I have been thinking about this rampant problem that people cannot (or, at least, do not) discern evil; in particular that they impute good motivations even when evil is intended.
I suppose most people would not regard this as a Bad Thing, and
indeed might regard it as a sign of a Good Person that they assume other people
are also Good...
I find, however, that I can't believe it. I find that Good and evil
are mostly about taking sides: the side of God and creation, or the
side against them. So, a failure to discern evil is often - perhaps
usually - in practice a matter of allying oneself with the side of evil, and
against God.
This would mean that a
failure to discern evil - when one is in a position to do so - may be an act of
self-damnation.
But the consequences may compound the sin. This comes out in all
sorts of ways. For example, people will often try to explain-away and excuse
evil acts by saying they are actually well-motivated, or actually Doing Good.
This they term 'giving the benefit of the doubt'.
In particular, actual evil things happening in our own personal
experience and to people that we love, are instead assigned to be motivated by
remote, abstract, ideological Good, which we know only secondhand and from
habitually- and systematically-dishonest sources such as government, the media
and indeed large institutions of any kind.
Yet God will surely make it possible for us to know evil when it
impacts upon us personally? And also know this from our own personal direct
experience, common sense and capacity for reason (rather than needing to be
told it by 'experts'?
(Unlike those old-style communists who went to party meetings to
be told who to support, and why (nowadays this job is done by the mass media).
I think of those who were fanatical anti-Nazi until 23 August 1939 when they
discovered that Stalin had made a pact with Hitler. Presumably they then
trooped obediently CP HQ to have it explained that - today -
cooperation with fascists was Good...)
At the bottom line, I
suspect that the discernment of evil is maybe the most important thing to do
about evil; much more important than (supposedly) 'fighting' evil. We
absolutely need to identify, and correctly, what and who is on the side of
evil: who are evil-allied. And these evil-allied may well turn-out to be
almost-everything, and almost-everybody - we should be prepared for that
possibility.
If I am right, this widespread
and determined self-blinding to evil, the refusal to identify and
acknowledge evil; may be one of the most prevalent and significant of our
many modern sins.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2020/09/failure-of-discernment-of-evil-is-it.html