One of the most difficult problems of all of human history is the problem of evil. At its heart, the lessons on judgment and justice are about fighting evil. There is no need of judge and justice if no act has been committed that requires justice to be dispensed. As the lecture of the degree states, “In our intercourse with others there are two kinds of injustice; the first, of those who offer an injury; the second, of those who have it in their power to avert and injury from those whom it is offered; and do it not.” It is this problem of evil that we see not just as a problem that others create, but one that we are personally involved with. Evil is not just something done to me, but also something done by me. None of us has a life in which no evil befalls us as we go about our business; just as none of us has a life in which he does no evil to another. At least, in part, the answer to the problem of evil lies within me. In the words of the poet William Blake, “Oh Rose, thou art sick!” This fact of evil in humanity is the reason that the lesson of this degree goes most against the natural tenancies of human nature. To over come this nature requires extraordinary growth and strength, and in the end, may be impossible.
It is difficult to define evil in any kind of systematic or philosophical way. Evil has a chaos seemingly built into its very nature that often defies definition. Add to this the post-modern moral relativist position that things are only wrong if a society deems them to be wrong, and the concept of evil floats up and dissolves into the ether. The only way to truthfully speak about evil is in existential terms. Evil is grasped by the mind and felt in its immediacy. It is the pain and abuse of sentient beings and the experience of destruction of creation where we experience evil. Its existence needs no further proof than the human experience: I am; therefore I suffer evil.
Dostoevsky described the immediate existential reality of evil in The Brothers Karamazov: “Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They’ve planned a diversion; they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn’t it? … I think that if the Devil doesn’t exist, man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.” The examples of wanton human cruelty and destruction within our own experience are countless. One instance that is shared with all people in North America are the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2007.
In existential experience evil is not an abstraction or a philosophical question, but a real present experience of suffering, pain and destruction done to you, or those you love, friends and neighbors, or even those whom you do not know at all, but whose suffering cries out to you as you watch them on the evening news, leaping to their doom from a top floor of a burning World Trade Center.
The fact that evil is universally present in human experience, in all times, places and experiences, of every mature individual, teaches us that evil is cosmic and pervasive. As Pike says, “If you have wronged another, you may grieve, repent, and resolutely determine against any such any such weakness in the future. You may, so far as it is possible, make reparation. It is well. The injured party may forgive you, according to the meaning of human language; but the deed is done; and all the powers of nature, were they to conspire in your behalf, could not make it undone; the consequences to the body, the consequences to the soul, though no man may perceive them, are there, are written in the annals of the Past, and must reverberate throughout all time.” The past cannot be undone and the consequences of what was done create repercussion that go beyond the initial act itself. This reality goes not just for myself, but for all humanity no only in their individual acts, but in the acts of the society they create, governments they form and the world that they live in.
Finally the effect of evil on the individual creates an immediate and undeniable understanding that evil is an active state that should not be in this reality. It goes contrary to the laws of nature, contrary to human dignity and contrary to the very fabric of being. Evil seeks to undo that which is created. It uses things that are and are generally good, such as tools, nature, or good men, and turns them to destruction. This is not just limited to acts by or against humanity, but to all things that result in unjust destruction of what is good. Evil has penetrated the nature of creation and uses creation to destroy and inflict damage on the rest of creation. Humanity, acting as a moral agent, seeks to restore justice, dignity and trustworthiness to the world that has been affected by evil.
So it is that humanity seeks to judge and dispense justice in a world that teems with injustice. The man that would be judge must fight against what is within his power and nature to do: that which is evil. And so we are brought to the Biblical passage of Mathew 7:1 (NRSV) “Do not judge so that you will not be judged, for with the judgment you make, so too will you be judged, and the measure you give, will be the measure you get.”
The conventional wisdom of our day tells us that this passage warns all people not to judge anything ever. I rather think that this passage is a warning to always remember that you yourself may one day find yourself on the receiving end of judgment, and on that day you should be held to the same standard that you held others to. If you keep this passage in mind, you will not only dispense justice, but also mix that justice with compassion, recognizing the human condition in yourself as well as in the one that will be judged.
It is also an indirect warning that, though the crime may be different, the measure of the lay may be the same. We may personally not have one problem that another is prone to, but we may well have a problem that that same person is not prone to. Remember then that the measure you give is the measure you receive.
One thing that most humans do not do, as a general rule, is imagine themselves in the role or position of another. Even a person interested in justice or mercy may not pause to examine the circumstance that has led another to the place that the other finds himself in life. Learning to put yourself in the place of another with their weaknesses and problems runs contrary to the nature of the human individual. This is truly the heart of the biblical lesson about judgment. If you put yourself in their place, in your own place and in the place of the good of society then the judgment you render will be a truly just judgment and you, in honesty would hope that in the same situation, that you would be judged the same.
The burden of judgment is to grow beyond what you are. Anyone can judge from the perspective of their own self, but can you grow beyond that and into an individual that can truly dispense justice? It is this task of growth that makes the lessons of justice and judgment some of the most difficult for humanity to truly grasp and grow into.
