Posted on 06/03/2005 6:07:11 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Note: This commentary was delivered by Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley.
When the New York Times is willing to consider the possibility that evil exists, you have to wonder what’s really going on.
Joking aside, the Times ran an intriguing article, titled, “For the Worst of Us, the Diagnosis May Be ‘Evil.’” It gives valuable insight into a secularized culture grappling with the question of what makes people do bad things.
Author Benedict Carey writes, “Most psychiatrists . . . avoid the word evil, contending that its use would precipitate a dangerous slide from clinical to moral judgment that could put people on death row unnecessarily and obscure the understanding of violent criminals. Still,” he writes, “many career forensic examiners say their work forces them to reflect on the concept of evil, and some acknowledge they can find no other term for certain individuals they have evaluated.”
These psychiatrists are dealing with people who commit acts of almost unbelievable savagery. It seems that the more of these criminals they encounter, the less prepared they are to account for this kind of behavior. It’s making some psychiatrists rethink a lot of their ideas.
At Prison Fellowship, we know. For more than thirty years we have labored in the prisons of America, and we have seen evil face-to-face—and redemption, too.
Carey explains, “A group at New York University has been developing what it calls a depravity scale, which rates the horror of an act by the sum of its grim details. And a prominent personality expert at Columbia University has published a 22-level hierarchy of evil behavior. . . . He is now working on a book urging the profession not to shrink from thinking in terms of evil when appraising certain offenders, even if the E-word cannot be used as part of an official examination or diagnosis.”
For the Christian, all this talk of evil feels just a little like going back to kindergarten. Evil is a concept so central to the Biblical worldview—a worldview that teaches us that the germs of evil can be found, not only in serial killers, but also inside every human heart. You’d think that would be common sense.
So why are psychiatrists just now beginning to face up to this—the existence of evil? Well, the idea of a “therapeutic culture,” as some call it, is a tempting one. If bad behavior is just an aberration that can be cured through medical or psychiatric treatment, it keeps us from having to deal with the uncomfortable idea that every person is capable of such behavior. It also reinforces the belief that this world is all there is, a belief that many scientists prefer. As forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz put it, “I think the main reason it’s better to avoid the term evil, at least in the courtroom, is that for many it evokes a personalized Satan, the idea that there is supernatural causation for misconduct.” It’s so much more appealing to believe that all misconduct can be explained in scientific terms.
The problem, of course, is, once you start exploring what human beings are capable of, that belief just doesn’t hold water anymore. And the belief in evil suddenly doesn’t look so silly or childish. It starts to look as if the Biblical explanation may have been the right one after all.
They were a lively bunch that's for sure. I think the Jews must have missed a few. The Amalekite descendants are running amok in modern times.
Ah, okay now I get it :)
And these good people are walking targets for those who are not so good. God gives us free will to choose what we do. That's what makes us different from animals. People might get away with horrible deeds in this life, but everyone has to answer for their actions when they die. Socio/psychpaths have no conscience. They act on their thoughts, and to hell with everyone else. Maybe they don't have a soul?
They have souls, but are so covered with envy, lust, greed and anger that they are truly "mad" - they are unable to have any true understanding or appreciation of themselves as souls, or of God's real existence. Even if such people are supposedly believers in "God", it isn't God who they believe in, but a creation of their own vain imagination.
This brings up why doctor assisted suicide (or any kind of suicide) is so bad and wrong. Even a very bad person has the chance of redemption as long as they draw breath. That chance shouldn't be taken away. In fact, when people get very close to death, the more chance that they may indeed repent and beg God's forgiveness.
And the more the common culture rejects the truth of God's existence and the truth of universal justice, the more people have no restraints to indulge their basest passions. It's a downward spiral. Very, very sad.
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