A pure evil lies behind brute force
JPURE evil stalks the streets of Ukraine. Is it fanciful to believe Russia’s barbaric massacre of innocent civilians is the work of the devil?
The appalling stories told by ashen survivors, the bodies of ordinary townsfolk on the streets, hands tied behind their backs before they were shot in the head, are visions from hell.
The beheaded grandmother in a car; the mass graves revealing the tortured remains of families – there’s no point going on; we’ve all seen them and felt revulsion and horror.
My heart almost stops every time I watch the news. But what is happening here? This kind of demonic cruelty towards the vulnerable old; the slaughter of whole families; the gang rape of countless mothers, even children; this isn’t war as we understand it, which has rules forbidding the murder of civilians and repellent sexual violence.
So what happens in the minds of the young Russian conscripts, who believed at first they were part of a military exercise, not a brutal invasion?
Surely those lads love their mothers as much as the Ukrainian boys they’re fighting adore theirs? Don’t they cherish their grandparents, their wives and sisters?
They must – so what happens to their souls when faced with frightened families who bear no weapons and pose no threat? How is it they turn into animals, as Volodymyr Zelensky described them to the UN Council this week? Can any of us imagine our own sons turning into butchers or rapists? What despicable force is at work here? A fascinating Radio 4 conversation between the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and masterly American horror writer Stephen King discussed the nature of evil. Is it “bred in the bone” as King put it, dwelling inside the individual? Or is it an external force which can take root in a nation or community? Welby and King, one a minister of divinity, one who writes metaphysical stories of horrific fear and dread, both regard evil as a supernatural force. There is no answer, they concluded. The good guy doesn’t always win. God is cruel, God is kind.All we can do is try our best to help – tragically inadequate though that seems.