Reporting on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust, the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) used the phrase “the banality of evil.” It is a shocking phrase to many because it flies in the face of our idea that evil is demonic, monstrous, and villainous, something that everybody immediately recognizes as grotesque and terrible. Arendt’s phrase actually helps explain how the Holocaust or Shoah (catastrophe) could happen. Somehow evil became commonplace. In his introduction to Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Israeli journalist Amos Elon writes: [Arendt] concluded that Eichmann’s inability to speak coherently in court was connected with his incapacity to think, or to think from another person’s point of view. . . . He personified neither hatred or madness nor an insatiable thirst for blood, but something far worse, the faceless nature of Nazi evil itself . . . aimed at dismantling the human personality of its victims. The Nazis had succeeded in turning the legal order on its head, making the wrong and the malevolent the foundation of a new “righteousness.” In the Third Reich evil lost its distinctive characteristic by which most people had until then recognized it. The Nazis redefined it as a civil norm. . . . Within this upside-down world Eichmann . . . seemed not to have been aware of having done evil. [1] As both Thomas Aquinas and C.S. Lewis taught, for evil to succeed, it must disguise itself as good, which is apparently much easier to do than we imagine. [2] What previous generations called “the devil” is still quite active, though disguised in the banality of evil. The devil isn’t going to appear in red with horns and a tail and entice us to follow him. When Paul talks about the devil, he uses words like “powers,” “principalities,” and “thrones” (see Colossians 1:16). These are almost certainly his premodern words for what we would now call corporations, institutions, nation-states, ideologies of supremacy, and organizations that demand our full allegiance and thus become idolatrous—not just “too big to fail,” but even too big to be criticized. Suddenly, the medieval notion of devils comes very close to home. We must first convict evil in its glorified organizational form. When we idolize and refuse to hold such collective realities accountable, they usually become demonic in some way. We normally cannot see it until it is too late. [3] Hannah Arendt wrote, “The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.” [4] While evil may reside primarily in “corporate” form, the resistance to it begins with us as individuals. The rest of this week is dedicated to the stories and wisdom of individuals who made a clear decision to confront evil and hatred with goodness and love, even at the risk of their own lives. Week Twenty: Choosing Love in a Time of Evil How Do We “Save” the World? The Divine Mind transforms all human suffering by identifying completely with the human predicament and standing in full solidarity with it from beginning to end. This is the real meaning of the crucifixion. The cross is not just a singular event. It’s a statement from God that reality has a cruciform pattern. Jesus was killed in a collision of cross-purposes, conflicting interests, and half-truths, caught between the demands of an empire and the religious establishment of his day. The cross was the price Jesus paid for living in a “mixed” world, which is both human and divine, simultaneously broken and utterly whole. In so doing, Jesus demonstrated that Reality is not meaningless and absurd, even if it isn’t always perfectly logical or consistent. Reality is filled with contradictions, what St. Bonaventure and others (such as Alan of Lille and Nicholas of Cusa) called the “coincidence of opposites.” Jesus the Christ, in his crucifixion and resurrection, “recapitulated all things in himself, everything in heaven and everything on earth” (Ephesians 1:10). This one verse is the summary of Franciscan Christology. Jesus agreed to carry the mystery of universal suffering. He allowed it to change him (resurrection) and—it is to be hoped—us, too. Christ frees us from the endless cycle of projecting our pain elsewhere or remaining trapped inside of it. This is the fully resurrected life, the only way to be happy, free, loving, and therefore “saved.” In effect, Jesus was saying, “If I can trust it, you can too.” We are indeed saved by the cross—more than we realize. The people who hold the contradictions and resolve them in themselves are the saviors of the world. They are the only real agents of transformation, reconciliation, and newness. These “saviors” exist in every period of time and in every faith tradition. At times they exist even with no “faith” at all, beyond a consciously held belief that solidarity with all of life is, in fact, the meaning of life. For whatever reason, such people agree to share the fate of God for the life of the world now. These people feel called and agree to not hide from the shadow side of things or the rejected group, but in fact draw close to the pain of the world and allow it to radically change their perspective. They agree to embrace the imperfection and even the injustices of our world, allowing these situations to change them from the inside out, which is the only way things are changed anyway. The Gospel is simply the wisdom of those who agree to carry their part of the infinite suffering of God. It must be recognized that many non-Christians fully accept this vocation with greater freedom than many Christians. This week, we will be focusing on people, both Jewish and Christian, who chose to act out of solidarity and compassion during the genocidal evil of the Holocaust, what many Jewish people refer to as the “Shoah” or “catastrophe.” ____________________________________________________________ Young, Sarah. Jesus Calling Morning AS YOU SIT QUIETLY in My Presence, remember that I am a God of abundance. I will never run out of resources; My capacity to bless you is unlimited. You live in a world of supply and demand, where necessary things are often scarce. Even if you personally have enough, you see poverty in the world around you. It is impossible for you to comprehend the lavishness of My provisions: the fullness of My glorious riches. Through spending time in My Presence, you gain glimpses of My overflowing vastness. These glimpses are tiny foretastes of what you will experience eternally in heaven. Even now you have access to as much of Me as you have faith to receive. Rejoice in My abundance—living by faith, not by sight. PHILIPPIANS 4:19; PHILIPPIANS 3:20–21; 2 CORINTHIANS 5:7 l (Jesus Calling®) (p. 284). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

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