Naivety

As a child of the 60s, I freely admit that our generation back then carried in our hearts a not inconsiderable amount of naivety.  For the young’uns among us who cannot remember such ancient history as the 1960s, it was a time of youth protest, of earnest questioning, of genuine searching for new answers.  It was the era of hippies with long hair and bell-bottom jeans conducting protest marches against the war in View Nam, of burning their draft cards and shouting “Hell no, we won’t go”, of making the peace sign and advocating free love, of “sit-ins” and chanting slogans such as “Make love, not war!” 

       Much of its message was expressed through music.  Folk singers sang songs like “Blowin’ in the wind” which became a kind of anthem for the generation.  The song beginning “Are you going to San Francisco” (especially the hippie and drug addled Haight-Ashbury part of it) counselled the visitors to wear some flowers in their hair and expect to find “gentle people” there, “a whole generation with a new explanation”.  That generation fervently believed that if only you would love everyone hard enough and long enough, everyone would respond and become peaceful, kind, and gentle.  As John Lennon once famously wrote on billboards, “War is over (if you want it)”. 

       This was well-expressed in a lyric in one of my favourite songs, “The Lovin’ Sound” sung by Ian and Sylvia:  “Your world is cryin’ now, my friend, but give it love and it will mend and teach you all the music to the lovin’ sound”.   

Note the hopeful note, offered not as a wish or a sentiment, but as a certainty, a conviction:  if you give the world love, it will mend—a promise with a money-back guarantee made by a generation that did not fight in the Second World War but confidently believed it had found the answer to human evil.  To quote yet another song by what was arguably the voice of the 1960s, “all you need is love”.

The issue that the 60’s generation tried to confront was the problem of evil—not the theological question of why a good God would allow evil to exist in the world, but the sociological question of the nature of human evil and how it can be conquered.  The gentle people of San Francisco believed that evil was something ephemeral, almost accidentally showing up in the human heart as an unforeseen and unwelcome guest.  No one was truly evil; people who did evil things were not ultimately evil but insane, for no one who was sane could do those evil things.  External causes of human evil were searched out:  evil was the fault of bad upbringing, of toxic environment and bad example, it was the fault of poverty, it was the result of a lack of good education.  But ultimately evil people could be brought to see that evil was wrong and to be rejected.  All you needed was good education or better environment.  All you needed was love.

The naivety of that generation (and perhaps of Christian universalists—but that is a question for another post) was staggering and would be criminal if it were not tragic.  In fact, evil is not an accidental affliction like the flu and it can be freely chosen by people who were well brought up in comfort and well-educated.  A quick look at the people on trial at Nuremberg reveals that.

As does a quick look at the Bible.  It is as our Lord said:  “This is the judgment: that the light is come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” (John 3:19-20). 

Note:  men loved the darkness rather than the light.  It is tragically possible for a soul to choose evil because that soul has come to love the darkness and to hate the light.  That is why many of the Nazi war criminals expressed absolutely no regret for what they did during the war.  Adolf Eichmann, for example, responsible for the slaughter of millions of Jews, was proud of the work that he did.

The sad truth is that one can choose to resist God’s grace and light and successfully remain in the evil that one has chosen.  The persecutor Saul’s heart was touched by God and he repented; the hearts of the Sanhedrin were touched by God at the trial of Stephen and they did not repent.  Even though they were cut to heart, they still chose evil, covering their ears and rushing upon Stephen to stone him (Acts 7:54-58).   

The Master was right:  when the light comes, some love darkness and choose evil.  The men of the Sanhedrin and the man Adolf Eichmann were such.  The evil they did was freely chosen after much thought and deliberation; you could give them all kinds of love for as long as you want, but it will not cause them to mend and to teach you all the music to the lovin’ sound. 

For such impenitence there can only be one answer:  the justice of God and His wrath.  God desires that the sinner repent and stand clear of the wrath that will one day blast sin out of the universe in the age to come.  But if a man chooses to cling to his sin, embracing it like a lover and refusing to part with it, there is no hope. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of God’s throne (Psalm 89:14) and eventually all darkness and sin will be annihilated and all the world will be filled with God’s light.  Those who choose darkness thereby choose to be annihilated along with the darkness they have chosen.

Naivety is not a fruit of the Spirit. Evil—and the certainty of God’s wrath upon those who choose it—remains a stubborn fact in this world, an enemy, an intruder, an alien presence.  We must love all the children of men whether they are evil or whether they are good, but we must not be naïve and imagine that evil can be easily dealt with.  That is why our message must include not only a proclamation of God’s love for all, but also an urgent call to repentance.