"The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9 NIV).

In Jay Tolson's thought-provoking article* of May 10, 1999 published in US News and World Report, he observes that our nation's vast 'explanation' industry is failing to come to grips with incidents of horrific violence, such as the recent Littleton shootings, because it has lost a vocabulary that is adequate to the 'enormity of evil'. We are left with 'threadbare theories' that blame our genes and social conditions and portray evil-doers as an alien breed of 'monsters', people who are not like us.

We have been brainwashed into believing that evil is merely a condition of ignorance that can be eliminated by adequate counseling, or that it is the result of poverty which can be eliminated through establishing stable and equitable economic conditions.

Some say the problem of evil is the result of personal alienation and low self-esteem that can be treated with better social integration. Media pundits inundate us with socio-and-psycho-babble. One writer issued a press release stating that the Littleton shootings were symptomatic of the male identity crisis. Others say Hollywood is to blame or the NRA. We cannot accept that people perform these crimes because they want to and they choose to.

As threats of violence loom in our high schools, students, parents and faculty members go into huddles to brainstorm ways to make potential hit-men feel better about themselves and integrate more successfully with the crowd. Politicians propose new ways to throw more money at the problem, and counselors give explanations as to why those who act violently 'are victims of society who can't help themselves'. We are reluctant to admit that these approaches in themselves are insufficient in addressing the issue. Every now and then we are confronted with some act of evil that leaves us stupefied. All of our explanations sound hollow.

Jay Tolson recalls that there once was a time in America when people were held responsible for their actions. He refers to the Biblical world-view and quotes Augustine's distillation of the Old and New Testament teaching that evil results "when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower--not because it is evil to which it turns, but because turning itself is wicked."

We are more comfortable blaming genes, families and insufficient counseling, than what lurks in our own hearts - a personal bias to turn from what is good for selfish reasons. This bias is called 'sin'. We cannot seem to frame this reality properly in our contemporary social equations, and the results are obvious.

The Socratic heritage of Ancient Greece, rediscovered in the European Enlightenment, repackaged into a civic religion by Ralph Waldo Emerson and others, is the belief that evil is the result of some defect of knowledge. Ignorance is the cause of evil. Therefore it can be banished by knowledge. This progressive optimism of human perfectibility fails to maintain coherence with reality. Philosopher Jean Bethke Elshtain from the University of Chicago comments that "the language of syndromes has replaced the language of sin" even in pulpits, and helps the vast majority of us to excuse our behavior. As for those who perpetrate heinous crimes, they are 'monsters'. They are not like us.

The Bible tells us that there is a monster of sin lurking in the heart. The heart of the old sin nature cannot be healed. It needs to be replaced. The good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is the only prescription that offers hope. It fulfills the ancient promise of a cure for the ancient problem: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws...you will be my people, and I will be your God." (Ezekiel 36:26-29).