My son and I recently went to a late night showing of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
In the movie, Lord Voldemort IS the cinematic version of evil. My visceral reaction was fear - tightening up, pulling back, gasping. Voldemort is pure evil - 100% negative.
But a question kept running through my mind while I watched him (ok, not really while I watched him - I was just sitting scared then): "What does evil look like?" Does it look like Voldemort? Does evil look unquestionably, 100% ugly, scary - with not even a small lure of positive?
That works in certain movies and books - and, of course, in speeches from political platforms - but in everyday life? I don't know. I think evil is harder to spot than that. It may, at times, even be alluring.
Like sweet victory - a balancing of the scales - a feeling closing in on you when you have the desire for justifiable revenge - regardless of the cost. And you feel VERY pulled in that direction!
Or, sometimes it comes in the face of someone close to you - whispering a shaming comment in your ear - on purpose. Or consciously minimizing your dreams - again.
These are scarier than Voldemort - and harder to run from.
In the movie, Harry fights to keep Voldemort (The Evil One) from taking over his mind (his life seeming to hang in the balance). Because Harry had expressed concern about his similarities to Voldemort, Professor Dumbledore tells him: "It's not how you are alike, it's how you are different!" He continues by talking about choice.
Sirius Black (Harry's godfather) also talks about choice: "...the world isn't split into good people and death eaters. We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the power we chose to act on. That's who we really are."
Maybe what evil looks like is turning toward the dark - choosing dark - until it becomes more comfortable than choosing light.
Let's choose light!
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