The wicked are estranged from the womb;
These who speak lies go astray from birth. (Psalm 58:3)
Someone asked a question online: “In
light of how we are behaving given COVID-19, are we as humans fundamentally
good or are we fundamentally bad?” It set me
thinking about a book I read years ago, The Great Influenza. It gave a detailed description
of how a virus works and changed my thinking on the subject of evil.
Let’s suppose that in your essential trip to the
grocery store, somehow one particle of the COVID-19 virus makes it way into
your body. Just one. I don’t know the precise multiplication rate of any virus,
but let’s suppose that in the first 12 hours, that one becomes a million, but
you have no symptoms. By the end of the first day, your spouse has 50 viral
particles, your oldest child 40,000, and your youngest child 1, but no one has any
symptoms.[1]
After ten days, you have a cough. Your spouse has a
mild fever. Your oldest child seems fine, but your youngest has to go to the
hospital for a fever and shortness of breath.
Now, here’s the question. At what point did you, or
your family members become sick? Was it when the first viral particle entered
your bodies? When the virus reprogrammed your body to produce more viral
particles? When the viral load reached a certain point but you were still
without symptoms? When your symptoms first developed? When?
Following the same logic, when does a person become
sin-sick (AKA evil)? Is it passed on through the parent’s genetics so that the
child is already sick when he’s born? Is it with her first cry? His first lie,
or the first time she steals a piece of gum from her sister? Or, do we not “catch”
evil until we do something more malicious, like key someone’s car or drunkenly
rape someone who is drunker still? Or, does it take “selling our soul to the
devil” and setting ourselves up to be the master villain from an espionage
thriller, who can’t wait for the opportunity to explain just how his brilliant
plot is going to put the world under his control?
I believe we “catch” evil in the womb, from the day
of conception, that it is a spiritual virus that passes from parents to child
in the DNA. Some folks may be like the oldest child in your hypothetical family.
Everyone else is sick, but he/she seems fine. Some are like the youngest child,
needing to be hospitalized (or imprisoned) because of the damage it’s done.
Most of us have mild symptoms. A lie here, a word of gossip there, a little
hatred mixed with our love in another situation.
Evil may be recognized by its symptoms and their
severity, just as COVID-19 is recognized in its symptoms and severity, but the
lack of symptoms does not mean the lack of illness.
One of the good things about most viruses is that if
one survives it, one’s body stores a playbook by which it can combat the
illness the next time it enters your system. The immunity may be enough that
you never have symptoms again, or it may result in a milder case of the
illness. Sometimes, weakened versions of the virus can be introduced to the
system (vaccination) so that we develop the antibodies. Sometimes, this isn’t
possible. This seems to be the case with evil. Introducing mild evil to our
lives doesn’t prevent evil.
Another means of gaining immunity is through a
transfusion provided by someone with the immunity. For this to happen, the
person providing the transfusion must have been exposed to the ailment but
survived. Our bodies can then reproduce the immunity factor – not always
completely or perfectly, but at least partly. This is what Jesus did on the
cross. He gave His blood, so that we might gain immunity from sin.
What all this means is that the answer to the
question online is that our being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad has
nothing to do with our behavior, whether good or bad. It has to do with a
disease in our souls which may or may not produce symptoms we identify as evil.
When do you get sick? When do you become evil?
[1] By
the way, on average, each person with COVID-19 passes it on to 2.5 people.
People with Ebola pass it on to 2 people. People with HIV/AIDS pass it on to
about 3.5 people. People with measles pass it to 11-18 people.
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