The nature of evil

I need to get some work done this afternoon, so this will be brief. I did not watch the Saddleback conference last night (can't watch McCain right now) but have read about it. I caught this different response on the nature of evil and it caught my eye. If you notice, McCain wants to continue the definition of evil as external enemies. For him, as for Bush, evil is Al Qaeda and suicide bombers. Obama, on the other hand, notes those external evils (though his reference was to Darfur, not the obvious Al Qaeda) but also notes the internal evils, "sadly on the streets of our cities. We see evil in parents who viciously abuse their children."

Exactly right. Bacevich noted this the other night, saying that most Americans define their problems as external, and refuse to face those within us. This strikes me as a huge theological difference as well, and shame on those Christian conservatives who cheer McCain's simplification of evil as Bin Laden or his followers.

But McCain's explanation, much like Bush's entire collection of answers over the years, is simplistic, and therefore greedily accepted by people who don't want to consider the deeper issues. Obama, on the other hand suggests that evil is everywhere, and also in us.

I imagine the Joel Osteen lobotomy club will eat this up. But we will be better off if we can address a more complex world with a more complex understanding. We have just had 8 years of simplistic answers, and we are clearly worse off than we were before.