The Crucible was not a fun book to read in Advanced English class in high school, but it was a requirement.

It was written by Arthur Miller, and I only knew him because he was married to Marilyn Monroe. It was a play, so that made it seem more like Shakespeare to us.

Our teacher gave us additional information, that it was written as a reaction to the McCarthy Era. We didn’t know about that, so in between acts of the book, we heard about charges of communism.

All this happening in eleventh grade advanced English class. We knew about Communism. We had scabby knees from crawling under desks in elementary school. They stole the atomic bomb and threatened to drop it on America, because we were bad, and Communism was better.

So this McCarthy guy was warning us about Communist agents in government, education, and entertainment. The problem was that we had been tricked, there weren’t hordes of Communists all around us. There were just bad people, pointing fingers.

Just like in the Crucible. There weren’t evil witches. There were just people who had good farms that somebody else wanted. If you got a bunch of young girls pretending to be bewitched, you could have the owner killed, and you could get the land at auction.

After all, there were no witches. Just like there were no hordes of Communists.

I’m not suggesting that this was the start of not believing in evil. People did believe that people did evil things. World War II had just finished, and people did evil things.

The Korean War had called a cease-fire, and that seemed like Communists did evil things. But we were protected, we had oceans to keep them away. Besides, it was some people that did evil things. Evil itself didn’t exist. We came to believe that evil did not live.

It is an oddity that in English, live and evil have the same letters, just opposite. That little oddity was the start of my pondering. Evil was not a noun, nor an object. I’ve been thinking about objects for quite a while. 

Evil used to be an object. Mostly we said they were demons, sometimes they were monsters like vampires or werewolves. But even then, our modern minds turned them into fictional tales to frighten us on dark stormy nights.

It was only the medieval, uneducated mind, that believed in physical evil, like demons hiding in forests, lurking in deserted castles.

We can still act medieval, like the Crucible, or the McCarthy Era, but actually, we know better.

Now that I’m old, I’m not so sure we have that right.

It isn’t an issue with religion or faith exactly. We have had revivals several times. True, evil is a concern, but even in our revivals the existence of physical evil is downplayed.

There was a television show that was very popular, a major hit for five years, then reruns for years afterwards. It was called ‘Highway to Heaven’. 

The show was about an angel that was assigned to travel about, helping people with their difficulties. The angel could not lie, or mislead. In order to solve some problems, the angel enlisted a human companion to assist. They traveled together, not being open that one of them was an angel.

I mention this because it was so popular. It has been calculated that perhaps tens of millions of people have witnessed this angel on that television show.

And not once was there a demon. Five years of episodes and nobody was troubled by a demon. Once, on Halloween, the Devil himself was on the show, he was defeated by a conman the angel hired.

The Devil showed up on one other show, but he only sold a sandwich to the angel’s traveling partner.

Our entertainment downplayed physical evil in comedy, and in drama. Literature sometimes referred to the medieval beliefs, but only to condemn them.

And here is the thing, if I were a demon, it would be so much easier if no one believed I existed.

The world is changing as is expected, but some of the changes seem extreme, and extraordinary. In many cases, I’ve seen the possibility of angels interceding, and that is encouraging.

In other cases, I’m left with people doing evil things without reason. This is compared with good things happening with angels’ help and assistance. Just maybe, some people with evil actions have been helped by physically present evil.

It’s true that some movies have been popular that have the existence of demons, of evil living. But it’s for entertainment and it’s only a movie.

Most of the movies still have the evil as a spirit that invades the body. The evil exists but it is invisable. It might throw objects, it might appear in a mirror. Rarely it appears as a physical presence with mass and weight.

For some reason it is more terrifying to see footprints in the mud without feet. Or to see a mattress sink as though someone had lain down.

It’s hard to remind yourself that this is written to scare you, not to inform you. Few people use movies as proof for anything.

It was purposeful to name this as physical evil, instead of an evil action. I just wish to express that I believe in both of them. And their impact on humans.

It’s curious, I was reluctant to type ‘helped by demons.’ I almost didn’t type that because I want to come across as sane and reliable. Evil has managed to edit my communication.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author’s Note

The title of this essay is Live vs. Evil. The word ‘live’ can be pronounced two different ways, with two different meanings. Both can be applied to evil. I want you to consider evil living. Not in a human that is doing evil. But evil being alive in itself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reader’s Note

Have you seen Evil?