From Chapter 2: Evil Or Error?
Rather than wasting time in dissecting psychology of people like Abraham, Saul, St. Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Stalin, Hitler, or Osama bin Laden and proving them "evil," we are better off just accepting them at their word. They acted with assurance of following God's will, or worked to advance some other high Truth. The problem is, of course, that their good intentions turned to proverbial flagstones that pave the road to Hell; yet, explanations for this paradox advanced so far are hardly satisfactory. To call those who cause suffering "evil ones" is the easiest thing in the world to do, but such "explanation" simply dismisses the problem rather than help us understand what is going on. "Evil" describes something that is outside of our control and is beyond our understanding. By calling something "evil" we acknowledge that more is going on than human reasoning can explain, and, for all practical purposes, wash our hands of the problem. We give up fighting the adversary with corrective ideas and turn instead to physically wiping the enemy out with missiles and bombs.
Though military response is often an unfortunate necessity, we should not so quickly give up on understanding what is going on in the enemy's mind.
Here is why: one does not need to be "evil" in order to cause terrible suffering to innocent people. Results of an honest mistake in assumptions that underpin a perfectly good and worthy endeavor can be exactly identical to disasters caused by genuine evildoers. It is impossible to tell from results alone whether they were caused by evil, or by error.
In 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded during the launch, and all astronauts were killed. Was NASA "evil"? Such was not the conclusion of the committee that investigated the disaster. It turned out that the launch occurred during freezing temperatures, and the rubber became brittle and caused fuel to leak, resulting in an inferno. Not "evil" at work, but human error. That same year, Soviet nuclear scientists staged a bit of a scientific experiment using one of the reactors at the Chernobyl power plant. It resulted in the worst ecological disaster in human history. And again, it turned out that Soviet nuclear scientists were not "evil;" they did not conspire to produce such a horrific event. They simply made a wrong assumption.
Perhaps something similar is causing religious violence, too. If such is the case, Osama bin Laden and his ilk are sincere, well-meaning people who cause misery because their underpinning assumptions are wrong.
This is something we can deal with. While it is beyond our powers to understand evil, we should be up to the task of uncovering a mere human error.
Actions of the pure in heart and poor in spirit can be described by a very simple formula: Zeal in pursuit of Truth brings Disaster. Two parts of this equation are not variables. Sincerity of zeal is irrelevant. The disaster it brings is obvious - it has manifested itself through terrible bloodshed on way too many occasions. The only variable left unexamined is the Truth.
Let us presently turn to this stumbling block of the pure in heart.
