![Don't be blind to evil | opinion Don't be blind to evil | opinion](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/Xn3KP2xbyFBWgTmsCMnW6P/02ff6377-f794-4996-b7cf-6349fe889264.jpg/r0_2541_4175_4835_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Late last week, an ABC headline grabbed my attention. It read, "Accused killer Ryan Cole seemed like a friendly boat enthusiast to his neighbours. Few knew his backstory."
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For the sake of clarity, the act of gunning down Natalie Frahm, of which Cole is accused, was objectively evil. There are no qualifying statements and no mitigating circumstances.
However, the reason I found this headline striking was that it reflects what seems a common way of speaking of these horrific acts in which individual people are viewed as either wholly good or wholly bad.
Ask yourself, why should it be shocking that Cole appeared normal, even pleasant, in his day-to-day life? Yet, so often, when these horrific acts are committed, they are met with an outpouring of surprise that someone who seemed so ordinary could be capable of such evil.
A couple of years ago, I read Christopher Browning's 1992 book Ordinary Men. Browning's work (recently adapted into a Netflix documentary, which I look forward to watching) examines evidence gathered during the post-WWII Nuremberg trials. He details Reserve Police Battalion 101's role in the Holocaust, moving town to town in Poland and rounding up families of Jews who would then be lined up and coldly and methodically executed. I will spare you the gory details.
Browning's horrific discovery was that these "ordinary men," - bakers, carpenters, police officers, firefighters, etc., rather than simply following orders, had been given the option to refuse to take part in the massacres but most actively chose not to. Their initial emotional distress was eventually numbed by the daily routine.
Ultimately, it left me uncomfortably asking whether I would act any differently if placed in their circumstances. Could I resist such extreme peer pressure? Would I be willing to risk the potential consequence of defying a government such as Hitler's Nazis? I hope so! But as much as I can hold my ground on many important issues, I can't say that this is always the case.
Examples such as this show me the wisdom of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's famous observation that "the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained."
Solzhenitsyn penned this line while languishing in a Russian Gulag for eight years. His experiences there led him from Atheism to Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, his observation is a profoundly Christian one. On one hand recognising that each of us is created by God, in his image, and so are capable of immense good. Yet, on the other, we are stained by the reality of sin. Within each of our hearts is the capacity for both good and evil.
Practically, this puts all of us in the same boat. Those who do wrong, whether in small ways or large, are not made of different stuff to us. They are as ordinary as you and I. This recognition has certainly helped me to be far more patient and forgiving with others than is my natural impulse.
More importantly, it reminds me that, as we often remind ourselves when we see the misfortune of others, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Indeed, which of us has not found ourselves giving in to impulses within ourselves that we wish were not there? Lest my own heart be overwhelmed by the evil within it, I do well to join the Psalmist in crying out, "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me."