Are there evil people?

The instinctive answer to the question above may be, "yes, there are some evil people." However, on consideration of the various factors including theological and social, one may be leaning towards answering, "NO." Why did I make this statement? A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a couple of friends about the possibility that some individuals may be evil. The responses from each indicates that they have all thought about this topic for sometime based on what they observed happening in our world and the stories in the Judeo-Christian scripture - the unecessary killings, bombings, wars, destructions, wrongful witnessing and the likes. While all the responses given may seem quite convincing, I offer the following for refuting that people are evil.

According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, when God created, he saw that all he made was GOOD (Genesis 1:31). Socially, when a child is born, society sees nothing but goodness in the child. That is why until the age of reasoning, a child is not liable for his/her actions - he/she cannot make an informed choice based on formed conscience. Based on the Judeo-Christian tradition, God breathed into our first ancestors, the breath of life (God's breath keeps us alive). God created our first ancestors, and by extension, you and I in God's "image and likeness." Paul also reminded us that "You are temples of the Holy Spirit." My first argument is that that which is created in the image and likeness of God cannot be evil. To say that any human being is evil is by extension to say that the "Godness" in him/her is evil. This is a contradiction since GOD IS GOOD.

Am I trying to discredit what is written in the scripture with regards to some people being possessed by evil spirits? Not really! What I am trying to convey is that either by our making choices or others making them on our behalf, evil (the evil one) finds a place to inhabit. Now, it will be wrong to state that one who is possedssed by the evil spirit is evil. This is because when the evil spirit is cast out as seen in the scripture, the person becomes "whole" (in essence, who he/she should be). So, the idea of being possessed does not necessarily mean being evil. To say that one who is possessed by evil spirit is evil is to say that one is equal to his/her illness, for instance, to equate one who suffers from diabetes as being the illness itself, or one who suffers from cancer from being the illness itself. In the case of cancer for instance, if the individual recovers from it, we do not say that "he/she is/was cancer," but rather, that he/she suffered from cancer. So, one who was possessed by the evil spirit did not become the evil spirit. Rather, what happens here is that a condition for the habitation of the evil spirit is created thereby excluding the condition for the total habitation of GOOD.

Why do some actions seem quite evil? This is because people make choices based on their convictions, whether these convictions were right or wrong is determined by social, religious, and ethical norms. In some cases, these choices go radically and violently completely contrary to social norms, at least as informed by the Golden Rule and the law of fairness. When people make choices to do the unthinkable, in essence that which we generally see as being very bad and contrary to what any human being should do, we refer to such as evil acts. Why then do they make such choices?

God gave all humans free will. That is why we make choices often based on our experiences, education, understanding of life and reality, and the ideologies to which we subscribe either by choice or by indoctrination. When talking with young people, especially some of them who may have been in trouble with the law, I often see the restrictions placed on them by the of lack of proper education (not necessarily classroom education), lack of proper understanding of the Newtonian explanation of the law of physics "action and reaction are equal and opposite," and the role of the acceptance of the ideology that they are always right (and in some cases, that everyone else is out to get them). In some cases, there is the realization that people would want to help them but the consistent making of the wrong choices create the chasm between them and those who wish to help. The choices that result from such confusion, while they may seem right to the individual, may go contrary to the general understanding and application of what is right by society. Are all these individuals really evil? My definite answer is below.

Society may also create the condition for bad choices which may result in the eventual acts that may be quite evil, so evil that people may identify the perpetrators as being evil. Take for instance the Bosnian war which "started because the Bosnian Croats wanted to live in Croatia, the Bosnian Muslims in a sovereign Bosnia, and the Bosnian Serbs in Serbia..."
(Ivan D. Trifunovich, 6/12/96 quoted in the New York Times online forum: "Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace." http:www.nytimes.com/specials/bosnia/forums/digneie.html). The apartheid in South Africa (apartheid is an afrikaan word meaning "seperateness") which extols what separates races and strives to keep them apart in segregated areas, geographically, socially and economically); and the World War II which originated from Hitler's attempt to establish a pure race. All these started from individuals or a few individuals but eventually had a buy-in from some aspects of society. History now paints the individuals who started these as being evil.

Going back to the question, are all these individuals really evil. As difficult as it may be, the answer is, NO. They were probably people who would like to consider themselves good (depending on their definition of good) but make the wrong choices. I know I will probably get some lashing from this, but I stand by what I said based on the words of Christ, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." I simply belive that the fact that one makes the wrong choice which may result in something evil does not make the individual evil. This may be seen as a matter of semantic by some, but for me, it is a matter of Christian fact. That is why the Christian believes in the reality of forgiveness of sins. One can only look at the life of Saul who eventually became Paul. If his choices made him "evil," his conversion would not delete the evilness. As we all know, he commited all kinds of evil in God's name (gathering the early Christians for punishment, some by stoning as seen in the life of Stephen).

Going back to my original premise, all that God made/created was/is good! Good creatures make stupid mistakes based on their convictions. They are capable of realizing the truth based on civic, religious, and ideological norms accepted by the majority so civilized society. Let me know what you think.