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With every natural disaster, pandemic and war, understanding the nature of evil and our response to it becomes more urgent. Evil is no longer the concern just of clergy and theologians, but also of politicians and the media. The news reports daily on cases of child abuse, discrimination, ethnic cleansing, Covid inequalities, random violence, torture and terrorism. These cases appear to be on the rise and there seems to be a failure of will to address the issues. For too long we have naively believed in the modern idea of irreversible human progress. In contrast, postmodern thinkers have rightly argued that evil is real, powerful and important, but they give no real clue as to what we should do about it.
In fact, evil is more serious than either our culture or our theology has supposed. How then might Jesus’ death be the culmination of the Old Testament solution to evil but on a wider and deeper scale than most imagine? Can we possibly envision a world in which we are delivered from evil? How might we work toward such a future through prayer and justice in the present? These are the powerful and pressing themes that we will explore in our Lenten study.
In fact, evil is more serious than either our culture or our theology has supposed. How then might Jesus’ death be the culmination of the Old Testament solution to evil but on a wider and deeper scale than most imagine? Can we possibly envision a world in which we are delivered from evil? How might we work toward such a future through prayer and justice in the present? These are the powerful and pressing themes that we will explore in our Lenten study.
