"Why Do the Evil Prosper?"
From my standpoint, I'm glad that I absorbed as much original sin theology before being swept up in the human potential movement that made us and Jesus into unalloyed positivity. It helps at times like this when the sharp edges of personal and national life protrude so ominously.
Among the reasons I was drawn to the Psalms is that they repeatedly decry evil deeds and predict the demise of the perpetrators. The promise is addictive though rarely fulfilled in my experience. Media has magnified the scope of malevolence more than at any time in history whether or not it's actually more pervasive than ever. The Psalms are glorious but I still wait for evidence that the other shoe has dropped, that the captains of greed, hatred and domination have been shown the door.
Why, indeed, if the meek are told they will inherit the earth, do the brazen and heartless so regularly run it? Perhaps the default answer is that it's a mystery. But the language is pretty concrete. The God of the Psalms and the Prophets flatly pledges to stamp out the villains in order to lift the boot from the neck of the persecuted. The crushed ones are often left in the lurch, however. Why? cries the oppressed.
That has perpetuated a strain of perplexity within Western religion. When will vindication come, assuming, perhaps falsely, that we are on the right side in this transaction, and what can religious people do to hasten its arrival? It is a cause of doubt about God's existence and/or intentions -- on the other hand, would believers recognize rescue in the fashion in which arrived? Is suffering a necessary prelude to vindication or a state of being mocked by an empty promise?
https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/why-do-evil-prosper#civil-comments
More evidence that the evil are prospering at the expense of good people: Republicans controlling all branches of the Federal government and a majority of state legislatures; Donald Effin' Trump; people becoming more selfish than ever, etc.
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