The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Jesus’ Diagnosis on the Source of Evil:  Mt.15:18 – 19

^15:18 But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. ¹⁹ For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders.

A question that people discuss in the academic field of International Relations is, ‘What is the origin of war?’  One of the options is Classical Realism.  Classical Realism says that war originates from something evil in humanity.  But in many conversations, Classical Realism is not given much serious consideration.  Other theories are offered and explored with much more depth:  a few mad dictators, bad power structures and policies, natural disasters, and other circumstances.  While I think it is very important to pay attention to those factors, I believe that people would rather think of war – or other evils – as the result of things external to human beings.  Why?  It seems easier to reduce war down to something we could plan against, at least in theory, because if humanity itself were the problem, then what is the solution?  What tradition claims to be able to transform humanity itself? 

William Golding’s 1954 classic, The Lord of the Flies, tells a story about evil rising out of the human heart.  A group of young British schoolboys survive a shipwreck and get stranded on a jungle island.  An older boy named Ralph becomes their leader.  They find a conch shell on the beach, and it becomes Ralph’s symbol of authority and a prized possession.  At first, everything is fine.  The boys build a fire as a signal to anyone searching for them.   They try to keep the fire going, but some of them want to just hunt on the island, as if they could settle there forever.  Another older boy named Jack challenges Ralph.  He is the best hunter; so then comes a mutiny: Jack leads some of the boys away to just hunt.  Jack wins over almost all the boys and sets up another tribe where he is the chief.  Then, as they get caught up in emotion, surround and kill one of their own, a boy named Simon.  It was an accident; it was nighttime; there was thunder, so they couldn’t hear Simon’s cries.  But the next victim is a chubby boy named Piggy.  Piggy confronted the savage hunter boys:  “Which is better -- to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill…Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?”  Then another boy named Roger dislodges a huge rock from up a hill, which strikes Piggy and knocks him off a cliff.  From that point on, lone Ralph becomes the hunted prey in a life and death struggle.  Roger takes a stick and sharpens it at both ends, intending to put Ralph’s head on it.  But British sailors from a battle cruiser appear just in time to rescue all the boys from the island, and themselves. 

That story raises some puzzling questions.  What went wrong with the boys in the book?  Why did they become violent and deliberately evil?  And what about the evil in the real world, the world beyond the island?  What does this story tell us about ourselves?  Who will rescue the adult?  Americans asked that question on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, when two teenage boys, high school juniors at Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado, opened fire on their schoolmates and threw pipe bombs.  Many made the parallel that at the time, the U.S. was bombing Kosovo, Yugoslavia.  Who will rescue the adult?

In the middle of his book, Golding shares his view with us.  A rotting pig’s head, impaled on a spear, buzzing with flies, speaks to Simon in a hallucination.  The ‘lord of the flies’ says:  ‘There isn’t anyone to help you.  Only me.  And I’m the Beast…Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!...You knew, didn’t you?  I’m part of you?  Close, close, close!  I’m the reason why it’s no go.  Why things are what they are?’ (p.130 – 131, emphasis mine)  In other words, Golding sees no hope for the adult world because the problem is inside them, too.  It’s not a surprise that Golding wrote his book after World War II, because that was the most devastating war in human history, and human beings couldn’t blame religion like they had done before; religion had precious little to do with World War II, or any of the wars of the 20^th century for that matter.  So humanity’s true colors came shining through, and it was not impressive. 

I believe that the uniquely Christian contribution to discussions about ‘evil’ is to maintain that humanity is the source of much of the evil in the world.  It’s not that at every moment, human beings are as bad as we could be.  But at every moment, human beings are not as good as we should be.  Human beings are not thoroughly evil.  There remains in us the image of God, however tarnished.  Yet human beings are certainly partly evil; the problem is ontological, concerning our very being.  It’s not simply educational, as if we just needed to educate people in the correct way.  It’s not simply moral, ethical, or legal, as if we just needed to deduce and communicate what to do.  Jesus said the problem is ontological.  It is in our hearts, at the very center of our will.

That is a challenging thought to many, because there is no philosophy or viable political theory that even claims to deal with humanity ontologically, in our very being.  Only Jesus claimed to heal and transform humanity itself.  First by healing and transforming the humanity he himself took on.  Then by sharing the Spirit of his new humanity with anyone who comes to him by faith.  There and only there is a remedy possible for our humanity, for all humanity.  Let us have courage and insight as we engage the world.  Where do you have opportunities to talk about this?