Evil

Today's tragedy (still unfolding) at Virginia Tech is a reminder of how destructive and evil humans can be toward one another. In the days and weeks to come, I am confident we will find out a great deal about the person responsible for such darkness.

I wrote these words a few weeks in a Review I wrote for Wineskins Magazine of N.T. Wright's book Evil and the Justice of God.

More humans died in the twentieth century than in all previous centuries combined. Mass genocide in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Darfur, Northern Uganda, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Srebrenica, along with the devastations of WWI and WWII crushed the optimism that characterized the West at the onset of the 1900s. By 1930, the spirit of progress began to give way to a spirit of disillusionment.

Western Christianity did not fare well either. Many of these atrocities took place in “Christian” nations or nations closely affiliated with the Christian religion (including Nazi Germany which was overwhelmingly Lutheran). According to Alister McGrath, though almost two-thirds of all Christians lived in the West in 1900, only one-third were still recognized as “Western” by 2000. Christianity shifted to the far corners of the world: China, South America, and Africa. Scholars now notes that there are more Anglicans in Africa, for instance, than in all of Great Britain.

Even more chaos consumes the 21st century landscape. The devastation of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, tragic earthquakes in Pakistan and Kashmir, the terror of Hurricane Katrina, and the latest surge of wars in the Middle East push Christians to ask, “is God present and working in the face of such pressing evil?” To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, “If the atheist must answer the reality of joy in the world, the Christian must answer the presence of suffering.”

To read the whole piece, click here. To check out Wright's book, go here.

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May the families of the victims be covered in prayer by people of all faith on this dark day in American history.