the banality of evil

Today in the One Year Bible, we read from 2 Kings 3:1-4:17. The new king of Israel does some bad stuff, but not as bad as the king before him. And we see that the evil that he does is kind of humdrum. Nothing outstanding like Jezebel. Just banal evil.

Hannah Arendt wrote a book called The Banality of Evil. She's describing Eichmann, one of the chief Nazis in charge of the holocaust. She talks about how normal he was... not the monster she expected, but just a clerk trying to get a raise at his boring desk job.

And really, when you look at the history of evil, 99% of it is boring and lame and banal. Every once in a great while you'll find a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Charles Manson or an Adolf Hitler. But most of the time the bad guys are just lame, kinda dumb people who do things that aren't even interesting enough to make the paper.

Contrast that with the saints. The saints throughout history are fascinating characters, and all of them are different from one another. The more we sin, the more boring we become. But the more we allow God to transform us into the person He created us to be, the more we become fully ourselves... and the more interesting we are.

God, please save us from banal evil, and help us to be the interesting people You made us to be.

PS the painting at the top of this blog is called The Banality of the Banality of Evil. It's by Banksy, and it's about the book by Arendt.