“I’m okay, you’re okay.” “What’s true for you isn’t necessarily true for me.” Such epithets Christians hear regularly as they seek to engage non-believing friends with the gospel of Christ. Technically, the term for this type of philosophy (it is a philosophy) is “relativism,” which means that all truth is relative. Negatively speaking, according to the relativist, there are no absolutes. This has its effect on religion as one person’s god is just as good as any other. Such is the case when it comes to how we live our lives as well: so what if Bill Clinton cheated on Hillary? Americans need to stay out of the bedroom, so we’re told. Oddly enough, one victim of this lugubrious relativism is evil. If all truth-claims are relativized, the truth about evil must necessarily be made relative as well. Logically, what is evil for you is not necessarily evil for me. What’s great about this for Christians is that our neighbours likely haven’t thought about things this way and hopefully are horrified when confronted with such a gruesome and morally bankrupt conclusion. Let me illustrate this with a personal example.
In my apartment in downtown Toronto I had the opportunity to share Christ with one of the tenants. He told me that he believed in god, but for him everything is god, indeed even he and I are god. This religious perspective is often called “monism,” the belief that all is one (Note: materialism as well as Hinduism are monistic worldviews). Incredulously I asked him, “You don’t really believe that do you?” To which he was a little nonplussed. I proceeded to demonstrate how such a belief made about as much sense as an illiterate novelist. To make my point clear, I knocked on the wall beside me and asked him, “So, when I knock on this wall, I am, in fact, knocking on god.” Yes. “The dog being walked in the park across the street is, like us, god.” Yes. “If this is the case,” I asked bluntly, “Then what do you do with evil? If all is one, then evil and good are both one.” “Evil is an illusion,” he replied. “Then,” and here’s the kicker, “what was the Nazi Holocaust?” It’s all fine and dandy to bandy about moral relativism, but the second you trot out the Holocaust, most people become silent. The same goes for infanticide, rape, or any other such barbarism one human can inflict on another. I told him plainly, “To utter the word evil is to immediately divest your beliefs of any meaning and assume the belief of the Christian. Only the Christian worldview can make sense out of evil, and only the Christian worldview has an answer to the ‘problem of evil.’” I further inquired if he wanted to come over for a coffee so we could continue to discuss these things; a flat, “no thanks,” was his reply.
This brings us to the recent atrocities committed by the disgraced military commander, the former Colonel Russell Williams. As Canadians are everywhere aware, Williams is the murderous pervert who thought that he could fulfill his vilest sexual fantasies with any woman who caught his fancy. As the images of this muscular, square-jawed soldier were published wearing nothing but women’s lingerie, and as the gruesome details of how he stalked, bound, raped and murdered two vibrant women came to light, one word again resurfaced with a sense of urgency and meaning: “evil.” The investigating officer spoke of evil and depravity. News reports in the papers had headlines with the word depraved in them. Even the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, by and large a champion of relativism, dedicated a Sunday evening broadcast to the subject of evil in relation to Williams’ story. It is worth mentioning that the guests included neither theologian nor philosopher; rather, we were entreated to the musings of a psychologist and a fiction-author.
As with any acts of wickedness perpetrated and reported on such a large scale the discussion of evil invariably comes up—think 9/11. This poses a tremendous opportunity for Christians to converse with friends and neighbours about the Christian gospel relative to evil (our own “relativism” if you will). The bible clearly asserts that absolute evil exists (cf. Matthew 15:19). It also affirms that evil has been soundly defeated on the cross of Christ. When Jesus suffered and died, he took sin and evil on his shoulders in the stead of those whom he died for (2 Corinthians 5:21). He assumed evil onto his body, and though he went to the grave, he was gloriously brought out of that gaping cavern by the Spirit of God. In so doing, Jesus destroyed the final enemy, another name the bible has for evil (1 Corinthians 15:26).
While Christians may not be able to explain the origins of evil, we most definitely can explain evil’s last hurrah. While it goes beyond the scope of our finite, sinful reasoning capacities, evil does indeed exist. The Christian story does not end here, because there is ultimate justice for all things evil, well-defined by another terrifying four-letter word: hell. Thus, the problem of evil is really no problem for the one who has put their faith in Christ. Instead, for the one who hasn’t, evil is not only a philosophical problem, as in the case of my hapless neighbour above, but it is an existential problem. The evil in your neighbour’s own heart will one day be judged by a good God. The message of the Christian gospel is, flee the judgment of God and cling to Christ who was judged in our stead.
