Investigation

Hunting for evil is surprisingly elusive. Wherever we venture, the earth around us seems tainted, yet the perpetrators remain invisible to us. This is life’s great ‘whodunit’, an intriguing mystery which both frightens and fascinates us. Being ‘moral’ as such, we assign to ourselves the role of the detective, who will investigate and track down these evil doers, but to our constant disappointment they seem to always be one step ahead. We need to be cleverer and more knowledgeable; our endeavours appear to be successful as we create great works of art and explore the hidden depths of science.

We imagine what the evil-doers are like, for surely, they are ignorant, savage and envious of our works; they are also lawless and lazy, having no structure in their daily lives and squander or ignore the resources around them. Modern profilers view them under the lens of psychiatry, where evil is regarded as a mental condition. We convince ourselves that we do not possess such traits and therefore believe that ‘evil’ is alien to our being. If, however, we are humble enough to examine the crime scene thoroughly, we would see the tale-tell signs: the antipathy to our fellow man, the desire to acquire what clearly does not belong to us, the belief in Man’s intrinsic goodness, the pride in Man’s own works and the insatiable lust for material wealth. Only then to our horror, will we discover our own fingerprints are there, suggesting we have been somehow implicated in the misdemeanours or have deliberately contaminated the scene.

It is true that we can distance ourselves from the great terrors of human history, but our continual acts of petty selfishness and incessant desires make our culpability all the more probable. The unforgiveable sin is the great ‘cover-up’ whereby people blot out their own conscience, describing any feelings of guilt they may have as unwarranted and thwarting their own self-interest. This is the real perversion of justice, where the unrepentant are set free and their wrongdoings go unchallenged. In reality we are all guilty and the desire to claim innocence is counterproductive. Our only chance of survival is through spiritual plea-bargaining, where we admit to all our transgressions, and lay ourselves at God’s mercy, knowing we fully deserve any punishment that may be meted out to us.