by The Spectator magazine of 8th February 2020 included an article entitled ‘The concept of Evil is an evasion’. The article was written by regular Spectator contributor Matthew Parris – a genteel, urbane homosexual who, despite his atheism, has written appreciatively of his experiences attending Church of England services. In the piece, Parris reflects on the concept of Evil as a proper noun, voicing thoughts inspired by its use during the week of remembrance marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Parris’s objection to the concept of evil is that it is, in his words, “an evasion, a way of hiding our eyes from what men are or can be, or can do.” He reflected that the application of the word ‘evil’ to certain specific deeds committed as part of the holocaust “would not sharpen my distress as an onlooker. It would relieve it. It would be an explanation, a diabolus ex machina.” Parris concludes his piece by observing that “Without [the concept of evil], the reader [of the Holocaust account] is left to face something much more frightening: that ordinary human beings are capable of these things without extraordinary explanations. Ordinary human beings like ourselves. To me, that is so much scarier than Satan.”
All this demonstrates is that Mr Parris has fundamentally failed to grasp what evil is, and has an unsound conception of the personality and objectives of Satan. His argument is fatally flawed, as he views the belief in supernatural evil to be one and the same as the belief that supernatural evil is irresistible. He writes of reciting the Lord’s Prayer from an early age – “Deliver us from Evil” and says that he “grew up with the idea, powerfully if imprecisely grasped.” Sadly, the impreciseness of his grasp of this fundamental truth has led to it slipping away from him entirely. That request in prayer doesn’t absolve us from responsibility to depart from evil – it simply expresses dependence on God and the acknowledgement of our own frailty.
A true understanding of Evil – the proper noun – has precisely the opposite effect to the one Mr Parris claims it has in closing his article. Evil is not an ‘extraordinary explanation’, and ordinary people – myself included – are capable of it. It is precisely because I am aware of the existence of Satan and Evil – through the grace of God, opening my eyes to it and saving me from it – that I am watchful and armed to resist his activities and its influence breaking out into sin. Sin, however, is a concept which is not admissible in Mr Parris’s view of the world or morality. He cannot see that sin is at the heart of ordinary people doing extraordinarily bad things, and Satan has introduced sin into the world. His atheism and his rejection of God has left his moral reasoning without a proper foundation, hence we see the irrational and illogical conclusions he arrives at. No amount of church-going or observation of the social conscience can replicate in the darkness what can only be produced under the rays of divine light.
Where does Matthew Parris’s flawed reasoning lead us? To a place where seemingly good people commit dreadful acts of… what can we call it? Not evil? Not sin? I doubt we can even call it wickedness. Dreadful acts, shall we say. And there is no explanation for it – it is mystery, a disease for which there is no cure, a moral coronavirus afflicting the globe. What a hopeless situation. Thanks be to God that there is a cure for the disease of sin – a disease which has been met and defeated once and for all at the cross of Jesus.
“The true light was that which, coming into the world, lightens every man… as many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God, to those that believe on his name…” – John 1:9,12