Compos Mentis

And Behold, Their Tears Have Become Laughter...

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted. I thought I'd be able to do one a day, but stuff just kept coming up and...well, no excuses. Down to business.
I went to see a movie called Lord of War yesterday with a bunch of other honors program brats, and one of the great things about going with them rather than most college people is that we had a discussion on ethics while walking back. (I seriously think that the majority of my peers got dumber after they went to college, but that of course excludes anyone reading this blog.)
The topic of the conversation was the basic nature of evil. Much of it everyone has heard before, discussing religion and whatnot. But there was one new thing that I noticed, and I'm going to discuss it in terms of religion because I think it will be more interesting that way.
Okay. Point number one: Evil causes suffering. I think everyone understands that, but it is at the core of a major objection against religion and the belief in an omnipotent, all powerful, all good God. I.E., such a god should not allow suffering to happen because he is powerful enough to stop it and good enough to stop it.
But I realized, during our discussion, that there are two distinct phenomena under scrutiny here. Evil, as the cause, is completely separate from the suffering. Let me give an example. In the movie, the main character, a gunrunner, has no regard for the people he harms. He has no compunctions about selling guns to an army within sight of the villagers who are going to be massacred by those guns. But, such an existence drives him away from all that is truly human. He barely feels pain when his family disowns him, when his wife leaves him, when his brother is executed in front of his eyes. Evil men become the ultimate solipsists, alone and afraid of all that they do not control or understand.
In fact, in his case, the little pain he did feel when personal tragedy hit him was probably a good thing. It was, quite possibly, his last chance to realize what he had become and change his ways. It was his last connection to his humanity.
Of course, while suffering may be separate from evil, it is still an awful thing. But the other thing we considered in our discussion (and I must warn you now that it was here that we had the most disagreement) was those who suffer. We will not consider physical suffering (i.e. torture and death) here because as a religious discussion, the premise is that death is not the end, and any physical existence will be minute compared to any eternal one. So, consider emotional pain. While it is horrible, occasionally you find people living in complete depravity, who've lost loved ones, who are truly joyful. It's all too rare, to be sure, but it happens, and it goes to show that suffering is not the end-all worst thing that can happen to a person. (I think I described that two paragraphs up) In fact, I think that suffering can cause two very good things, while remaining (I can't overstate this) a very bad thing. First, it can cause people to realize how stupid they have become, a la the gunrunner in the movie. It's not a bad thing if a drug dealer realizes the error of his ways and turns to honest work if he gets, say, stabbed in a fight. Second, I think pain sometimes creates a sharp relief to joy, making it more meaningful. In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis talks about eternity as retroactively moving everything into place; to those in Hell, they had always chosen Hell; to those in Heaven, they had always been in Heaven. In the end, even the pain is made new to become something good, something strong, something real.
I'm now wondering if you're all completely lost because you haven't seen the movie. Dang it.

posted by Emmett @ 17:29