Sorry for the lack of posting lately. I usually don't like to talk about blogging, but my long absence is probably causing someone to wonder about the reason for the blank, white page.
Two reasons basically. I decided to forego posting during Lent (but neglected to say so in advance - sorry), and I've got a bad case of New Jersey writer's block. Oh, and a third reason -- the twelve Microsoft security fixes kept me pretty busy earlier this month with a little bit of overtime involved, though that's not an excuse for not blogging on a Sunday as I'm doing now.
So, what's up? Besides the IT work, I've been reading a bit more, re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia, in their controversial time-chronological order, reading The Magician's Nephew first, where Narnia is created, and the Witch from the dead world Charn is brought into Narnia by accident. I'm not through re-reading it, but since I read it several months ago, I think I can venture some thoughts on it.
Since I'm spoiling some details of the book (but not its ending), the rest of this entry is in the extended entry...
C.S. Lewis has a chapter dedicated to the symbol of The Deplorable Word, a word which, when uttered with the proper intonation and ceremonies (i.e. magic), would cause every living thing to die, except for the being saying the word. The Witch from Charn has killed that world by uttering that word, and later is brought to Narnia by the unwise actions of a young boy from England who stumbled into her world by magic.
The Deplorable Word is an apt description of evil, for at its foundation, evil is about destroying relationships. The First and Great Commandment is "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37 NKJV) and the second, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'" (Matthew 22:39 NKJV). What could be a better symbol of utter evil than to be willing to kill all that exists apart from one's own self, for the satisfaction of an irrational lust for power?
The Magician's Nephew was written in the mid-1950's, while the US and the USSR were in the midst of The Cold War, and I think Lewis uses The Deplorable Word as a symbol of nuclear annihilation, as there was some talk back then of possibly winning a nuclear war, if one side had survivors and the other didn't. Not a very pretty scenario.
While the nuclear threat is certainly not what it once was (though it would be a mistake to ignore it completely, as North Korea and Iran bear out), the model is also applicable to suicide bombers (use expendable people to kill your opponents - hopefully killing all your opponents while you still have a few people left), and as evil as war is of itself (though not as evil as tyranny), the type of warfare exemplified by suicide bombings is an evil much greater. The story in the Bible of Samson killing himself along with a huge number of Philistines is no justification either. Samson is not portrayed in the Bible as a righteous man. None of the things Samson did, even though they accomplished God's intentions, were actually done for God's glory, but rather for the satisfaction of Samson's own imperfect human lusts.
In another way, though the allegory is not perfect here, this mode of evil is also exemplified by those who would be willing to kill for the sake of convenience, as in the case of Michael Schiavo's desire to end his wife's life, so that he could use the assets from his spouse's inheritance to support his children born of an adulterous relationship with another woman. And though this thinking is not going through the brain of every woman who has an abortion, I believe this mode of evil is inherent to the worldview that abortion is necessary to protect the right of a woman "to her own body" -- the view that the right to her body gives the right to kill another.