Because Carol, the homeless woman, is outside most of the time, Sister Elizabeth gave her a sunhat. She left very pleased with the hat, but a couple of blocks from here, her bicycle hit a slick spot on the road, and she fell. The hat landed a little distance from her. As she was scrambling to right herself, a young man asked her if she wanted him to pick up her hat.
“No, thank you, Sir,” she replied.
He picked it up anyway, and threw it away from her, into the mud. (I imagine he had intended this meanness right from the beginning, whether she had said yes or no.)
Carol was understandably upset. Even though she encounters a lot of scorn from people she meets, she never quite gets used to it. Nor should she.
Darkness in a Forum
The other day I was doing a search on Google – I don’t remember what the topic was, but it was for something I was writing. One link led me unawares to a website for ex-Christians. Once there, out of curiosity I read the webmaster’s story, and after reading it, decided to send him an e-mail. I told him that I was sorry about his journey away from Christianity, but that perhaps it had been a journey away from a childish faith that needed to mature. I urged him to remember that faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive and can coexist in the sincere heart and intellect — and also (for I had noticed some rather hateful postings from visitors who were not ex-believers), to pay no attention to “Christians” who would curse him for his non-belief, as there is no violence in God, who is totally loving and merciful. Since he had mentioned some non-Christian authors he had been reading, I suggested a few who were Christian.
I occasionally do send an e-mail, using a fairly anonymous e-mail address I have, to the person responsible for a website I have visited. Most often there is either a simple reply or no reply at all. I expected this to be no different.
The next day I received two messages from people I did not know. One thanked me for what I had said; the other encouraged me to reply to the responses to my posting. In the first place, I wasn’t aware of having posted anything, but I went back to the ex-Christian site and found that the webmaster had posted my e-mail (along with my e-mail address) to the site’s forum.
There had been 56 responses, and the second time I checked, there were many more. Some struck me as being from sincere seekers. Many, however, were vitriolic: one called me a “biblically illiterate fool”; and some made comments such as how my parents had wasted their money on my education. In other words, these people were not just disagreeing with me, they were in contempt of me.
For a couple of days, I found myself oppressed by a sense of darkness. Since then I have been reflecting on the experience and on why the feeling of darkness was so heavy in that forum. (I have also come to a profound gratitude for the kindness with which I am daily surrounded, and which, in countless lives, is woefully rare.)
I write the following with some hesitation, because I do not want to give the impression that I am judging the people who posted to the forum, as I have no idea what the pain may be that led them to adopt an attitude of such derision. Only God can see into another’s heart. Neither am I judging the young man who threw Carol’s hat into the mud. Even basically good people sometimes perform wicked actions.
A Question About Evil
But I ask myself: could it be that the essence of evil is scorn for what God has made?
This, of course, amounts to scorn for God.
The book of Genesis tells us, “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (1:27); and, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” (1:31).
Two chapters later, we find the serpent casting doubt on the value of the human beings created by God. Tempting the woman, he says to her that after she eats of the tree in the middle of the garden, “you will be like God” (3:5). In other words, he implies that she is not already made in the image and likeness of God. She needs improvement, the snake suggests, that only his superior understanding of life will make possible. He is dismissive of the beauty and stature of what God has done.
Here was the darkness, I thought: it resided less in the unbelief than in the disdain. Is this why, for Jesus, calling someone a fool is such a serious matter (Mt 5:22 )? What about throwing Carol’s hat in the mud? Both of these would appear to show scorn for the creature God has made, and therefore contempt for the Creator.
It is not just ex-Christians who fall into this kind of darkness. Practicing Christians as well can too easily dismiss those who seem odd, those who are not “orthodox,” those who are of a different political persuasion.
All of us — Christian, ex-Christian, non-Christian — we are all made in the image of God. And we all stand in need of mercy.
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.
(Romans 12:9-10)