I don't know about you, but I am grateful that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day has rolled around again. His wisdom comes like a healing balm, although I imagine he would be saddened to see our country so fractured. A Facebook memory of mine showed up from two years ago, where I posted this quote of his:
“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.” (Italics mine.)
Seems to me there is a tendency in our culture that needs to be addressed. It's a bit of a sticky subject, because much of it is rooted in our Judeo-Christian heritage. Scripture, not to mention lore from practically every culture, talks a lot about good versus evil and about the need to resist evil. Of course we all want to be on the good side. But I fear we have taken that and translated it to the notion that if we're on the good side, everyone else is on the evil side. We've tried to paint the world in black and white, while in reality it is a splendid array of color.
So my answer to the age-old question of whether man is intrinsically good or evil:
Yes.
As Dr. King reminds us, we are all capable of both good and evil. Just because we are made in the image of God, which I believe, doesn't mean we aren't capable of listening to our darker angels.
I find in so many areas of life this tendency to think in either/or terms. (I go into a little more detail in this blog post (pt. 1) and this one (pt. 2) from several years ago.) I may be way off base in my assessment of the cause. It is certainly not that simplistic -- psychologists tell us some people are seemingly wired to think in more black and white terms. But I do wonder if we make more work for ourselves by creating false dichotomies.
What if much of the time the solution -- dare I say reality -- is somewhere in between?
I call this the power of the ampersand.
I can't help wondering what would happen if we spent more time looking for the both/and than the either/or.
And maybe we should take to heart the words of an old song -- words we don't particularly like when we're really angry at someone:
"There ain't no good guys
There ain't no bad guys
There's only you and me
And we just disagree"
-Dave Mason