The Line of Evil is not between "Them" and "Us."

Our polarized and violent political culture has forgotten that the line of evil passes right through every human heart.

Yesterday’s assassination attempt on Donald Trump is a clear indication that many Americans are incapable of having civil political discourse.

Both the Left and the Right have ratcheted up the apocalyptic rhetoric. They both talk as though they alone are righteous and will save us from those on the other side who are utterly wicked and are hell-bent on destroying us.

The Left calls Trump a fascist who will destroy American democracy. The Right calls Biden the ruler of a shadow government that is destroying America.

It is framed as an existential crisis, and drastic measures must be taken. When we believe that we are in a war of good vs. evil, violence is often the result.

Original Sin and Political Discourse

Both the Left and the Right “other” their political opposition, dehumanizing them by calling them “vermin” or “deplorables.”

Both sides have deceived themselves.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us… If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, gives his and others’ first-hand accounts of the horrors of the Gulag slave camps of the Soviet regime.

It would have been easy for him to see “those people” as evil while “we” are righteous.

But that was not his conclusion.

Instead, he had a deep understanding of human depravity:

It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good…

In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good.

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.

Where do we go from here?

I think that this event will only further our propensity to draw stark lines of good and evil between “us” and “them.”

This is reflected in Donald Trump’s own statement via social media last night:

"Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness,"

I am not confident that my fellow evangelicals will remember our own doctrine of human sin and the depravity that affects every aspect of what we think, feel, and do. We have bought the lie that we are righteous while the opposition is wicked.

But Alvin Plantinga explains this important doctrine that we must remember:

“Original sin involves both intellect and will; it is both cognitive and affective.

On the one hand, it carries with it a sort of blindness, a sort of imperceptiveness, dullness, stupidity…

…But sin is also and perhaps primarily an affective disorder or malfunction. Our affections are skewed, directed to the wrong objects; we love and hate the wrong things. Instead of seeking first the kingdom of God, I am inclined to seek first my own personal glorification and aggrandizement, bending all my efforts toward making myself look good. Instead of loving God above all and my neighbor as myself, I am inclined to love myself above all and, indeed, to hate God and my neighbor.

Much of this hatred and hostility springs from pride, that aboriginal sin, and from consequent attempts at self-aggrandizement. We think of getting the world’s good things as a zero-sum game: any bit of it you have is a bit I can’t have—and want…

I can thus come to resent and hate you.”

Let us not succumb to hate.