Open my mind to discern good and evil

The Spiral of Violence - reflection from Fr Richard Rohr


Good meditation from one of my teachers who gave me the big wake-up call that I needed to be on my walk with Christ. Fr Rohr introduced me to Gil Bailie and Rene Girard in my quest for understanding the violence which lurks in our cultures (our systems as Rohr refers to here), our families and ourselves. Recognizing violence is the first step in the very long struggle to end violence.

If you cannot recognize evil on the level of what I call the world—then the flesh and the devil are the inevitable consequences. They will soon be out of control, and everything is just trying to put out brush fires on already parched fields. The world or “the system” is the most hidden, the most disguised, and the most denied—but foundational—level of evil. It’s the way cultures, groups, institutions, and nations organize themselves to survive. It is not "wrong" to survive, but for some reason group egocentricity is never seen as evil when you have only concentrated on individual egocentricity (“the flesh”). That is how our attention has been diverted from the whole spiral of violence. The “devil” then stands for all of the ways we legitimize, enforce, and justify our group egocentricity (most wars; idolization of wealth, power, and show; tyrannical governments; many penal systems; etc.) while not calling it egocentricity! Once any social system exists it has to maintain and assert itself at all costs. Things we do inside of that system are no longer seen as evil because “everyone is doing it.” That's why North Koreans can march lockstep to a communist tyranny, and why American consumers can “shop till they drop" and make no moral connections whatsoever. You see now why most evil is hidden and denied, and why Jesus said “Father, forgive them, they don't know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).