DOES EVIL EXIST OR WILL RE-EDUCATION ADDRESS OUR EVIL ACTS?

Many in the West insist that what we call “evil” can simply be overcome through moral education. However, the serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy confessed that they actually delighted in evil. Education wouldn’t have overcome their delight. Instead, they found morally dismissive and relativistic theories to justify their delights. Evolution, postmodernism, and related naturalistic philosophies became their handy tools to loosen up the constraints of their conscience.

Without a surpassing belief in and love of truth, our minds are easily co-opted by our evil desires, whether to seek revenge or to simple denigrate others to self-righteously to elevate ourselves.

Perhaps the most dangerous and seductive form of evil is self-righteousness—the belief that we are morally superior to others and entitled to even murder. The late poet T.S. Elliot had been understandably suspicious of those fueled by their evil desire to prove their worthiness and superiority:

• Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. 

This evil is hidden but life-controlling. Everything is calculated to elevate themselves above others. Anything that interferes with their narcissistic calculations is rejected. They must be admired and validated. Consequently, everything they do is “right.”

Can education touch them when they derive their entire sense of worthiness from self-righteousness and delight in regarding others as “deplorables?”

I am certainly not free from these desires and must always be on alert against them. But Jesus has given us a desire for truth, even when it hurts, and it will hurt.

In conclusion, I don’t see how we will overcome our mind-controlling evil desires. Even those who come from the best families are susceptible. The Devil had been created as the angel of light—Lucifer. However, he embraced the temptation to be God and has been on the downward slide ever since. Adam and Eve fell to the same temptation of wanting to be like God by any means.

The problem of evil and self-righteousness is profoundly deep. According to Jesus:

• “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)

While Jesus never dismissed moral re-education, He understood that training in virtue could also be co-opted by our quest to prove ourselves superior to others. Therefore, He taught that the heart had to be changed to let the light of truth in, and that this could only be accomplished from Above by a divine overhaul.