Captured
The story is told that one year the London Times sent out an inquiry to famous authors asking them to answer the question, “What’s wrong with the world today?” to which the English author and Catholic convert G.K. Chesterton replied, “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G.K. Chesterton”.
Last week, we discussed the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and came to the conclusion that for there to be a creation there must be a Creator. This week we look at the question, “Why is everything so messed up?” For each rational proof that God exists there are a million proofs that evil exists. Not all is right with the world. We don’t have to look further than our own hearts to know that evil lurks. But if we believe that our good God creates only good things, then how did we get so messed up? Who do we have to blame? The first chapters of Genesis give a poetic and complex answer. 1. God creates humanity good with the gift of free will, the ability to choose good or evil. 2. God creates the Devil as an angel, who subsequently rebels against his authority and sets himself up as a hostile force. 3. God allows the Devil to tempt our first parents in the Garden because he respects her free will too much to shield them from hardship. 4. Eve (and Adam in tow) is seduced by the Devil’s temptation and the desires of their own hearts to disobey God, and they sow the seeds of humanity’s future misery.
The original sin that Adam and Eve commit darkens their intellects, weakens their wills, and disorders their passions, and that broken nature is passed down to us. 5. But as Chesterton’s answer implies, we are not blameless in this long, sad story, for we add more misery to the equation each time we disobey God’s will and choose what is pleasurable over what we know is right. So who’s to blame: God for creating humanity with free will, the Devil for tempting, Adam and Eve for falling, or us for compounding this damage? More useful than blame is recognizing and understanding this basic truth: we have been captured by evil. We can’t do much of our own power to right all the wrongs in the world; we can barely manage to take care of ourselves. St. Paul remarks poignantly, “For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:22-24) Prisoners long for freedom and the sick for healing. Humanity looked for millennia to the God of creation and asked, “What, if anything, are You going to do about this?” We’ll look next time at God’s response to our cries for help.