The Face and Problem of Evil

If you have been reading my blog, by now you would have figured out that I am originally from Bosnia, and that I have survived the war in Bosnia. If it was not apparent (since I am not very comfortable talking about myself, or rather I find it dull), then I suppose it will be now.

For many years now, I have been attempting to write about the war. But I have been met with incredible difficulties. I have actually written about my inability to write about it. I have tried to cue memories in whatever possible ways just so I am able to illuminate the events of the war down to all the details. Those memories that I do have are muddled and fragmented, and often I question my very sanity that is connected to the remembrance. After all, what I had gone through was a series of “traumatic” events. I place the word “traumatic” in quotation marks because this is a fairly new word that has been used in the world of psychology. We are all traumatized from something it seems. Well, yes. But I think I prefer to say that we are all wounded from something: some to a higher, others to a lesser degree. And in many occasions, we spend the rest of our lives healing those wounds.

As am I.

As I sifted (yet again!) through the memory bank of war’s gruesome events, I ran into walls. As I walked through the mansion of my mind, I tried opening the door to each memory. But the door was locked. I need to remember! My cries seem hollow and my tears dry. I cry for the loss that was thrust upon me but there is not a specific event or memory, which connects clearly to these anguished screams.

I venture into thinking about the perpetrators in the whole picture. Whom should I be angry at? And I realize that I don’t know who they are. I don’t know them personally. Are they men? Are some of them women? Who is that sniper on top of the building spending his day aiming at a man carrying canisters of water, or a child taking a chance and playing in the sun, jumping up and down, so worn and tired from hiding in the basement? Who was it that aimed at me? Who? But these perpetrators have no name, have no face. What is this face of evil? Is it a man with a gun? A man with a knife waiting for the perfect chance to cut my throat?

This unknowability is what makes my cries even hollower, it seems.

As I sat in silence, I asked God to illuminate my mind, my self. It finally dawned on me that this mind that I was given by God does not really operate so much on details but rather on larger ideas that are prevalent in the human condition and human thought. I have been pushing myself and my voice into a mould that was not made for me. Suddenly, I realized that it does not matter whether the power and water supply was cut off 10 days into the war or 25 days into the war. It does not matter whether it was the middle of the summer that I sat in the corner of the hallway and ate two old, stale crackers I found in the back of the pantry and told my emaciated self that I was having a feast. It does not matter whether I slept in the left corner of the condo building’s basement or the right corner; or whether I smelled the poisonous bombs alone or with someone else in the room with me. A very small details of the war in many ways cannot be retold. At least not with the mind that I was given. The war still happened. The loss of life and an absolute attack on human dignity still happened. The existential reality and essence of the war still remains.

I have spent so much time delving into the minutae of the everydayness of the war (and judging myself in a terrible frustration that I am incapable of remembering those details) that I have disregarded the questions that come with it. Not the questions of the political kind (although those are significant in order to establish historical facts) but the questions of philosophical and theological kind.

If we look at the history of genocide (or at least of mass killings which have happened during the 20th century and into the 21st), we see two questions that are always there, aiming at us and we keep refusing to deal with them. First is what is evil. The second stems from the fact that in each genocidal instance, the world remains silent. Why has the world remained silent? We always say things like “never forget” or “never again.” But these statements have become almost a cliché.

The problem of evil has been discussed and written about my minds far superior than my own. And even though, I do intend to ask it, I am by no means, expecting a full answer. Just a small possibility: whatever is humanly possible.

The second question seems more intriguing. But it does rest or depend on the first question. I do not ask why has the world remained silent in an effort to condemn the world. My objective is not to point fingers at the “international community” and say how bad everyone is. Yes, the historical truth must come out. Like when (during the Bosnian war) Dutch commanders in Eastern Bosnia made a deal with the Serb aggressors and in one day sent close to 10,000 men and boys into their deaths.

My point is that we tend to complain how the world was in silence but the question is why? What is the nature of evil that overwhelms the human soul in such a way? My objective is not to place a further barrier between us. My objective is to understand.

God is the prism that I look through when I look at the world. One thing I do know is that human beings cannot provide salvation nor eradicate evil. We are fallible. And human law, however good intentioned, cannot bring about a full healing from evil. We must fight for the Justice in this world but when it seems like we are losing that battle, then we have to find peace that it is God who will judge.

This is my own voice trying to find some sense in what has happened to me. And finally, with God’s help, an exploration (philosophical, theological, human!) can begin.