Evil

The worst thing about evil is the way in which it seeps underground and nourishes its plants, watering its roots. Evil doesn't kill things before it comes into bloom itself. It fosters its own growth until it kills healthy plants suffocating them with its tendrils.
Evil attempts to pervade healthy things, it desires to infect healthy people, tries to seep away nourishment from healthy landscapes poisoning the rivers as it does so. Evil stops at nothing. It spreads underground in a network of open sewers leaking effluent into our taps and the very food that we eat, it tries to enter our bloodstream. Before we can understand how or why our relationships begin to falter, evil has begun its attempt to ensure that trust is destroyed, it seems we betray each other but we don't know why. The worst thing about evil is you cannot see where it came in and you cannot make any claims with any evidence about where it started. It is deception and delusion and calculated dishonesty. We do not see where the contamination starts, until it seems as though it is too late. It has crept in stealthily through the back door, tried to steal your friends. A convivial gathering in warmth and safety, and now the room has gone cold, the warmth evaporates but you can't find the draft, can't blame an unclosed door for the dispersal of all that joy.
Evil is known by its successes, by the triumphant theft, it gains its joy from the demise of others. It gloats over futures thwarted, talent supressed, relationships destroyed and delights in depriving people of their own happiness. It will soak into our shared existence without us knowing. It is invisible until the lines show, the faces crease, the bitterness and resentment begins to develop. We have bile in our mouths instead of sweetness. We notice it when we start to look at people differently. We are shocked to realise what has become of us.
Hannah Arendt speaks of the banality of evil. I am rarely so persuaded by theological arguments so wholeheartedly. Evil is banal. Evil breeds in the most ordinary places. It is made from the stuff of our lives and what people choose to do to them without our consent or knowledge.
We shouldn't ever berate ourselves harshly when we come close to evil. Most people would have run from it if it didn't wear such friendly disguise or such a banal demeanour. Evil decieves us by hiding behind something innocuous. If something creeps up unexpectedly upon us in disguise as a friend or a lover, a parent or a priest, a teacher, or any person we respect then we cannot be expected to know that here is the leak in the vessel. This can be the open door, the cold wind blowing. How can we know where trust is in danger? We leave it exposed because that is the nature of trust. It thrives in open places. We risk everything when we trust and that is why we honour trust left in our safekeeping.
If our trust is almost destroyed, its lifeblood nearly drained we have not chosen this. It is removed, snatched from our possession without our permission. What can we do with evil. How do we point at it and say it started here, this is the hole through which it crept?
Sometimes we do find the leak, we do see, we realise. When our eyes are open and the evil becomes transparent it often looks so ordinary, so well-meant, so charming.
But evil is not charming. Evil is pernicious, vile and banal. It is there in the middle of an ordinary day waiting for us, in a phone call, a devious lie, an anonymous letter, a tiny theft which is the precursor of another. Evil is a thief. Evil is a common or garden thief. It is so hard to acknowledge it that mostly we don't. I have never been keen to discuss evil before. Hannah Arendt knew about the Holocaust and she knew about the evil use of banal things. You can, after all, foster evil by refusing someone food, by stopping them from drinking. You can choose evil by ignoring an injustice. You can steal a letter, write libelous things under the guise of a kind warning. You can choose to believe a liar by ignoring your God-given instincts because you choose the fantasy first and the reality second. Evil is on our doorsteps. Evil appears in anything as simple as a bottle of milk. A poisoned bottle of milk; a stolen milk bill which leaves it unpaid and the person without milk and labelled irresponsible. It is a sharp knife deliberately left in the washing up, a severed tendon, a careless stitch, a tetanus infection and an invisible culprit.
This invisible poisoner, thief, planter and cruel plotter has followers who do the same, this kind of evil depends upon denial and accusations which distract. To you: "Who would do such a thing? Poisoned milk? Are you sure? You must have left it in the heat. "Poor you, how sad, you have been poisoned!" and to another "poor thing, she thinks she's been poisoned!" and to a group, "I must look out for her, she is poisoning herself, How needy she must be that she is deliberately going to hospital.". To you: "I must buy you a special box for your milk!", to the group "I have bought her a box for her milk, poor thing!, to the public: "Don't praise me for buying the box for the milk" I am only an ordinary person, looking out for a vulnerable soul." To you: "there you can see, you are not being poisoned, your box has been protecting it from intruders, it has a key and everything!". All the time the box is contaminated by poison by the poisoner themselves. To you: "poor thing you are in hospital"; to the group:" she is vulnerable, even though she has a special box she still thinks she is being poisoned.", to the public "paranoia is a terrilbe thing'. And so on, and so on, until this sustained poison does indeed poison us, we no longer know who is poisoning us, we think perhaps we are imagining it. We had thought we knew our adversary but we cannot be right, this person is so kind. Soon, everyone pities you for your madness, they no longer trust your judgement and you no longer drink milk though it sustained you for all of your life. You stop eating anything at all, no longer able to trust it, you become frail, weakened, the people around you stop eating too, they become frail and weakened. The poisoner starts to sell these milk boxes in bulk. To you: "I have paid with my own money for some more boxes, you never know where or when the poisoner might strike". As the poisoner sells the boxes, they are taken as gifts, taken in trust, their milk is poisoned. To the group: "you can never be too careful, when people are delusional", the public "a mad person is on the loose, the devil is at work'. slowly all the milk is poisoned, we have been deprived of our life blood, our sustainance. We no longer eat together, in case it has been poisoned, in case one of us is the poisoner. The giver of gifts at least cannot be the poisoner, and so we join the poisoner, sure of our safety, they at least know where it began.
Whole communities are starved slowly, allegiances to the poisoner formed, innocent people secretly, covertly, invisibly violated in public in an apparently legitimate way for apparently legitmate reasons. They have been played with, lied to, stolen from, they have been cleverly manipulated because of their trust, power has been abused.
All evil starts with this tiny banal deliberate innacuracy, the slight intonation, the tiny double-meaning which can be taken anyway you choose. Evil makes us think we have chosen it. But it has poisoned us.
So far, so bleak, but the banality of evil is nothing next to the triumph of the human spirit, the courage of faith, the insistence that we should foster trust, truth and feed each other regardless of the risk. We should never honour evil with claims that it is powerful. There is no power so strong as a shared human desire to trust again and to point at the evil in all its weak, self-concerned despicable stench. Evil violates us, it takes us to places that we have not chosen to go and gives us no way out. Human love gives us a way out of that imposed exile from our homeland. Love thrives with truth, honesty and trust, seeking the joy of others, the fruition of lives, the unity of communities. Evil is banal in comparison.