This week, on January 27, 2019, a couple of explosions took place in Jolo Catholic Cathedral in the Mindanao region in Southern Philippines. On that same day, we remembered the Holocaust. Moreover, we have been experiencing the shock and the ripple effects of the new Reproductive Health Act of New York, which is nothing less than the legalization of infanticide.
Many people have died prematurely. Many will die unjustly. The future looks bleak. Tragedies of infanticide, genocides, and terrorism intertwine daily. It seems that human evil is irremediable, and our basic moral intuition has died.
By now, I hope you see that I am not talking about those who have died due to injustice. Rather, I am talking about living humans with morally dead souls. They have a hard time realizing their crimes. And, even though you and I have not carried out a crime of terrorism, genocide, or infanticide, we have such potential.
Differential Diagnosis of our Terminal Condition
First, Excluding Mental Illness
No, I am not exaggerating in case your mind went there. If you read, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101, you will come to the same conclusion. Those who were involved in the murder and the abuse of Jews were ordinary men. They were initially bothered by the “messiness” of their crimes, the blood splattering, the skull bones chattering. Then towards the end of the war, they were enjoying Jew hunting. Their problem with killing the Jews was a graphic one, not a moral one.
We could say the same about the doctors who will be carrying late-term abortions. Do you think they are any different from any one of us? They are just ordinary men and women.
Second, Excluding Socio-economic Factors
What about terrorists? You may think, “these poor souls are simply brain-washed” as if they were passive sponges that do nothing but absorb radical ideas to explode themselves and others. But, have you ever wondered, "why are not we successful in brainwashing people to become like Jesus?" Perhaps, our dying souls have one destination only if left to their own efforts; that destiny is decadence and death.
You may also think, “these poor souls are uneducated or deprived in their socio-economic status.” But that is not what the evidence suggests. They tend to be educated men. Some have chosen to leave the comfort of their own homes. Some chose radicalism in the East over Western secularism such as Osama bin Laden and Sayid Qutb.
Third, Excluding an Over-generalization Error
Finally, you may think that a lot of people do good. You may conclude, “we cannot be that bad.” Yet, first, claiming that evil has corrupted our nature does not entail that we cannot do any good acts. Second, good acts do not rule out impure and selfish motivations. Third, our human nature has “evil” as a default setting, which best explains the potential of ordinary men to commit unthinkable evils. Societal and legal constraints mask our souls’ decaying stench forcing many to be law-abiding citizens, which accounts for why we behave altruistically at times. But autonomy unmasks our evil tendencies.
In short, it is not education, socio-economic status, or corrupt propaganda; evil indwells us, but it manifests itself in quite the variety. Evil is part of our software for the lack of better analogy. Can someone who is already in the process of moral decay reverse the process by his/her own power or will? Not a chance, for it is much easier to prevent the decay of a thing than reversing the process of decay and its damage. If we cannot prevent the process, by what magic can we reverse it?
It does not end here.
A Bigger Problem
In the Bible, Job was a righteous man even in the eyes of God. In the middle of his suffering, his friends insisted that he was suffering for his sins. While they were mistaken, Job’s outcries open a can of worms. Job states, “I know You [God] will not acquit me. Since I will be found guilty, why should I labor in vain? If I wash myself with snow and cleanse my hands with lye, then You dip me in a pit of mud and my own clothes despise me!” (Job 9: 29-30). Job is trying to say that, "no matter what I do, no matter how extreme the measures I take to keep myself holy before God, I will still be found unclean as someone who was just dipped in mud." Job saw that there is a huge gap between our standards of holiness and God’s. So, he cried in despair, “There is no one to judge between us [him and God] to lay his hand on both of us!” (Job 9: 9:33).[1] Job was seeking someone who can stand between God and him to reconcile them both together.
So, who needs redemption? We all do!
Why Does This Matter to You?
Consider the possibility that God exists. Consider the reality that we are morally evil and irremediably corrupt. Where does that take you? There is one question I hope you ask after reading this post; "is there an arbitrator who qualifies to stand between us, to lay his hand on both of us, you, me, and God?" The question, “can the dead be redeemed?” logically follows; it is the first step to search for a redeemer.
[1] According to John Gill’s exposition of the Bible, “Herodotus makes mention of a custom among the Arabians "when they enter into covenants and agreements with each other, another man stands in the midst of them both, and with a sharp stone cuts the inside of the hands of the covenanters near the larger fingers; and then takes a piece out of each of their garments, and anoints with the blood seven stones that lie between them; and while he is doing this calls upon a deity, and when finished the covenant maker goes with his friends to a host or citizen, if the affair is transacted with a citizen; and the friends reckon it a righteous thing to keep the covenant.'' Perhaps, Job was referring to this custom. See, https://www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/gills-exposition-of-the-bible/job-9-33.html