That
“all have sinned” is the one Biblical truth that is demonstrated empirically
every day in the news headlines. Reality
has not sustained the reality that humanity is good by nature and awaits
perfection by technology, science, politics, social reform, and education. We are given to self-deception, and even when
we strive for good, we often do evil. Feodor Dostoyevsky, the Russian novelist, asserted that the
soul must be itself. However, the moment
that man indulged this freedom to the point where he was free from God, it led
inevitably to tragedy and evil. Evil is
the shadow cast by good. The search for
moral righteousness is filled with moral ambiguity, that even as we make
progress by either force or reform, trapdoors open under us. No one commits evil except in the pursuit of
good in his eyes. Every war that has
ever been fought and every violence that has ever been
committed has been rationalized in this way.
There is in each of us Hitler, Stalin, and Pol
Pot. From the charnel pits of Treblinka
came the founding of