TUESDAY
CHALLENGE: Fear no evil…. perfect love casts out all fear.
Psalm 23:4
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
What is Evil? How does one know it when they see it? When does a car or a gun take the step from being a simple mechanical device to something that can be part of a murder? How do we come to understand the devastation and loss of life caused by a hurricane and how is that different from the events that led to the death and destruction the world witnessed on 9-11?
It seems clear that there is a difference between a hurricane and an act of terrorism. Although both are evil, one is moral evil and one is natural evil. “Moral evil is evil brought about by human choices and actions; any other kind of evil is what we call natural evil.”
A murder would be considered a moral evil because one person chose to kill another. However, if a person dies in a hurricane, that would be a natural evil because it did not result from the choice and action of a human. A major difference between these two categories is a matter of intent. If a human chooses to take action that will result in the death of another human, that person has intended to do something that they ought not to do.
John Stuart Mill writes: “In sober truth, nearly all the things men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another are nature’s everyday performance. Killing, the most criminal act recognized by human laws, nature does once to every being that lives, and in a large proportion of cases after protracted tortures such as only the greatest monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living fellow creatures.”
CHALLENGE: Fear no evil…. perfect love casts out all fear.
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