Forcing Evil to Reveal Its Ugliness

​Evil likes to cloak itself in righteousness.  It disguises its nefarious purposes in robes of a noble cause.  It covers its debase motivations in garments of higher ideals.
 
Every tyrant appeals to some glorious cause when engaging in an evil pursuit of absolute power.  Hitler appealed to the glory of a new Reich.  The failed artist painted a beautiful picture of a prosperous Arian society that resonated with a broken and demoralized post-World War I Germany.  The horrors we now associate with the Nazi regime were adorned with magnificent flourishes of national pride, economic prosperity, and advances in public health.
 
But evil is not content to only misrepresent itself.  It seeks to pervert truth and impugn the righteous.  The authoritarian accuses those who cling to the ideals of liberty as obstacles to the greater good, enemies of a society that is united in achieving a higher purpose.  Those who selfishly pursue absolute power project selfish motives upon those who stand for freedom, making them villains and objects of public scorn.  Those who attempt to speak truth are dismissed as peddlers of conspiracy theories, dangerous liars who must be silenced, lest their words mislead the public and create obstacles to achieving the “greater good”.
 
Evil began in Eden, where the serpent cloaked rebellion against the Creator of the Universe as a righteous pursuit of knowledge.  But the only knowledge to be gained was the knowledge of evil – the knowledge of a desolate existence in the absence of God.  A kind and loving God was falsely painted as a tyrant who held his creation bound in ignorance.  But the only knowledge kept from the first humans was the knowledge of pain, suffering, and death.  These were the fruits born from the false righteousness of the first true tyrant and they are the bitter harvest reaped by every tyranny the world has since known.
 
Jesus was well aware of the nature of evil.  He saw it at work in the hypocrisy and false righteousness of the Pharisees and Sadducees of his day.  He knew their tyranny would lead to his death.  But he was determined to make them reveal all the ugliness of their intentions, so that history would forever record the true nature of evil.
 
Many people interpret Christ’s teaching of turning the other cheek as an appeal to pacificism.  But it really is a statement of defiance against evil.  When evil strikes, you do not run and cower from it.  Nor do you strike back and become corrupted by evil yourself.  Instead, you stand there resolutely and defy evil to strike you again. 
 
Evil seeks to win on the first strike.  The first strike is intended to either bring submission or to invoke a reaction that justifies further oppression.  Strike back and you are “revealed” as the enemy that the tyrant has painted you to be.  But stand stoically and defy evil to do its worst, and you tear away evil’s disguise.
 
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew the power of turning the other cheek.  He instilled great discipline and courage in the members of his movement.  The evil of Jim Crow South sought to paint blacks as savages that needed to be carefully controlled for the good of society.  Had those in the Civil Rights movement responded violently to the violence they suffered, such a reaction, while justified, would have only advanced the cause of their evil oppressors.  The stoic and resolute response of King’s movement revealed all the ugliness of the evil of Jim Crow.  Turning the other cheek turned a nation against those who tried to cloak racism in righteousness.
 
And now we see new signs of tyranny rising in America.  A country founded on freedom and personal liberty is slipping into something from a dystopian novel.  The righteousness of “public health” is being used to cloak evil ambitions.  These range from the petty vanity of formerly obscure officials who have gained a taste of fame and power and cannot let it go, to the nefarious ambitions of an elite cabal who feel the world economic and social structures are in need of a “Great Reset”.
 
If you are feeling oppressed by mask and vaccine mandates and do not know what to do, you can react in one of three ways.  You can submit and help the tyrants solidify their power, which will only lead to greater tyranny.  You can act out and give the tyrants “proof” that you truly are an enemy of the common good, which will also lead to greater tyranny.  Or you can simply stand and force the tyrants to reveal themselves for what they are.  Do not quit your job in protest if you are confronted with a mandate you deem oppressive.  Force them to fire you.  Force the school to expel your child if you think that masking is harmful to your child.  Force a business to turn you away at the door if you refuse to produce a vaccine passport.  Do not self-sensor yourself on social media.  Force them to flag your posts and possibly ban you.  Force them all to accept the role of oppressor.  Do not let them dodge and obfuscate the ugliness of what they are doing.
 
Evil can only gain control when it fools enough people into believing it is righteous.  If enough of us have the courage to just stand, take the hit of evil and then turn the other cheek to defy evil to hit us again, our defiance will unmask the evil at work in our society and reveal its ugliness for all to see.