THEY ARE MORE THAN PROBLEMS

For some reason Madeleine Albright’s observation that the real axis of evil in this world is poverty, ignorance and disease still haunts me. If these are truly evils, why do we not take them as such? Why do we, yes, acknowledge them to be serious problems but seem reluctant to categorize them as evils, as, in fact, sins? For the truth is, that is what they are: sins. They are problems, to be sure. But until we see them as sins, we will never, ever, get a handle on them.

     For, you see, sin is deliberate. Problems may well be but usually they are not. It is true that we are often our own worst enemy and can cause problems to arise were there were none. We often do. We make mountains out of molehills if not the molehills themselves. Like mountains from molehills, a problem arises from something: too many people, not enough rain, too little money. A little problem can grow into a bigger problem into a problem that is almost beyond, if not out of, our control.

     We always seem to be ready, willing and able to attack what we view as evil, if we perceive it as evil, or if someone can convince us that it is evil. On the other hand, if we are not so convinced, we may very well regulate it to the category of a problem, a serious one to be sure, but a problem. The problem with that is that in this instance, poverty, ignorance and disease are more than problems, even people problems. They are truly evils, sins in fact, which means that they are somehow deliberate.

     But how are they deliberate? Did we as a world deliberately choose to inflict so many people with disease, condemn so many to poverty, refuse to educate billions more? Was that society’s plan? Of course it was not. Poverty, ignorance and disease began as small problems here and there that got out of hand on a global scale and now there are seen as almost unsolvable.

     That said then, how are they sins? How can we call them deliberate? I think they are deliberate in that we deliberately choose to close our eyes, and perhaps even our minds, to the massive reality of these evils. For unless we can bring ourselves both individually and as a world to come to see the real evil in poverty, for instance, as long as it remains only a serious problem, we will not be willing to do what needs to be done to eradicate it from the world.

     How we remove poverty, ignorance and disease I have not the foggiest idea. But that is not my problem. I suspect I should be thankful about that. As a preacher my responsibility is to point to the problem, the evil, the sin, to make sure it does not go unnoticed and unattended. It is up to the politicians, the polis, the people of the city, the rest of us, myself included as a citizen, to find ways to eradicate these evils from this world. The first step in that process is to recognize them as evils, as sins, and not simply problems that have to be addressed in due time.

     Now is the time, Matthew 25 time, all that jazz time.   WJP