There’s a strange phenomenon that has taken place particularly in the West since the fall of the Third Reich and the ending of World War II, and that is the notion that evil just happens to be more present in some human beings than in others; or that the most evil among us is somehow otherworldly, and we have since evolved as a species. I submit that both of these notions are wrong and dangerous.
I’ve come to call this way of thinking the Demon Seed Theory. It’s the theory that suggests Hitler and the Nazi party just happened to grow up with a deep and profound hatred in their hearts for anyone not Aryan, and they just came to power one day and wreaked havoc until they didn’t anymore. That theory would pan out if we lived in a superhero movie, but things are rarely that cut-and-dry.
I believe many of us, albeit subconsciously, hold this theory because we cannot bring ourselves to even begin to fathom that someone belonging to the same human race that we belong to would be capable of such levels of conniving cruelty. We must bring ourselves to fathom this, however. Because all of us—yes, all of us—have the same propensity for evil. All of us have the same potential for hatred and deceit. There is evil in every single one of us; from Mother Theresa to Adolf Hitler himself. We have not ‘evolved as a people’ from the dark times in history. The only thing that has evolved is our technology.
This truth that “folly is bound up in the heart of a child…” (Proverbs 22:15a) is evident in our day-to-day lives. Children do not always learn to lie to their parents from other children. Many kids learn to lie in the heat of the moment; when they’re standing in front of their mom or dad and the question is asked “what happened?” That child makes a decision to either tell the truth and get in trouble, or lie and try to get out of trouble. How many of you chose the latter as children? How many of you were taught to do that, and how many of you lied instinctively?
Lies about who broke the television set seem like a far cry from committing genocide, but the principle of it is there to illustrate a point, and that is, if we can commit little evils almost by intuition when we feel we need to, how is that impulse different from committing bigger evils if we have also mastered the art of rationalizing those actions as well? The impulse is not different. If we find ourselves alone on pornographic websites, though something in us is telling us we shouldn’t be, and though we may know that many of these sites actually feed the human industry, we are committing an evil. If one or a few bad experiences have caused us to harbor hatred or mistrust in our hearts for an entire group of people, we are committing an evil. If we find ourselves taking more than was owed to us because we knew no one would notice, we are committing an evil.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past few months, and discussing this at length with both my wife and my brother (from another mother), and maybe it’s because we are coming off the heels of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), or that we are in Black History Month now and I’m reflecting more on Black America’s triumphs and tragedies, but I think it’s so crucial moving forward that we let this sit in our hearts. It’s easy to look at Hitler as that evil German guy over there that has nothing to do with us. It’s easy to look at the transatlantic slave traders and the American slave masters thereafter as an evil associated with their white skin color. It’s easy to attribute some other differentiating external trait to someone to make us feel better about ourselves, but the truth is, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
Evil is not German. It is not White American. It is not man or woman. It lies in each and every one of us. It was with this understanding that the the U.S. Constitution was written. The amendments are to safeguard the people against the government, should our government ever turn tyrannical. The first amendment acknowledges our God-given right to free speech, which abolitionist, freed slave, and presidential advisor Frederick Douglass says:
“No right was deemed by the fathers of the Government more sacred than the right of speech. It was in their eyes, as in the eyes of all thoughtful men, the great moral renovator of society and government. Daniel Webster called it a homebred right, a fireside privilege. Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants.”
A Plea For Free Speech
- December 10, 1860
The understanding that evil exists in all men is why the second amendment was also written. As comedian Dave Chapelle says in jest, “just in case the first one doesn’t work out.” At the heart of each of these amendments is the acknowledgement that no matter how great our government may be, government is made of up humans who are deeply flawed like the rest of us. To not have safeguards in place would be a colossal display of arrogance, especially considering the oppressive British monarchy was the impetus for forming a new government in the first place. It was the constitution that freedom fighters like Frederick Douglass, and later Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on as a platform to hold America accountable for their injustices against Black Americans. I cannot even start to imagine what the fight to end slavery would have been like for Douglass if there was no document declaring the equality of man, and the God has given us all inalienable rights. I’m not so sure there would even be a fight.
When we know evil is in us, and more specifically, when we know what our own personal vices are, we have what we need to start putting up our own safeguards. We can begin to look at the world a little bit more humbly, and we can fight for justice a little bit more truly. We have not evolved as a species, but we can take part in our own evolution everyday.