Responding to Evil in the WorldRead Time 10 min

Social media is all too quick to tell us not just every minute detail of what is wrong with the world but exactly how we ought to respond. We are told that if we don’t immediately roll out a clear and hard-hitting verbal response, we are failing to stand up to evil.

Legend has it that in response to a query from a Times reporter, “What’s wrong with the world?” G.K. Chesterton simply responded, “I am.” Whether or not he wrote it to that particular reporter, he certainly wrote the same sentiment elsewhere. Because of this, anytime that I begin to bemoan everything that is wrong with the world, I have this wonderful, automatic gut check: “What’s wrong with the world?” “I am.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I am personally responsible for the whole weight of brokenness in the world. But all the brokenness in the world is the cyclic spreading outward of the pain and brokenness of individual people. My primary responsibility in responding to evil in the world is facing my own brokenness and going to God for healing. Otherwise, I will perpetuate the problems.

This also doesn’t mean that I will never be called on to deal with brokenness that is not my own. Minimally, I will be called to deal with the brokenness in the people I love in my life — loving them well and offering what support and help I can in their struggles. The destructive results of sin will meet me throughout my life — there is no place on earth I can keep myself completely separate from the reality of sin and hurt and death.

But there is no place of sin or hurt or death that is too dark or distant to be reached and transfigured by God’s mercy. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in a letter, “Evil labors with vast power and perpetual success — in vain — preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to grow in. So, it is in general and so it is in our own lives.” As I face the brokenness of the world — the brokenness of my own heart and the brokenness of those I encounter — it is crucial that I never lose sight of Jesus right there with me, or of the ever-present possibility of his redemption. I have to hold on to hope.

To that end, I’ve had a few stories on my mind lately that I think provide fruitful perspectives and reflections on how I am called to respond to evil in the world. These stories are all over the map in terms of maturity level and style, please be aware that not all of them are suitable for children. This certainly isn’t a homework list, but if one or more of these has been popping up in your life lately, and especially if you are feeling overwhelmed by the brokenness of the world, a story like one of these might be a helpful way to refresh your perspective.

1. “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien is my all-time favorite story and its insights on the virtuous response to evil could fill multiple columns. One striking aspect of the story is that all the grand heroism of the battlefield — as inspiring as it is —­­­ is very clearly only there to support the quiet and daily sacrifice of Frodo, carrying the Ring to Mordor.
2. “Enemy Brothers” by Constance Savery is much less known than “The Lord of the Rings” but is another one of my all-time favorite stories. A somewhat fanciful premise puts a Nazi-raised 12-year-old boy in the home of his long-lost English family during World War II. Unlikely as the circumstances may be, they provide a beautiful (easy to read) story about the power of relationship, not of arguments, in growth and conversion.
3. A similar theme is at the center of “Triumph of the Heart,” a powerful new movie about St. Maximilian Kolbe, set in the two weeks he spent in the starvation bunker, leading up to his death. In the most hopeless of places, he incarnated the love of God to his fellow prisoners and was victorious in the most unlikely and the most important way.
4. “The German Wife” by Kelly Rimmer is not one of my favorite books and can get a bit heavy. But it has stuck with me as an eloquent image of the terrible cost of the opposite of what St. Maximilian Kolbe did. As harrowing as a sacrifice like his is, this story reminds me that the cost of giving into fear and temptation is far higher.
5. “KPop Demon Hunters” is a recently released Netflix movie that has been hitting the zeitgeist hard. The name makes it sound like it could be the worst movie ever made, but instead it is a surprisingly profound reflection on the toxicity of shame and on the idea summed up by Solzhenitsyn that “the line separating good and evil passes right through every human heart.”

At the end of the day, sin and pain and brokenness bring real evil into the world, and sometimes it has to be faced. Sometimes the weight of it becomes so great that the task of defeating it can feel all-consuming. Even so, if my sole aim ever becomes the eradication of some evil instead of the building up of something good, I miss the mark. This is true in the world around me and it is true in my spiritual life. When God calls me to do battle with what is wrong with myself and even sometimes the world, it is always because that is in service of building up positive good and real relationship with him and with the people around me.