The Banality of Evil

In Macbeth, Shakespeare uses his considerable genius to express the abhorrent beauty of absolute evil... It's true that lady Macbeth and Macbeth are never more alive than when they contemplate killing the king.  They thrill with vitality and excitement.   But as soon as they commit the act, they're oppressed with the banality of evil.  And I'm not just talking about guilt.  To be sure they are both tormented by guilt.   But even more afflicting that Macbeth's guilt is his ennui.  His awesome will to power, magnificently manifested in Duncan's murder, gives way to an all-consuming listlessness.

He'll murder many more times, but each time it becomes more mechanical, more tiresome, more wearisome.  What really wears on Macbeth is the tedium of evil.   In his wickedness he cannot find contentment or joy or even desire.  There's nothing but this: tomorrow tomorrow and tomorrow creeping at its petty pace to the last syllable of recorded time.  And perhaps this is the ultimate truth of the tragedy.  When decency and goodwill give way to wickedness and evil, life loses its meaning.  It can be no more than a tiresome monotony.  A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.

Professor Kent Lehnhof

What Punishments of God are not Gifts?

This from a GQ interview.  Stephen Colbert describes the plane crash that suddenly killed his father and brother when he was 10 years old.

 “ ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ ” he said. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that’s why. Maybe, I don’t know. That might be why you don’t see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It’s that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”…

I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien’s mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”

He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I’m grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.’ I felt so guilty to be grateful. But I knew it was true.”

Modern English Translations by Word Count

Prayer to End Abortion on the 44th Anniversary of Roe v Wade

  Heavenly Father, rise up to protect every unborn child in our land.  We pray to you for them with confidence 
and firm trust knowing that it is your Holy Will to remove the scourge of abortion from off the face of Your 
earth. Thank you that, on this, the 44th anniversary of our Supreme Court’s infamous decision about these 
things, You have helped Your people and given many victories in defense of unborn life since then.  Continue 
these victories by Your mercy.  Change the minds and melt the hearts of all who promote this evil, or who 
seek abortion as a remedy for the troubles of their lives, which troubles are – for many – very great. Make 
us – in our lives – a testimony of sexual purity; those who cherish human life, love and help our neighbors,
 guard and adopt the fatherless and unwanted, honor Your holy image wherever it is found in mankind, and 
willingly sacrifice of ourselves, our comforts and possessions, so that we might truly be your servants and in practical ways, bring about Your Kingdom and Your righteousness. Heavenly Father, we ask you this in the 
name of Jesus, Your Son.  
Amen.

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