The Moment We Fall
I've been thinking about the Fall. No, not as in autumn leaves, but the Fall of Humanity. Which led me to start thinking about the categorical question: what is the nature of evil? And then it struck me how little I think about it. How that for me the problem of evil has largely slipped out of my consciousness except as it relates to physical evil - sickness, suffering as a result of natural disaster, etc. But in looking at the history of art and thinking about how the nature of evil has been portrayed in art through the centuries, I've been struck at how seriously evil was once viewed.
To think about calling a thing - a behavior - evil is enough to strike terror into the hearts of the postmodern person. Accusations of evil abound these days, fundamentalists accusing liberals, liberals accusing fundamentalists, but somewhere in the guts of all of us, the whole idea of whether or not there really is an Evil that might be identified and rooted out so that humanity would absolutely be better off if it were eradicated...well, that notion hasn't got much traction in our world. I fear the discussion of the nature of evil tends more toward whatever gets in the way of power, for there is nothing - read no person - outside humanity to reveal what the metaphysical nature of Evil might finally be. And if we can''t know, then we must fight it out as best we can.
Such is the world without God.
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Here's an interesting exercise. In asking a few of my friends about picking a movie moment which symbolizes the fall of Adam and Eve, most hover around moments of deep violence, choices in which evil is embraced, evil that is understood and executed.
But it seems to me that the Fall is more subtle, more about small disobedience leading to loss of innocence, and the tragic gaining of knowledge, the opening of the eyes for the first time as to what evil is. The Fall was an innocuous little moment, the small bite of a piece of fruit. How could such a thing hurt anyone? There is flavor, and beauty in it, and a bit of wisdom to be gained as well. The fact that I have now lost touch with the very heart of existence, the very source of all that is good and true and beautiful will not dawn on the fallen for some time. Something is changed, for sure (where's my fig leaf?), but the full nature of destruction is some ways off.
It is telling that when we think evil, we have to think mass murder, genocide, and whatever horror lies outside the bounds of what we think is normal. In our willingness to spend enormous amounts of time reminding our selves of the small goods in life, do we miss the fact that each small "bad" is a marker as well? Perhaps in thought-life, we don't want to dwell on the negative...fair enough. But if we dismiss the notion of evil in the human heart, aren't we cutting off the full nature of God's world in half?
So, let me rephrase my question for my friends...what I need is a movie moment in which innocence is lost as a result of a willful choice that one did not intend to be evil, but one in which they were cognizant they were moving against the benevolent authority figure (is that an oxymoron?) in their life.
Have you got one? If you do, let me know...
8:33:27 AM
