God created the world out of chaos, but some chaos still remains. It’s
the factor that transforms the beautiful waves of the ocean into a tsunami, it is why a monster is
born among many good people, or a sick child among
the healthy ones. God can’t do anything to prevent this, but we can. Our technology will allow us to predict natural disasters and
genetic diseases, and I don’t think that a new Hitler could get away with another Holocaust today,
because the human race has been too deeply ashamed of it to let it happen again.
We can make the
world a better place, but this is not going to happen automatically, thanks to “progress”.
Technology and democracy won’t protect us from evil. We must be able to recognize it, for Satan
is the “Big Deceiver.”
Other times, instead, evil is so evident that we are struck by the
impulse to act against it forcefully. This usually leads to more evil. Following Christ and his message of peace
seems unrealistic in a world where atomic bombs are built. It’s a challenge,
but the gospels teach that evil cannot be confronted as something apart from us, where we are good
and the others are bad.
Evil often reaches its climax in the interaction between the two
contenders. Even the apostles had their moments of evil, including Peter, the head of the Church. Only
Jesus could unmask it and exhaust its power. He did not resist it and didn’t call to the Father
for vengeance, but the Father raised him from the dead, not as a reward or a statement about his
divinity, but as Satan’s final defeat. Jesus’ resurrection is the first step in the new creation.
The prophet Isaiah predicted his sacrifice, as we can read in the
prophecy of the Suffering Servant. Jesus the Servant will save the world from within, for God is
grieving upon His creation gone wrong. But why doesn’t God deal with evil on His own? Perhaps He
can’t land in force to defeat it because, to say with C.S. Lewis, when the author walks on the
stage the play is over.
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