelangelo.

Make the ways straight for the Lord.

Sin and Repentance

 

This last Sunday’s second reading reminds us of a basic tenet of Christianity that is commonly misunderstood by non-Christians—as well as many Christians.

Truncated, St. Paul writes, “God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.” – Romans 11:32

Non-Christians consider it intolerable that the church declares something they do sinful: homosexual sex is the obvious example, but we might also mention masturbation, using artificial birth control, chastity outside of marriage, and so forth. This is unreasonable; this is oppressive. The church is just being prejudiced, or prudish. 

Then they will point to some priest(s) or bishop(s), or practicing Catholic(s) they know, whom they know or believe do these things themselves. So they will accuse the Church and Christians of hypocrisy.

They will also point to the known or supposed misdeeds of Catholic saints. Saint Thomas More, as Lord Chancellor, had Protestants burned at the stake! So Catholics approve of burning Protestants at the stake!

They are making the gravely wrong assumption that a good Christian never sins. According to the Christian teaching, as Saint Paul says above, everyone sins. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3: 23).

The morality demanded by Christ is perfection. It makes no allowance for human frailty: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

If you call someone a fool, this is as bad as murdering him. If you look at a woman lustfully, this is as bad as raping her. And so forth.

Jesus is not being unreasonable. You are being unreasonable to declare yourself righteous and without sin. You are not God. 

You do not go to Hell for having sinned; you go to Hell for denying that you have sinned. The mark of the true Christian is repentance, not self-righteousness. If you admit and sincerely regret your flaws, God will forgive. If you do not, he cannot.

The Stigma Attached to Narcissistic Personality Disorder

 

My bright fifteen-year-old asks “Is it right that there is a stigma around narcissistic personality disorder”?

I don’t know what she has been reading or listening to on the Internet. In these times, the world is an open book. 

Short answer: yes.

“Narcissism” is the modern term, distorted by the history of psychiatry, which began by seeing everything based on sex. 

What is narcissism really? Morbid self-love. 

What is the old term for excessive self-love? Pride. 

What was Lucifer’s original sin? Pride. He thought he could be God.

What was Eve’s or Adam’s original sin? Pride. They thought they could “become as gods.” 

Pride, narcissism, is the first and greatest deadly sin, from which all other vices emerge. If there is no stigma attached to narcissism, there is no stigma attached to sin.

What is the old term to refer to someone in the grip of a vice? “Vicious.” That is the appropriate stigma.

But, narcissists will complain, they are “mentally ill.” They can’t really control it. 

A perfect alibi, from their point of view. Gets them off the moral hook.

And there is some truth to it. Once you give in to vice, it is hard to turn back. That is why these sins are called “deadly.” They lead to spiritual death. You have made a pact with the Devil, as Eve did, and surrendered your will to his. 

The vice most people have the easiest time understanding is alcoholism. The confirmed alcoholic seems unable to control himself. “First the man takes a drink; then the drink takes a drink; then the drink takes the man.” And people like to speak of alcoholism as a “disease” as a result. But ultimately, the alcoholic is responsible. If he cannot now control himself, this is based on a conscious moral choice he made in the past. For comparison, if I murder someone, my guilt does not simply go away with the passage of time. Especially if I keep murdering.

This is why there is no redemption for the Devil. He has made this irrevocable moral choice, to set himself up as God. This is why he is condemned to hell. This is why anyone who is condemned to hell is condemned to hell: because, once you surrender yourself to a vice, once you sin against the Holy Spirit by setting yourself up as your god, you cannot escape. You have sold your soul to the Devil.

That is how Adam and Eve committed the original sin, which passed down through the generations: that is how hard it is to escape a settled vice. It requires a dramatic divine intervention to escape.

But, in sum, there should be no stigma more permanent and complete than the stigma around narcissistic personality disorder.

How Many Souls Fit under a Microscope?

 

I think psychiatry and psychology do enormous harm. “Psyche” is soul. You cannot have a materialist psychology, that does not even believe in the existence of the soul. 

That blanket statement includes Jordan Peterson. While I generally agree with his politics, all he has managed to do in his thinking on psychology, in his rules for life and related videos, is to struggle his own way through a corn maze of miseducation to the unlocked front door of the stable. He is perhaps ready to acknowledge the existence of God. That puts him in the position of a baby about to be baptized; not a leader.

More regrettably, psychology suffuses our culture. We treat it like a religion; except that people seem to cling to their preferred psychological theories more fiercely and with less logic or evidence than anyone ever clings to a religion. Marking it as an idolatry, or, in psychological language, a delusion.

A sample text in a current textbook—in English, not Psychology--is all about the problem of bullying. And it explains, as psychology does, that people become bullies because they have themselves been bullied; or because they have been neglected by their parents, and do it to get attention.

One vital thing is immediately missing in this analysis: free will. As we see here, psychology reduces everyone to NPCs—except the psychologist. You stick in this pin, and you get that response.

The tremendous advantage of this viewpoint is that it eliminates right and wrong. With no moral choices, there is no morality. This is a great boon to those who want to do wrong, of course. Accordingly, psychology promotes evil.

That is actually the perfect philosophy to create bullies. It exonerates them. And it makes it unnecessary, indeed impossible, for them to change their behaviour, to improve themselves—because, after all, they have no free will. At the same time, the psychologists see themselves as gods, having agency over their patients when their patients do not—attracting bullies to the profession. And of course being logically inconsistent, and denying the essential moral principle, that of human equality: do unto others.

All this would be utterly damning even if it were true that bullies are tempted (albeit not compelled) to bully because they have themselves been bullied. But this too is improbable. Being bullied is painful. Experiencing pain, does the average person really want to impose it on someone else? If, for example, you put your hand on a hot stove, and get burned, are you motivated to encourage others to put their hands on hot stoves?

For most people, the reverse. Being bullied would convict you not to bully another. You would develop empathy and a fierce sense of justice. 

And this is just what you find in those who have been abused. Elon Musk is one example. He apparently bought Twitter to end the bullying.

Why do psychologists believe the opposite? 

First, because they simply ask bullies why they bully, and accept the answer. No bully is going to voluntarily take the blame. The obvious dodge is to insist they are actually the victim. 

And, being bullies themselves, the psychologists embrace the explanation.

As for bullying coming from a lack of attention from parents, this is nonsensical, because as a child, in order to get away with bullying, you generally do not want adult witnesses. So it is not what you are going to do if you want attention from your parents. It is the opposite of what you would do.

THis too probably comes from bullies refusing to take responsibility for their actions. So they will shift the blame to their parents: "I wouldn't have been able to do it if they had kept a closer eye on me."

The best approach to psychology is to assume that everything it says will be the opposite of the truth.

I think we all secretly know this. It is more or less the basic principle Freud propounded, when he claimed that everything our subconscious says to us means its opposite. He was actually revealing that tendency in himself.

Those Beyond Prayer

 

John at the Jordan

If anyone sees his brother sinning, if the sin is not deadly, he should pray to God and he will give him life. This is only for those whose sin is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin, about which I do not say that you should pray. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.

We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin; but the one begotten by God he protects, and the Evil One cannot touch him. 

We know that we belong to God, and the whole world is under the power of the Evil One. 

We also know that the Son of God has come and has given us discernment to know the one who is true. And we are in the one who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. 

Children, be on your guard against idols.

This passage from the First Epistle of John, the first reading at last Sunday’s mass, is challenging.

First, it says “We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin.” This seems to contradict the Catholic position that we are all sinners. If this is so, if Christians cannot sin, there ought to be no need for the sacrament of confession.

Second, it says you need not pray for those guilty of grievous sin. Aren’t we supposed to pray for everyone? Aren’t we supposed to love our enemy, and seek the best for them?

Third, it affirms that the true follower of Christ is capable of telling who else is and is not true. So much for the popular doctrine that we are not to judge, not “be judgemental.” Apparently we can judge, reliably.

Fourth, it declares that “the whole world is under the power of the Evil One.” Surely a surprise to any “Hallelujah Chorus” or “prosperity gospel” Christians. And anyone who thinks they can live a Christian life reconciled to the world.

These issues are interconnected. 

As to the first point, other translations render “We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin” as “will not continue to sin,” “will not persist in sin.” The literal translation from the Greek is “not continues to sin.” This can be read not as meaning we will not sin once we believe in God, or that we will not persist in sin, which is to say, develop a vice. Because a vice, a kind of addiction, surrenders a part of our will, the vices are often conceived of as independent spirits, demons. Hence, developing a vice counts as “the Evil One touching us,” getting his hands on us. When we develop a vice, we “belong” to the Evil One, and no longer to God. 

This fits with the distinction between ordinary sins and “deadly sins” in the reading (the Greek is literally “sin unto death”). When we pray for someone who has sinned, we are presumably praying for their soul, that they do not fall into vice. If they have fallen into vice, there is no more we can do.

The vices are, after all, called the “Seven Deadly Sins.” They are deadly because they are settled habits. They both persist, in principle unto death, and are the death of the soul. If they can ever be escaped, it takes a miracle.

If this seems harsh, it seems to be the attitude of John the Baptist in the Gospel. He calls to repentance: and the people come out into the desert. If they do, expressing thereby their repentance, he washes them of their sins. 

But not everyone.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

They are not welcome to repent. Either it is an impossibility, or else it offends divine justice.

And John the Baptist seem fully capable of judging them on sight.

This is also the obvious sense of Jesus dividing mankind onto sheep and goats, and condemning goats to the eternal fire.

Consider now the last words of this passage, “Children, be on your guard against idols.”

Vices, because they take over the will, are demons. They are idols. When you develop a vice, you have surrendered your will to some idol.

Going to Hell

 

A Buddhist image of hell.

“Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

My father once said the most shocking thing.

“I believe the Jews really are the chosen people. That’s why we have to keep them down. Otherwise they’d control everything.”

Leaving out any other details of my father’s life and deeds, this seems to sum up something essential and unambiguous.

The comment, made in all sincerity, is shocking, of course, for its antisemitism. And antisemitism, history, especially modern history, has shown us, is the most sinister and least forgivable form of racism. Anti-black or anti-Indian discrimination can often look like benevolence. People can convince themselves they are doing it in good heart. Not so antisemitism. 

A Muslim image of hell.

Of course, my father was also prejudiced against blacks and Indians, and other groups.

It is also an obvious expression of envy. It tracks closely the sin of Cain. Cain killed Abel because he thought Abel was favoured by God. After pride, envy is the worst of the deadly sins.

But there is something even more disturbing here. My father was saying

1. He believed in God.
2. He was God’s enemy.

So he did not have the alibi of ignorance. He knew he was going against God, and fully intended to do so.

Years later, my father has now died, without any sign of repentance, on this or as far as I can remember over any other of his acts or views. His will seemed spiteful. Always a heavy drinker, he encouraged everyone to get drunk at his funeral.

We can never be sure, but this looks like the perfect example of a soul bound for eternal torment.

“God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God is necessary, and persistence in it until the end.”

And God did seem to be merciful. He gave my father ample time, close to ninety years, to sort things out. He never did.

An early Renaissance Christian view of hell.

Why would anyone choose to go to hell? Milton gives the reason, in the words of Satan in Paradise Lost:

"Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”

It is pride, the first and worst of vices.

It troubles me often to think of my father suffering in hell. The traditional image is of burning—supposedly the most painful way to die, but continuing forever. Muslim sources are, if anything, more disturbing than Christian ones. Buddhist sources too speak of awful tortures.

Of course this does not make literal sense, because after death one has no body. Old authorities argue this does not matter, that one may have the same sensation, without the physical organs. Modern authorities, and the Catechism of the Church, say “The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God.”

That makes the fire image a metaphor; but is hardly reassuring. Eternal separation from God seems likely to be more terrible than physical suffering—as mental anguish in this life is easily worse than the worst physical pain.

I think I did my best during his life to fraternally correct, to point out to him the need for a change of heart—and paid bitterly for it. That at least is some consolation. But it is a heavy thought, that one’s father is lost forever.

Reader, consider your own case.

True Love Ways

 

Jesus and the woman taken in adultery

The Catholic Church attracts a lot of hostility for condemning abortion; not to mention this, that, or the other peccadillo. This is supposedly “hypocrisy.” Didn’t Jesus say “Judge not, lest ye be judged”? Didn’t he say “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”?

He did; this is an illustration of Shakespeare’s principle that Satan himself can quote scripture to his advantage. This is “proof-texting,” pulling quotes out of context to distort their meaning. Perhaps the perfect example is the fact that the Bible says in so many words that there is no God. “There is no God.” Psalm 14:1.

Of course, the full verse reads “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good.”

Context matters.

Of course, even without any context, we can see that this strict "judge not" interpretation of Jesus's words is impossible. If it is wrong to judge anyone, then it is wrong to judge the Catholic Church for judging you. You are ipso facto a hypocrite.

Let’s look at the immediate context of these verses, so often quoted by atheists and evildoers against Christians.

In the NIV: Matthew 7:

“1 Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

It ends with the obligation to, in fact, judge. And the analogy, of removing a speck from your brother’s eye, shows judgement as an act of kindness. The issue is that you must be able to “see clearly,” to judge clearly.

The caution is against hypocrisy, meaning judging another by a different standard than yourself, applying different rules to them.

Now let’s look at the woman taken in adultery, and casting stones:

John 8

3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11 “No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

It ends with Jesus judging her, referring to her life of sin. He is simply refusing to enforce the legal punishment, which I think we can agree to be extreme.

Our attention is drawn to another detail, because it is so odd: asked a question, he looks down at the ground, and appears to be writing something. He is deliberately looking away. Then he looks up, and all the men are gone, but the woman is still standing there. 

Although she faced death, she did not take the opportunity to slip away.

It shows that the woman admits her fault and accepts punishment, even one we might consider extreme. She is prepared to sacrifice her life if that is what is just. 

This is what is essential to forgiveness; it is the same in the sacrament of confession. It is what keeps us out of hell. In order not to be punished for one’s sin, one must fully admit it, and be fully prepared to accept justice. Only then can one receive mercy.

Rather than hypocrisy, pointing out that another is doing or has done wrong, to you, to themselves, or to a third party, is both a virtue and an obligation. 

See Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1829:

The fruits of charity are joy, peace, and mercy; charity demands beneficence and fraternal correction…

For “charity” one can also read “love.” Pointing out the faults of others is an act of love. If we do not do it, we do not love them. We want them to go to hell, and we are prepared to frog-march them there for our own benefit.

Consider the case of an alcoholic. That is a vice we all can understand. Who is it who loves the alcoholic, the one who warns him he is drinking too much, or the one who smiles, slaps him on the back, joins him in a toast, pours him another drink?

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives the following definition for “fraternal correction”:

“Fraternal correction is here taken to mean the admonishing of one's neighbor by a private individual with the purpose of reforming him or, if possible, preventing his sinful indulgence.”

It goes on to say:

“That there is … an obligation to administer fraternal correction there can be no doubt. This is a conclusion not only deducible from the natural law binding us to love and to assist one another, but also explicitly contained in positive precept such as the inculcation of Christ: ‘If thy brother shall offend against thee, go, and rebuke him between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou shalt gain thy brother’ (Matthew 18:15). Given a sufficiently grave condition of spiritual distress calling for succour in this way, this commandment may exact fulfilment under pain of mortal sin.

It can be a mortal sin, if someone is sinning, not to tell him so. It is always a virtue to tell him.

Does the Bible Endorse Sin?

 

Jephthah's daughter

Something puzzles me. 

In a recent column, friend Xerxes claims that the Bible endorses child sacrifice, because in it Jephthah sacrifices his daughter; it endorses incest because Lot has sex with his daughters; and it endorses prostitution because Tamar prostitutes herself.

To be fair to Jephthah and Lot, as the Bible tells it, they do these things unintentionally. An unintended action is not sinful.

But the broader point is that, because the Bible reports a thing happened, does not imply that the Bible endorses it. The Bible says that Adam and Eve ate the apple; does that mean they should have? The Bible reports that Herod killed the innocents. Does that mean he should have? It reports that the Romans crucified Christ. Does that mean it endorses the crucifixion of Christ?

When I called him on this, Xerxes did not make the argument; but perhaps in his own mind he was making a distinction between those the Bible presents as protagonists and those it presents as antagonists. If so, the Bible also endorses murder; both David and Moses murder people. Adam was the Bible’s first protagonist, the first patriarch, and he was hardly without sin.

To lengthen the list of sinning protagonists would be tiresome; the Bible does not represent anyone but perhaps Enoch as without sin. That’s what cheap novels do. The Bible is not a cheap novel. That is the ugly world of plaster saints.

Xerxes’s defence, rather, was that to claim the Bible was simply reporting, was reading the Bible just as one would a newspaper. And this amounted to a denial of the special sacredness of the Bible.

For the life of me, I cannot see his point. I imagine that, in his mind, there is some radical distinction between “truth” and “Truth.” I can see none. But then too, I can see no distinction between soul and consciousness, and many seem to want to make the soul something mysterious.

I suspect that any hard line between truth and Truth is an attempt to claim a license to lie. Any attempt to make a distinction between soul and consciousness is an attempt to deny the reality of the soul.

A Daughter's Gratitude

 

Some years ago, my daughter drew a card for her Mom on Mother’s Day. It was brilliantly done, and I shared it on Facebook. She has immense artistic talent.

But it drew two disturbed comments from female friends. Posted publicly, apparently with no thought that my daughter would see them. One wrote “Uh-oh. There’s something wrong here.” The other accused my wife of abusing her.

For she had written on the card, “thank you for not aborting me.”

I explained to the friend who saw this as proof of child abuse that, so long as abortion was legal, it was simply a fact that every Canadian woman made a conscious decision whether to abort a child or not. Our daughter, being an intelligent child, surely just realized this.

“But,” my friend countered, “she should have been reassured that she was loved, and would never have been aborted.”

But abortion happens before the mother meets the child, and knows anything of their personality. If her life was spared, it was only by either her mother’s good morals or by her good luck.

In the Philippines, where abortion is illegal, nobody was troubled by the card.

My friend concluded by declaring me “delusional,” unfriending me, and never speaking to me since.

I think the experience shows that Canadian women often have a guilty conscience over abortion. And that the human tendency, when made aware of a wrong or injustice, is most often not to right the wrong, but to object to its being mentioned in polite company.

Literally Worse than Hitler

 

The Devil incarnate? Or a lesser demon?

Modern history has left us Hitler as our image of ultimate evil.

He may not be up to the task. 

Awful as he was, he is not the worst possible human. He was just theatrical about it.

None of the Seven Deadly Sins requires a victim. You could regularly indulge all of them, wrath, envy, pride, lust, gluttony, acedia (spiritual, not physical sloth), and avarice, without coming to the attention of many others. Our society even tends to celebrate some of them. 

The same could be said for seven or eight of the Ten Commandments: you could get away with coveting your neighbour’s goods, or his wife, without anyone even knowing. You could fail to keep holy the Sabbath day; you could take the name of God in vain. Many do. You could commit adultery without much social blowback. Some would cheer you on. 

Hitler was guilty of mass murder—thou shalt not kill—but murder is actually not the worst sin. It is the worst crime. There is scant evidence he indulged in lust. He lived a celibate life; he had few and discreet liaisons, so far as is visible. Or gluttony: he was a teetotaler and a vegetarian. Or avarice: he lived on the royalties from Mein Kampf, which he had the state buy in quantity, but did not loot as he might have; like his lieutenant Goering. Hitler was preoccupied with power. This is pride, the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins. And he clearly indulged his wrath. But at least he did not submit to all of them.

Hitler also had one signal virtue: courage. A worse man would lack it. 

A thoroughly bad man, precisely because he lacked courage, would not so publicly sin. He would remain an upstanding member of your community. People might feel, personally, there was more than a little “off” about him, but they would not find anything they could openly condemn.

The Devil, they say, is a gentleman. You are more likely to encounter him at your next social gathering, than in the history books.

Marianne and the Child

I think it is wrong to pry into the lives of famous people. Celebrities whatever their field are entitled, like the rest of us, to privacy. Interest in their personal affairs is generally the sin of calumny.

I am about to break that rule for Leonard Cohen.

Cohen is too important. He is not just another famous person. He is a spiritual guide, and, in the righteous words of Jennifer Warnes, Canada’s national poet. His soul intersects with Canada’s soul, and contains multitudes.

I was listening recently to the late song “Choices,” off the “Can’t Forget” tour album. And I realized how sad it was.

I've had choices
Since the day that I was born
There were voices
That told me right from wrong
If I had listened
I wouldn't be here today
Livin' and dyin'
With the choices I've made

It is a confession. It is sung in the voice of a hopeless alcoholic. Cohen did not write it, but the fact that he chose to perform it regularly suggests it meant something to him.

I was tempted
At an early age I found
That I liked drinkin'
No, I never turned it down
There were loved ones
But I chased them all away

Cohen did have a problem with drinking; but I fear that is not what he is really talking about. It stands in here for another vice, because he cannot quite speak that truth squarely. It is too painful to admit.

His vice was sex. It was lust.

This was, after all, the title of his first, autobiographical, novel: “The Favourite Game.” The favourite game was recreational sex: the hunt, the conquest. A common and commonly celebrated vice in his young adulthood, the era of Hemingway’s machismo, James Bond, Playboy, and the “sexual revolution.” A blind alley down which too many wandered then, and wander now.

Some girls wander by mistake
Into the mess that scalpels make.

Wrapped up in this is Marianne Ihlen: “So Long Marianne.” You can see her on the back cover of Songs from a Room. I have not seen the movie, “Marianne and Leonard,” but I think the issue is clear enough. It was his first committed relationship. By all the rules and right, that was his marriage, and it should have been for life. There was a child. It is unnatural and inhumane to break such bonds. I gather Cohen walked out on her, gradually, because, starting to become famous, he suddenly had lots more opportunities for casual sex. He was tempted as few of us ever are, and it was a temptation he could never resist.

Ever since he has had to live and die with that choice that he made. A fatal spiritual mistake.

The worst of it is that the child went mad by adulthood. Cohen must have wondered if he was responsible for that.

Cohen never could commit to any permanent relationship. He could never get past the lust; and always had chances to indulge it due to fame. He was an addict.

Notwithstanding, Cohen was a good man. He was just fallen like all of us; all of us have our temptations. The sign of his goodness was that he was wracked by guilt, and continued to wrestle with it. And to confess.

What I loved in my old life
I haven’t forgotten
It lives in my spine
Marianne and the child
The days of kindness
It rises in my spine
and it manifests as tears
I pray that loving memory
exists for them too
the precious ones I overthrew
for an education in the world

But Cohen fans and all of us need to realize that his early and sometimes celebrations of sexuality, attractive to so many, are phantoms on the road, demon voices that ruined his own life, the lives of many women, and the lives of many children, and continue to do so.

Is Hell Eternal?

Dives and Lazarus

A friend who was once a member of the Unification Church (the “Moonies”) recently mentioned to me that they believe no one goes to hell; or perhaps better stated, hell is not eternal.

This sounded heretical in Catholic terms—but then I remembered that von Balthasar, or Bishop Barron, advance the idea that, while hell must exist, it is still theoretically possible that there is no one in it. And that would amount to the same thing: the bad perhaps spend a long time in Purgatory, but no one is finally abandoned.

This idea is appealing, because it is hard to understand why God would create some for eternal torment. This does not seem merciful. It does not even seem fair. Suppose a very bad man, like Hitler, has caused unspeakable suffering to 20 million people. Would justice not be served if, in purgatory, he himself experienced the full measure of all the suffering he had caused? If this is not enough, wouldn’t twice all the suffering he inflicted? Ten times? That is still not eternity.

But then it seems to me there are problems with this idea. To begin with, it is hard to reconcile it with the Gospel. In the story of Dives and Lazarus, for example, Jesus seems to plainly say that Dives is in hell, and there is no path that can take him from there to heaven. Then there are the images of separating the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. These images do not seem to work if, in the end of all, the wheat and the chaff are back together, and the sheep herd with the goats.

There seems to be, beneath this, an argument that, if everyone gets to heaven, there is no good reason for God to have created this life. This life would seem to be a testing ground, a valley of soul formation. It does not seem to do that if everyone passes the test.

To deny the possibility of hell also seems to diminish free will. What is the sense of giving man free will if he cannot freely choose the ultimately wrong course? That’s something less than true free will, then.

There is another issue as well. Not all sin is against one’s fellow man, or other creatures who can suffer. Sin is not necessarily the infliction of suffering on others. Who suffers if you secretly covet your neighbour’s wife? In this case, it cannot be atoned by experiencing suffering oneself.

The most serious sins, indeed, are against God, who cannot suffer. And it is exactly this, sin against God, that the Church says leads to hell—it is rejecting God.

Jesus, asked what is the greatest commandment, answered “To love God with your whole heart, and your whole mind.”

He called blasphemy against the Holy Spirit “the unforgivable sin.”

In the Ten Commandments, the first three (or four, depending on your division) are sins against God, not your neighbor. Being listed first suggests they are first in importance.

Is God being selfish to make sins against him so much more important?

I do not think so. Define God, or his Logos, as the Truth and the Good. Jesus says something like this: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light.”

Now, which is worse, telling a lie, or denying that there is any such thing as truth?

Surely the latter is sinful on a higher plane.

Which is more sinful, committing a sin, or denying that there is such a thing as sin, as right or wrong?
Surely the latter.

So the first example, committing a sin, gets you to purgatory; but there has to be a higher level of retribution for turning your back on the whole premise of being good or telling truth.

Hence there must be some state qualitatively different from Purgatory to which one would go.
And, if you have rejected Truth and Good as goals, it seems impossible for any length of time in purgatory to allow you to achieve either goal.

Hell and Damnation

A further thought on how many go to Hell; mentioned here some time back as a current controversry between Church Militant and Bishop Barron.

The meaning and purpose of life is not obscure. It is to seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. This comes in the West from Plato; but it also seems to correspond to the Hindu trinity of sat, sit, ananda, usually translated, inaccurately, as “being, consciousness, bliss.” Sat is the Good, honesty; sit is Truth (true knowledge); ananda is aesthetic appreciation. These three things, at minimum, are of intrinsic value, and their presence gives value to all else.

Although this seems self-evident once pointed out—the real or true is of more value than the false, and the good is of more value than the bad—it is also true that some people—many people—do not seek the True, the Beautiful, or the Good. Some will insist the Truth is socially determined, or the Good is up for grabs, or our idea of Beauty is purely a matter of taste. The whole Postmodernist thing is to deny the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. And a huge proportion of people are assertively postmodern in this way.

This is ultimately cynical. The advantage of rejecting Truth and the Good, even if self-evident, is that it leaves you free to do or believe whatever you want.

Heaven is Good, True, and Beautiful to a maximum degree. To seek these transcendent values is to seek Heaven; and to seek God, who is a perfect being, so perfect Goodness, perfect Being, perfect Beauty. The immediate presence of God is definitive of Heaven. Those who are not seeking them are, therefore, rejecting God, and choosing to turn from the path to Heaven. They are declaring in favour of Hell, and against Heaven, as their intended destination.

And this makes sense in Catholic doctrine: God, being all-merciful, wants no one to end up in Hell, but some of us choose Hell for ourselves. Anyone who is not seeking the Good, the True, and the Beautiful has quite expressly chosen not to go to Heaven.

Sin, in turn, is when we choose anything else before the Good, the True, or the Beautiful. For example, immediate physical pleasure, or social status, or self-regard. These are the three great temptations: the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.

Any of us can slip up in this way at any time. The difference between the saved and the damned, however, is that the saved will understand this as sin, feel regret, and eventually repent. The damned will refuse to accept this, and deny they have done anything wrong.

They may instead protest, like Pontius Pilate, “What is Truth?”

Eight New Commandments

After all, they weren't carved in stone. Oh, wait. I guess they were.

My leftist columnist friend has recently proposed that the Ten Commandments are obsolete. All very well for a small desert tribe, perhaps. But progress! Morality marches on!

We Catholics were always able to derive everything we needed from the original ten in the traditional examination of conscience. But he does have something of a point; sometimes it takes a bit of a stretch. Not all the commandments are as clear as they possibly ought to be. For example, there is no “Thou shalt not lie.” There surely should be. The Devil is “the Father of Lies.” We are able to deduce the general point, sure, from “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour,” but that seems more oblique than it needs to be.

So okay, here are a few additional commandments that might usefully be added to the mix. No, morality does not change or evolve. But certain sins are currently conspicuous, and part of the problem might just be that the prohibition is not as clear as it should be.

The same principle, after all, holds for the commandments as a whole. All of them, as Jesus notes, could really be replaced with “Do unto others as you would have them do to you”; or “Love God, and love your neighbour.” Love, as St. Augustine said, and all will be well. But while the Golden Rule, or “Love, and do what you will,” or Kant's categorical imperative, or simply following the voice of conscience, ought to do the whole job, humans are perverse. They will look for loopholes. Things often need to be spelled out, or we will rationalize our way out of them. Given this tendency, the ten commandments could probably always be expanded. And always have been. Feeling the ten are not sufficient, Rabbinical Judaism expands them to 613 specific prohibitions.

So, a few new ones, to address some common sins.

Confucius

To begin with, I like Confucius's answer, when asked what he would do first if put in government. “First,” he said, “is the rectification of terms.” It is, I think, a profound moral issue not to tinker with the language, with the standard meaning of words. It is a form of lying, and an especially insidious form, for it becomes a great obstruction to anyone later seeking truth. Playijng with gender pronouns, changing the meaning of words like “bright” and “gay,” changing pro-abortion to “pro-choice,” when it refers only to one particular choice by one particular actor, and so forth. The tendency is everywhere.

Moreover, this commandment needs to be understood as fundamental, as Confucius said, because without it, all other commandments can be easily overturned, simply by changing the meaning of a crucial word: “kill,” or “covet.”

So I offer a commandment close to the heart of any editor:

1. Thou shalt not falsify or manipulate the meanings of words.

Also close to my heart, for almost the same reason:

2. Thou shalt not attempt to prevent another from sincerely expressing their mind, or refuse to listen to and consider what they have to say.

If you do not follow this commandment, you are not yourself sincerely seeking truth--see John Stuart Mill on this. Worse, when done in the public sphere, you are preventing others from finding truth. If you are not sincerely seeking truth, you do not love God, for God is Truth. No shouting down, no ad hominems in argument, no government censorship, no hate speech laws. This is obviously a growing problem today.

3. Thou shalt not judge a person before hearing what they have to say in their behalf, or, depending on the circumstances, observing how they act.

This simply and properly defines prejudice. Prejudice is a failure to honour the second core commandment, to love your neighbour as yourself. It seems necessary to spell it out, not just because it is a frequent sin, but because the nature of prejudice is often these days misrepresented as its opposite. Any freedom from prejudice is now declared prejudice. For example, people actually say, if you have white skin, you are racist; if you have dark skin, you cannot be racist. This is a statement of quite extreme prejudice.

There is a corollary to this, which probably needs to be stated separately, because it is even more often overlooked.

4. Thou shalt not favour a person over others except as is justified by their own merits, or one's prior commitments to them.

This is really the same as the previous injunction, or at least its necessary corollary. Unjustly favouring someone is just as evil as unjustly condemning another. In practice, it amounts to the same thing: you cannot favour one without discriminating against another. But because it looks like “being nice” from one very limited perspective, people commonly think it is okay. Hence moral crimes like nepotism or “reverse discrimination.” Thou shalt not play favourites.

The bit about one's prior commitments is needed, I think, to clarify that you do indeed owe special consideration to some, like your children or your spouse, because of prior commitments you have made to them of your own volition (by, for example, begetting them), or debts to them you have incurred.

"Envy plucking the wings of fame"

5. Thou shalt not envy.

This is, to my mind, already definitively covered in commandments nine and ten, Catholic numbering (“Thou shalt not covet”) but recent discussions with this same leftist friend, and indeed a Web search, suggest that this is still ambiguous to many. He takes those commandments as prohibiting, not envy, but materialism. Not immediately clear to me how this refers to coveting thy neighbour's wife… but that might be separate injunction against lust.

Envy deserves its own clear prohibition in any case. It is a common sin, and it is one of the seven deadly ones. If your neighbour has more than you have, or is smarter than you are, or is better looking, you have no right to resent them for it. You should celebrate their good fortune.

Might I point out that most leftist politics are based on this sin? If anyone does not have enough to live on, that is a problem to be fixed. Money can of course be acquired in immoral ways, but the mere fact of having money is not a moral issue--except that, if you object to it in another, you are simply indulging envy. Even worse when the envy is based on another's intelligence, which is at least as common a problem. A particularly bright person might produce great benefits for mankind as a whole: a cure for cancer, a pollution-free energy source, a symphony, a solution to some great problem. Yet the envy of others can hold him or her back from this. Even at a more pedestrian level, everybody benefits if the druggist behind the counter is the best druggist available, the brain surgeon operating on you is the best brain surgeon, the engineer designing the structure is the best engineer. Envy is the primary force preventing this from being so, and it is cumulatively massively destructive.

6. Thou shalt not outsource thy morality.

This is a major omission: it is a prohibition against hypocrisy, the key issue in the New Testament. And it remains a key issue today. Tooo many people try to sidestep their own moral obligations by instead placing moral obligations on others. For example, it is moral to give money to charity. There is nothing moral, however, about advocating a law requiring others to give a percentage of their income to charity. It is moral to limit your air miles in order to conserve limited natural resources, or to prevent the emission of “greenhouse gases.” It is not moral to lobby to pass laws forcing others to limit their air miles for this reason. It might be advisable in practical terms, but it is not a moral act. A particularly common, and particularly egregious, example: if you are paid for a job helping people, you are no more moral than the next guy who has a job doing something else, given that your pay rate is the same. If you are being paid for it, it is not your charity.

7. Thou shalt not openly forgive another who has not admitted a misdeed.

This will probably not sound Christian to many—this is why it needs to be said. It is a very common moral error. If someone sincerely apologizes, you have a moral duty to forgive. This too is commonly not done, but at least just about everybody seems to understand that you should. The more common error is the opposite. If someone does not apologize, and you publicly and openly forgive them, you are saying that what they did was really okay. This is putting their soul, and even those of any onlookers, in mortal peril.

It is especially important to make the point, because non-Christians are always trying to beat Christians over the head with their duty to forgive, when what they almost always really mean is that the Christians ought to accept that a sin is not a sin.

Of course, there is nothing to prevent you from, in the meantime, forgiving another in your heart. But even this is not really a moral issue. It is something advisable for your own peace of mind.

"Honour your father and your mother"is another present commandment that seems often misunderstood, and used for nefarious purposes. It does not mean "obey your father and yor mother,"and it is not addressed to children. It is too often used by bad parents as a stick to beat their children. Read this way, it directly contradicts must of the New Testament, in which Jesus tells a prospective disciple who asks for time to first bury his father, "let the dead bury their own dead," and, "call no one father but your father in heaven," And,  after all, obeying your parents if theyu ask for something immoral, or giving them honour above their deserts, would be itself immoral. What if your Dad is Hitler, and your mum Karla Homulka? What the commandment is really about is looking after your parents in old age, and allowing them a digified dotage. That is "honour." Hence it should be recast as

8. Support and respect your parents in their age.

Many are not following this commandment. The common problem is not abandoning the old, in terms of their physical needs, but dropping them off in a nursing home and forgetting them. They are owed not just food, bedding, and physical care, but dignity and  a stake in the continuing life of the living.

People of the Lie

Eve's temptation, as imagined by Gaugin.

We don't like to admit the very existence of human evil. We want to deny that hell exists, that the devil exists, or that anyone is bad to the marrowbone. We even hate those, like the Catholic Church, who remind us of the possibility of evil. This is strange, because the twentieth century can best be understood as a massive eruption of human evil: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and their many imitators. There were no doubt genocides before the twentieth century, but they were rather rare. Now they are commonplace.

But we even have trouble accepting this overwhelmingly obvious fact. Just about everyone agrees that Hitler was evil; but probably only because he lost that big war, and got himself safely killed. In his day, he had a lot of ordinary Germans on his side. Stalin and Mao still have their admirers; Mao still has many. Feminism and abortion have killed and crushed more than either, yet it is highly controversial to say that they are evil. Someone has rightly said, that no bad government ever gets overthrown because it is evil; governments only get overthrown because they are incompetent.

The principal reason for this is an unspoken pact among us. If we deny the existence of evil, we get a free pass on our own actions. We need no longer worry about whether we have done right or wrong.

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. -- John 3:19-20.

War in heaven: Bosch.

Some of this too, no doubt, is a natural fear reaction: speak of the devil, and he may appear. You don't want him to notice you, so you pretend not to notice him. It may not be terribly logical, but it is a typical human gambit: whistling past the graveyard.


Some too is the much less creditable hope that, by remaining silent, or even by cooperating, the evil will pass you by and turn their glance on someone else.

The man looked frantically round at the other prisoners, as though with some idea that he could put another victim in his own place. His eyes settled on the smashed face of the chinless man. He flung out a lean arm. 

‘That's the one you ought to be taking, not me!’ he shouted. ‘You didn't hear what he was saying after they bashed his face. Give me a chance and I'll tell you every word of it.He's the one that's against the Party, not me.’ The guards stepped forward. The man's voice rose to a shriek. ‘You didn't hear him!’ he repeated. ‘Something went wrong with the telescreen. He's the one you want. Take him, not me!’ - George Orwell, 1984.

Hence the Stockholm syndrome, the trusty kapo of the camps, the Uncle Tom. The now-famous Milgram experiment seems to prove that, confronted with a case of clear evil, most ordinary folks will willingly cooperate. Sixty-five percent of us, in fact, given the chance, will obey to the point of apparent murder. In other words, society is no protection against evil.

Adolf Hitler as the messiah.

Another discreditable but routine human reaction to evil is victim blaming. It is unfortunately reassuring to convince ourselves, whenever we see another suffering, that in some way they brought it upon themselves. This relieves us of the stress of fearing that the same thing might happen to us; and it relieves us of the moral responsibility of either helping them or risking standing up to evil. This is no doubt extremely helpful to the evil among us. It is also the underpinning of the doctrine of reincarnation endorsed throughout the east: if some poor wretch is being stabbed at your feet, it is no doubt because he tortured spiders in some past life. No call nor point in helping him out now.

So far, so bad. But then too, I suspect some of the problem with recognizing evil for evil comes from the fact that evil is by its very nature ambiguous. God created all things in this world. He created all things essentially good. Evil is therefore not a thing in itself, but only a relative absence of good: evil occurs when a greater good is sacrificed to a lesser (privatio boni). This so, it is always possible to point to some good in any evil. Without a decent sense of proportion, therefore, the very distinction between good and evil can casually be lost. This is what we see in “moral equivalence,” for example. Every evil person can give some sort of justification, some superficially plausible rationalization, for every evil deed, to himself or herself or to others.

Another complicating issue is the Christian belief in the universal availability of salvation. God also created every person. He created no one evil, and no one to be damned. Salvation is available to everyone, even the utterly wickedest of us, given that we repent. So in this sense it is wrong to characterize anyone as “evil.” Their nature is good, for they were created good, and may still return to goodness. Their deeds are evil.

Still, the Bible does speak of sheep and goats. Hell is there for someone. At least at the point of death, some of us will have indeed become irredeemable, and there will no longer be any walking anything back. In fact, understanding evil seems to be one of the keys to the New Testament. There, Jesus and John the Baptist don't appear to hold back much in describing the scribes and Pharisees as evil in so many words. They are called “full of hypocrisy and wickedness,” and asked “How will you escape being condemned to hell?” Jesus blames them for “All the righteous blood that has been shed on earth,” and tells them “you do not enter the kingdom of heaven.” They are introduced as “children of hell” (Matthew 23:13). Not a sterling example of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” Denying evil, despite much propaganda by non-Christians and anti-Christians, is not a Christian virtue.

One of the Buddhist hells, in which the permanently evil torture mere ordinary sinners. Tiger Balm Gardens, Singapore.

So, God's truth, there does seem to be an identifiable group or class of people in the world who are rightly described as the bad guys. And it may only be cowardice or duplicity that keeps us from plainly seeing and saying it.

I have recently been reading the book People of the Lie, by M. Scott Peck. Peck, a psychiatrist and a Christian, argues that we need to accept the psychiatric reality of evil, as we do with other psychiatric diagnoses, so that we can study it. So someone can be diagnosed as “evil” in the same sense someone else can be “schizophrenic” or “depressed.”

I have problems with this approach, but that would, at present, be a tangent. The point is that he, as a psychiatrist, claims to encounter genuine evil regularly. If it is not a psychiatric diagnosis, it is the cause of many psychiatric diagnoses in others—its victims.

Mao Zedong as centre of the universe.

Peck does not give his own clear diagnostic criteria, so far as I can see, but he does make a distinction between those who are evil and those who are merely sinners. We are all, of course, sinners. He says that “evil people,” “people of the lie,” are distinct in the consistency of their evil. It is as if they have at some point, like Faust of legend, made a pact with the devil. They have made up their mind, whenever there is a conflict, to follow their own self-interest in preference to their conscience.

This does not, according to Peck, usually produce obvious and dramatic results. We are not talking here about serial killers. Perhaps the only person who consistently sees such cases, and sees them clearly, is the psychiatrist, through meeting their victims. Because the truly evil rarely end up in prison.

Most folks behind bars, Peck says, are merely mentally ill; while the truly evil are seen by others on the whole as good, upstanding citizens. This surely stands to reason. An evil person is a person who puts his or her own self-interest or personal desires above all else. It is in nobody's obvious self-interest to go to prison, or to be identified publicly as a criminal. Accordingly, anyone who is both evil and in prison must be significantly incompetent at being evil—of quite low intelligence. Most will have ended up there not because they are evil, but either because they are self-destructive or have been put in some desperate situation.

And should it be any surprise that this is just what the New Testament suggests as well? Without saying that their crimes are okay, the New Testament, and Jesus, make a point of never condemning criminals as criminals, as Jesus refuses to condemn the woman taken in adultery. Indeed, Jesus himself is executed as a common criminal; what could be a clearer statement of solidarity than that? The thief crucified next to him is also pointedly identified as good, indeed a saint, ready for heaven instantly, with time served, with no intermediate stop in purgatory. As if the point were not already made, at the very moment that Jesus insists that some people are good, sheep, and some people are bad, goats, he implies that those in prison are not among the goats. Jesus says that any man we might visit in prison is in some sense Jesus himself; and it is by visiting them that we show ourselves to be of his flock of sheep (Matthew 25).

Instead, according to both the Bible and Dr. Peck, the truly evil are to be found among the most “respectable” classes, those who are generally thought well of by society as a whole. The leaders, the city fathers. And this stands to reason. Thinking only of what is best for themselves, and holding that they are intrinsically wonderful, the truly evil are going to do what they can to amass both prestige and power over others. The devil, as they say, is a gentleman.

Jesus makes this point by describing them, as a class, as “hypocrites,” a term used in the original Greek to refer, among other things, to actors. They are people playing a social role, who are the opposite of the way they appear, “whited sepulchers.” Peck makes the same point by calling them “people of the lie.” They are probably not going to break any laws, and they are not going to attack anyone from the front. It will be the knife in the back, the sly manipulation, the short-of-criminal con. It will be hate disguised as love, evil disguised as righteousness, selfishness disguised as selflessness, black disguised as white. The lie must be their basic tool; this no doubt is why Satan is called “the father of lies.”

Satan's own sin, the fundamental sin of all sins, was to imagine himself as God. This is the archetype of evil: the ego elevates itself to godhood, imagines itself the true and proper centre of the universe. It is Adam and Eve's sin in turn: they ate the apple not just in disobedience to God and their conscience, but that “they might become as gods” themselves. Every evil person is a little self-proclaimed idol. (In this context, it is both telling and frightening that it is commonplace now for women of the feminist persuasion to refer to themselves as “goddesses”). This distinguishes him or her from the general run of sinners, who often will go against their conscience for their own self-interest, but will tacitly recognize the wrongfullness of this, later surrender to their guilt, and repent. In the end, most of us accept that other people have the same abstract rights as we do. The evil do not accept this to be so. Other people are things, put there for their benefit.

Atheists will here object that they are perfectly capable of being moral people without believing in
God, much less bowing the knee to him. And that is true, if by this they mean the traditional depiction of the Judeo-Christian God specifically. But in philosophical terms, bowing to God is the equivalent to bowing to the reality of objective truth and objective justice, objective right and wrong—which even the pagan Greeks would have recognized, as Dike. God is this personified: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. As AA puts it, “A power greater than ourselves, however we might conceive it.”

Faust plays chess with Mephistopheles.

The next point is that this violation of the first great commandment, to love God (or justice) with your whole heart, leads automatically to the violation of the second, to love your neighbour as yourself. Satan's rebellion against God led him to seek harm to Eve and her children as well. Adam and Eve's transgression led in turn to the second great sin of Genesis, Cain's killing of his brother. When you reject God, or truth, you reject your fellow man as well. You begin to actively do harm. This is because truth as moral centre is automatically replaced by ego as moral centre.

Peck explains this as a need to scapegoat. In an effort to quell the voice of their own conscience, the actively evil need to project their sins onto someone else, and punish them, in order to feel righteous. So Satan stands in as “the accuser,” in for instance the Book of Job, justifying himself as a kind of prosecuting attorney ferreting out evil in us mortals, and supposedly punishing it in hell. This is also ther type of the scribe or Pharisee in the New Testament, who stand as judges over the people, laying additional burdens on them and making no effort to help. This is the universal bully. In practice, it can become sadism, deliberate cruelty.

We see this in history. It is said that those who sought to avoid the evil attentions of Vlad the Impaler were obliged to praise him as the “scourge of God,” doing God's work in ferreting out and punishing evildoers. That was how he wanted to see himself; and, since we all have some tendencies to evil, this ruse can always work. Idi Amin's system was to have one prisoner beat another to death, and then to ask a third prisoner to beat the second prisoner to death for this crime, and so on. By doing so, he kept his own conscience, presumably, clear. Each man was being executed justly in turn, for he had given in to temptation in hopes of saving his own life. As the evildoer's conscience becomes more and more insistent in telling him that he has done somthing wrong, he becomes more and more active in seeking and punishing scapegoats to alleviate his own guilt. Put him or in a position of supreme power, and the result will be a holocaust.

But this notion of scapegoating is not the whole story, surely. It is not clearly what happens in the story of Cain and Abel, which suggests that it is not the true, primordial genesis of brother-on-brother evil. Here, the problem is simply and clearly that Cain perceives God as liking his brother more. 

The scapegoat.

This too makes good sense. If an individual ego has made up its mind that it is and ought to be sovereign, any demonstration of any kind of attention given to or superiority shown by another being, however inadvertent, is a direct challenge to and attack on that sovereignty. It is, within this distorted view, itself satanic; it is an act of rebellion against the rightful God, who is, of course, John Doe. So the evil person can feel justified in doing any act of harm to another whom he or she considers a threat to his cosmic supremacy.

This is indeed what led to the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ. The keepers of the law could not tolerate the direct appearance of God himself, for it threatened their own authority. God himself was rebelling against them. He had to and in some twisted sense deserved to be put to death.

So too in Cain's deed, he is demanding that God, not just Abel, submit to his will. 

Cain and Abel, by Durer.

As with the Nazis and the Jews. Let's be honest: the real source of the Jews' problems was (and is) that they were too genuinely impressive in their accomplishments. There was certainly scapegoating too, but this original sin led to their choice as a scapegoat.

Put these two factors together, scapegoating and envy of the good, and you have a truly demonic force. You have a human wrecking machine.

You have the people of the lie. And we need to understand that they walk among us. We are sheep among ravening wolves, as Jesus said.

On Sin

Oxford defines sin as “an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law.” There are two concepts here: that of immorality, and that of breaking God's law. Merriam-Webster gives these as two separate meanings: “1. an offense against religious or moral law,” and “2. transgression of the law of God.”

Both concepts, it seems to me, are necessary for a full appreciation of the nature of sin. “Transgression of the law of God” or “transgression against divine law,” on its own, leaves the impression that God's law might be capricious or arbitrary. If God declared murder a good thing, and charity a bad thing, would they become so? They would not. Morality exists as an absolute apart from God's willing it. God cannot will evil to be good.

Were this not so, it would be meaningless to say that “God is good.” not that God is subject to the good, but rather that he is morally good in his essential nature. “He cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). Therefore, to sin is not only to offend against God, but to offend against morality as an objective quality, against objective right and wrong. In the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love....” (CCC 1849).

However, true morality also necessarily involves an obligation to love and obey God, to keep God's laws. When Jesus summarizes morality in two commandments, “Love God,” and “love your neighbour as yourself,” he gives the former the priority. Similarly, the first three (or four, depending on your numbering system) of the Ten Commandments presume a moral obligation to honour God.

If one accepts the definition of God as absolute being, and absolute perfection, it follows that he is also absolute goodness. Aquinas states this as a matter of definition: “the word 'God' means that He is infinite goodness” (Summa 1:25). Or, in the words of the Gospel, “None is good but God alone” (Luke 18:19) – to say “good” is to say “God.” If one does not believe in, and revere, absolute goodness, this in itself is a turning away from the good. If an atheist genuinely holds that there is no such thing as moral good, he is not in the end a moral being. If he holds that there is such a thing as moral good, he is not really an atheist. He is simply not calling God by the word “God.”

Given that we truly believe in the absolute moral good, why do we ever do evil? Why does sin enter our lives? Why are we tempted?

The classic explanation, of course, is the story of the Fall of Man. According to Genesis 3:6, Eve faced three temptations leading her to commit the original sin: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food [1], and that it was a delight to the eyes [2], and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise [3]...” (RSV).

The first temptation seems clear enough: our sensual appetites, though in themselves good, may conflict with a higher good.

The second temptation is less clear. Firstly, if it is simply a matter of the apple being pleasant to look at, this is not a separate temptation from the first. Moreover, if this sensual pleasure of seeing the apple is what is desired, eating the apple is not the way to acheive it: this removes the apple from sight, and therefore ends this sensual pleasure. Conversely, leaving the apple on the tree in obedience to divine command is the best way to satisfy this desire.

Accordingly, the second temptation must be something else: a desire to show the apple to Adam. She would have something that Adam did not. The second temptation is the temptation to “look good” to others; to win their esteem. While good in itself, this too can conflict with the ultimate good, as appearance can conflict with reality.

The desire for wisdom is explained further in the passage: knowledge of good and evil is promised to make Eve “like God.” This is the sin of egotism or spiritual pride.

There also seem to be three temptations, and three stages of the Fall, in Genesis. Eve’s temptation is only the first: on the literal, most basis level, to eat the fruit—temptation of the senses or the flesh. Then Adam too is tempted, and eats—tempted by his wife, the first historic instance of peer pressure. He must keep up with the Joneses. With this, significantly, comes shame, social guilt. Then comes the next temptation: Cain’s murder of Abel. He does this out of spiritual pride: resentment that God seems to favour Abel.

Temptations, it seems, always come in threes; and, I submit, this same set of three. Both Luke and Matthew, for example, tell of Jesus facing three temptations in the wilderness: turn stones to bread, rule the world, jump from the temple roof. These are Eve's three temptations, again, in order; which Jesus, however, resists. The Book of Common Prayer, following Peter Abelard, cites “the world, the flesh, and the devil” (Abelard, Exposition of the Lord's Prayer): the same three, but in a different order, 2, 1, 3. 1 John 2:16 also seems to have our list of three: “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” Lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, and pride: 1, 2, 3.

I order the three temptations in the way suggested by the historical sequence in the Bible. The same sequence is also given by Luke and John—by a majority of our sources. Matthew and the Book of Common Prayer have different sequences, but also do not agree between themselves: 1, 3, 2 and 2, 1, 3, respectively.

Why are the temptations of the flesh the first temptations? Probably, because the pleasures of the flesh are the lowest common denominator, something even young children or animals feel strongly. Our instinctive, animal desire is for material or physical comfort and the absence of pain; things like wanting to eat, seeking warmth, getting a good sleep. The complete surrender to this temptation is the comprehensive sin of materialism, of living “by bread alone.” Wealth too is, at base, a desire of the flesh, because the essence of wealth is material possession. Hence the proverb “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).

The second temptation, for social appearances or social standing, is referred to by the Book of Common Prayer as “the world”-- as in Merriam-Webster’s second definition: “All of the people, societies, and institutions on the earth.” “Peer pressure,” we would say, with teenagers; as the French would say, “tout le monde.” Similarly, “lust of the eye” in 1 John does not mean a desire to own things you see—that again would be only a duplicate of lust of the flesh, less clearly described. It refers to a desire to be looked at, or “looked up to.”

Finally, the sin of pride—the devil’s sin, hence by synecdoche referred to in the Book of Common Prayer as “the devil.” This is “putting God to the test,” putting oneself above God in some sense. This was the last temptation of Job, the righteous man, a conviction of his own righteousness and that God owed him something in terms of treatment. “Shall he that contends with the Almighty instruct him?” (Job 40:2).

It would seem that each temptation in turn leads to a deeper level of evil. A simple lust for the flesh, as of a Falstaff, is in the end rather forgivable. There is relatively little of malice in it. People who avoid the allure of materialism, then succumb to the allure of social pomp or worldly power, seem more purely evil: Hitler or Park Chung Hee were both seemingly personally incorruptible. No doubt it is for this reason that Jesus and the Gospel save their greater wrath not for women taken in adultery, but for the scribes and Pharisees.

And the sin of spiritual pride, finally, is, as noted, the sin of the Devil himself.