Evil and good
Choose heaven. Taking the long view on Election Eve.
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.
We … will be remembered in spite of ourselves.—Abraham Lincoln
Dear Reader: I wrote the essay below when I first began this Substack, in June 2022, but because I had migrated my first posts from another platform, the post below and some others never actually got mailed out, so few eyes have seen it. It is actually based on something I wrote nearly two years earlier, in late September 2020. Ruth Bader Ginsburg had just died, we were in the final throes of another historic election, and we were still awaiting a COVID vaccine. The outlook was bleak.
This morning I read the latest post from “Letters from an American” by the historian Heather Cox Richardson. Richardson gives tomorrow’s election an historical perspective as if to say: We’ve been here before. It’s a message of hope as well as celebration of those of us who choose good over evil. I was struck by two things in Richardson’s letter. First, the above quote by Lincoln, which she included at the end, which neatly summarizes what I wrote below; and second, the parallels between what Richardson wrote yesterday and the sermon I preached yesterday, “Remembering What Matters,” which you can grab here. I offer both sermon and dusted-off post not to say, hey, I was onto something — but to add weight to the idea that in the short term, we will make it through as we always have, and in the long term, we will someday arrive at the place we were swimming toward.
Breathe.—RPK
Performing magic may seem trivial against today's constant pummeling of our hearts and minds. How do making a coin vanish or having all the aces magically jump out of the deck even stand a chance against all the evil in the world? What good are these little acts of love when those perpetrating evil continue to unleash cruelty and spout lies before the world with impunity? (I'm thinking of a current Russian president and a former American one in particular.)
I guess this gets at the heart of the difference between evil and good: the former is temporary, the latter everlasting. In its clever questioning of all that we think is true or impossible, magic is simply a reminder that the mystery of life is a permanent reality, that it is our birthright and it is good. Followers of mystery take a gentler approach to life, seeking truth but never claiming it at the expense of someone else the way evil so often does. On the other hand, those who perpetrate evil for a temporary and relatively brief claim on wealth, power, fame or territory never truly get away with anything, not against the eternal grand scheme of mystery.
And for one simple reason: We don’t live past our transgressions; they survive us. History records. Wrongdoing will be remembered for what it was, just as justice born out of universal love will be remembered for what it was and continues to be. For love lasts. Hate is looked back upon and renounced, but love is looked forward to and inspires. (Kind of like seeing a magic trick.)
Think of how often we recall stories of lovingkindness, of justice, and we tell them over and over to one another. This is what is meant by resurrection. Love rises, again and again, for it is truly what we are. Hate, on the other hand, must innovate and shout to be noticed because it runs counter to our human nature. Think of how increasingly sophisticated our war machines have become. Of how handguns have graduated to assault-grade weaponry. Of how the plotting of an insurrection and its follow-on conspiracy theories have been revealed to be so complex they have made the Watergate burglars look like The Little Rascals. (Although the He-Man Woman Haters Club still holds Supreme, apparently.) Hate goes to all this trouble because it is everything we are not. It is not human. And because it is so jarring to our divine call to love, so otherworldly, hate often seems louder than it already is.
It’s up to each of us to carry ourselves in this life so that those who live past us and all who come after can look at the record and know we were good, and how we, despite our human frailties, tried to be better. In this way we rise and rise again. Meanwhile, evil lies buried in the historical ground, seen for what it was, and the people who perpetrated it recalled for what they did. They turned their backs on love to face an empty void they then tried to fill, and those who follow in their ways likewise live dead lives. Among them, only those who own their wrongdoing and make amends—for there can be no forgiveness without restitution—they will be remembered among the host of the resurrected, and they will be welcomed there by joining the memory of those who chose good.
Make no mistake—we all come from love and return to that great mystery, and it is there that we all dwell eternally. But it is still a mystery. The difference is that those who lived in love, and anticipated their return to it, live in the part of human memory we call heaven, while those who denied love live in the part of human memory we call hell. Heaven and hell don’t really exist. But if you must choose a place that doesn’t exist where nevertheless people will put you, where the memory of you will live, choose heaven.