Deliver Us From Evil

So this morning on tv there was a lot of talk about Armageddon and the end of the world, this being 6/6/06 and all. First time since 1906 that we have had that date. Although, really, the world didn’t end in 1906, why would it end today? It didn’t end in 1806 either, or in 1706 for that matter. But still, everyone is oohing and aahing over the fact that “the sign of the devil” is today’s date.

“The Omen” opened last night at midnight, too. Good gimmick for a remake about a kid with “666” scarred into his scalp. Gotta wonder if they planned it that way: (circa 2000) “Let’s make a remake of ‘The Omen!’” “Cool, dude! But let’s wait a few years so we can release it on 6/6/06!!” “AWESOME!!”

I remember the original Omen. Freaked the hell out of me. My friends and I took turns inspecting each others’ scalps looking for the telltale triple sixes – thankfully finding nothing. But man, that kid was a piece of work. Pure evil. Or so they wanted you to believe.

Which is what I started wondering about while watching all this hullabaloo (wow – never thought I’d ever get to use that word in a sentence!). What exactly is evil? I mean, being raised a good Catholic girl I know that the Church teaches that there is good, and there is evil. God is good, the devil is evil. Duh. But is it really that simple? That cut-and dried? I mean, even though I have lapsed as far as organized religion, I still believe in God. But I am not sure about the whole Satan thing. (Well, sure, I believe in my boss, since I see him every day at work, but I mean his namesake, the guy who supposedly resides in the bowels of HELL.) Is there really some kind of supernatural being who hangs out whispering in people’s ears, trying to get them to do horrible things, causing natural disasters and car crashes and animal attacks and so on? I don’t think so. But that’s only my opinion.

Actually, not only do I not believe in the devil, I also do not believe in Hell. I can’t see believing in a loving, forgiving God (which I do) and then also believing that my God would allow one of His children to spend eternity in a place as horrible as Hell. Do I think that people like Gacy, Dahmer, and Hitler are floating around in Heaven? Nope. I think that they just are gone. Poof. Nowhere. But I also don’t believe that they are “burning in Hell,” as much as some people would like to believe that.

I think evil is a very difficult thing to grasp. When I was little, I thought that some of my teachers were evil. I thought that monsters were evil. I thought that spiders were evil. I knew the devil was evil – and as a child I definitely believed in him. You had to – the nuns drilled it into your head on a daily basis. “The devil made me do it” was not something you would say to a nun – even in jest – because they took that shit seriously. As I got older, I redefined evil. Child molesters were evil. Murderers were evil. The guy who dumped me for no reason was evil. My daughter’s so-called “friend” is evil. But nowadays, I obviously use the term “evil” a little more loosely.

Every night on the news, there are stories about shootings and hit and runs and murders and kidnappings… are all the perpetrators of these crimes evil? All of them? Are people who are mentally challenged evil if they do something horrific yet don’t understand what they’ve done? Is a pit bull evil if it is trained as a fighting dog and then mauls a small child? Is a person evil if they have a chemical substance problem and inject a friend with a lethal dose of a drug? Or if they get behind the wheel of a car and kill a family on a Sunday outing?

People always have choices – or do they? Does someone with schizophrenia always choose their actions? Does someone with an addiction always choose their actions? Does someone brainwashed with radical religious or cultural beliefs always choose their actions? Some may say yes, I’m not so sure. Not that I don’t believe people should never be accountable for their actions, obviously they should, but are they evil because of these actions?

In my life, there are many things I have done that I am not proud of. Many things, for sure, I am even ashamed of. Illegal things, immoral things, things that have hurt other people, both physically and mentally. Some of these things were done inadvertently, most of them done deliberately. Does that make me evil? Because I did bad things knowingly and (at the time) without remorse? Or am I given a reprieve because I now have remorse for my actions and I have built a better life, one that I am now proud of? Do people stop being evil if they change their ways? If Gacy had said “sorry” and started doing his clown shtick again and raised money for various charities, would he be less evil?

Wow. I am starting to give myself a headache. So I think it’s time to wrap up this post. But if perchance the world does end today, on 6/6/06, I hope I wind up in Heaven. And I hope to see you all there!