Shakespeare put into the mouth of Cassius the words:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings”.
John Donne preached: “Honour not the malice of thine enemy so much, as to say thy misery comes from him..” They both agree that it is from the inadequacies of human beings that most evils spring; from the inadequacies of ourselves that most of the evils we suffer arise. Generally it is no good blaming fate, or luck, of God, or the devil. But just occasionally it is. What is the proper response when some monstrous tyrant looms, when perverted law becomes an instrument of injustice, or when criminal conduct cruelly injures an innocent victim?
For me this question is best answered by asking another: what should Britain have done about Nazi Germany? This is because the 1939-45 War was the greatest event in my childhood and youth. Although I was only a schoolboy at the time, I knew after Dunkirk that “the Germans” might be over in a week, and if they ever got ashore, there was nothing to stop them. I assumed, if they did, both my parents would be shot; and what would happen to me a boy of 10 years of age? Doing my best to see my country’s enemies in true proportion, Hitler in my judgement was an evil genius. The proper response to him was what Winston Churchill and his lieutenants in fact did: defy him, and fight for the survival of honour and decency at any price, rather than let the world sink into a new dark age “made more sinister by the light of perverted science”. And if Jesus Christ had come along and preached non-resistance and turning the other cheek, then for me he should have been ignored. Mercifully he did not; and the government of the day was spared the decision whether to lock him up, or worse. So what has Christ to say in time of war? Does he keep silent? Is his gospel only relevant when soldiers have restored a kind of peace? Is his gospel only relevant when Judges have learned again to sentence crime, and can say with justice that crime is no longer out of control? Is his Gospel only relevant for Arcadia and the Garden of Eden?
After five long frustrating years at the Bar, I learned that I too had to defeat evil, in the Law Courts; and not be defeated by evil. It is the same on the individual level, as on the grand scale. So I learned to master the skill of persuading witnesses whom I considered dishonest to tell stupid obvious lies in the witness-box, OF THEIR OWN FREEWILL, which of course destroyed their credibility. I learned it was not enough to have an honest case, because, as Pushkin might have said, the Courts much prefer a witness telling edifying lies to a witness telling irritating truths. I had to be able to submit that wherever truth lay, falsehood lay with the other side. When I could pull it off, it was the key to annihilating victory. Both the War and my professional experience have taught me that one must fight evil tooth and nail, even while one recognises that one may oneself be the vehicle of evil, for a time.
We no longer live in the simple world of Palestine within the Roman Empire in which Jesus lived; and the solutions for his day are not appropriate for ours. Being a practical man, I seek to identify the roots of evil by asking the question, “What should one do about evil?” For me, academic theories about the roots of evil are quite valueless, unless they tell us what one should do in practice.
However marvellous a person Jesus was, I am not prepared to abrogate my own sense of judgement of right and wrong, and of what the will of God is for me. Indeed if one tries to do the will of God, one generally ends up in my experience telling God what one thinks His will is, despite the obvious danger that one is, or may be, indulging in wishful thinking. To do anything else is to copy slavishly the plans of bygone masters, and force them to fit new situations, which is the road to catastrophe: certainly in this world, and I suspect in the next too. Even if the future of the entire world were to rest on the correctness of one’s own judgement, one must still try to use that judgement, and not shelter behind rules of conduct set out 2000 years ago.