Spending Time With Evil

I can't say that I recommend it, but I found it profitable to spend a day with evil.

It's not something I sought out, or lingered over with anyinappropriate interest.  Some are interested in the kind of lust, greed, prurience, and downright meanness I saw.  I'm not.  I didn't volunteer, I was summoned.  You can draw your conclusions from that.

 

Though an experience like mine is depressing, disturbing, pity-inducing, and at times even revolting there are redeeming qualities about it.

 

I spent several hours with the human condition in its most awful state of corruption.  Some who serve us have to wade that cesspool on a daily basis.  Officers of our courts, social workers, police officers, jailers, and, I'm sad to say, many involved in our school systems deal daily with the dregs of society and those who are drug through the mire by them.  The innocent are scarred,by the guilty, who go about their wicked business with scarred consciences. The Bible speaks of those who enforce the law as "ministers of God."  After a brief excursion into their world my appreciation for what  they do is greater.

 

Literature, music, TV, and movies often glamorize evil.  The bad guys are frequently painted as beautiful, glamorous, to be envied, sometimes even noble.  What I saw was pitiful, ugly, repulsive, and markedly stupid.  The adage of an old preacher, whose name I have forgotten was born out by the sorry parade I saw:  "Sin makes you stupid."  These were folk driven by lust, blinded by evil, and made senseless by continuing lives that make no sense.

 

Too often we see laws as entities which limit freedom.  The result of the lawlessness that I saw is the complete loss of liberty. And I'm not speaking of concrete wall, tempered glass, or iron bars.  Many of these folk were so bound by fetters of their own making, that incarceration in society's jails will provide a measure of liberation for some of them.

Theologians speak of human depravity, or the totally depraved condition of people.  People who come from quite ordinary circumstances are capable of great evil.
We are fond of saying that there is a spark of greatness in every child.  If one goes God's way, I think that is so.  The evidence I saw is that the seed of evil is in each heart.  It's fruit is frightening to behold (see here).

 

It's STTA.