Evil

A friend recently posted a quote from Karen Marie Moning that really made an impact on me…particularly the last line. “…evil is a completely different creature. Evil is bad that believes it’s good.” After horrific hate crimes occur, we tend to spend a lot of time asking how someone could bring themselves to do such things. What motivates someone to decide that people need to be destroyed, and to take personal responsibility for destroying them? For most of us, it’s impossible to imagine. There are probably hundreds of misguided motivations and corrupted ideologies that ultimately play into it, but it had to start somewhere. This young man who has brought so much pain and suffering and death to bear, didn’t start out life with those intentions. He started out life just like the rest of us…helpless, dependent, precious, full of potential and vitality, infused with the essence of the universe. How did it come to this? The truth is that none of us gets out of life alive. It’s only a question of when living will eventually kill us. We hope to stick around as long as possible, but whether it’s at the hands of the mundane passage of time, or someone bent on destruction, we will all eventually die. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve shed tears for the terror and senseless loss of life that occurred at Club Q, but I am continually haunted most by what convinces a man that something so horrible is something worth doing. There is a glaring issue of division and separation in our society. It’s nothing new, but at this point we must not continue to ignore the epidemic of isolation, hate, and careless fear-based indoctrination. Why? Because it transforms into the killing of the most vulnerable members of our human family. What we say and what we do has future consequences that are impossible to imagine. TODAY, be an influence for love, for reconciliation, and for justice and peace. It is entirely possible that you can be partially responsible for changing the trajectory of someone’s life for the better. Club Q didn’t have to happen. None of the over 600 mass shootings that occurred this year alone had to happen. What are we doing TODAY to heal hearts being swallowed by evil and headed for murder? “We must all help one another or all perish together.” —Carl Sagan.