Journeying toward the Good

The Stand was the first book by Stephen King I read, and probably still my favorite. I was fourteen at the time, and though my mom was somewhat nervous of King’s reputation as a horror author, I had thoroughly outgrown the children’s section, and I was in desperate need of finding adult books that I liked. Many of my friends were into science-fiction and fantasy, and though I dabbled with that, I never got deeply into it. There were classics, but I didn’t know at all how to approach that.

When King’s unabridged version of The Stand came out, it sat on the endcap of the Waldenbooks and piqued my interest. Truly, it’s less of a horror novel than it is more of a dystopian epic. My mom’s philosophy generally seemed to be that I read so much that as long as a book wasn’t truly inappropriate, she’d probably buy it for me because she trusted that I could process what I was reading with everything else.

I devoured The Stand. At its core, it’s very much a good versus evil story, where a cataclysmic event happens, everyone is forced to take sides, and good and evil battle it out. In a sense, that’s one of the oldest plot lines ever, but it’s timeless because it’s a story that can be told a million different ways.

There was a subplot where, being intentionally vague here, the good guys send spies over to the city of the bad guys. There’s a woman named Dana who becomes one of these spies. On paper, she’d seem like the type of person who would be drawn to the bad guys and if I remember correctly, there’s a little nervousness that she might defect. She remains true to her calling to the good, though, but as she is living in the city of the bad guys, she can’t help but be surprised at how much she really and truly likes many of the people living there. Under normal circumstances, these people would be neighbors and coworkers and friends, and there would be no quarrel with any of them. Yet she knew that if the good were to prevail, these people would have to convert or die, because as much as they were “nice” people, they had chosen to follow an evil master.

For me, Dana’s surprise here was a profound realization for me. It drove home the fact that there are plenty of people out there who default to evil because they refuse to follow the good. They are still “nice enough” and carry out lives of respectability, order, and even perhaps “goodness”, but when actually called to the hard path of following the good, they take a pass on it. After all, what’s the use of voluntary hardship and sacrifice if this life is all we’ve got?

It drove home, as well, that much of that which is evil is wrapped in shiny clothes. Satan may be the prince of darkness, but he’s also Lucifer, who is associated with the light, particularly with the dawn. Light and dawn are beautiful and hopeful things, but in the fallen angel, they are false and they hide the true nature of what he is.

I’ve been hearing that it’s a “thing” right now for people to post themselves going through Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to America” and letting themselves be won over by how much they find that they actually agree with him. What is sad is that they don’t seem to realize that the best liars don’t lie all the time; they lie just enough to keep others believing no matter what they say. If someone lies half the time, that person is obviously unreliable. If a person is truthful more than 90% of the time, there’s a lot more leeway given in believing the person is correct, or that if he is wrong, he’s just mistaken, rather than trying to intentionally mislead. That’s only considering factual inaccuracies; there are plenty of different ways to lie, and there are ways to lie, like telling people what they want to hear, where the people hearing those lies eat up every word and beg for more.

For this reason, I don’t think any of us should be surprised when we read the thoughts of some truly despicable people and find that we share many similar ideas. Over at David Burge/Iowahawk’s Twitter (X), he makes this point succinctly:

If you kids think Bin Laden made some good points, wait'll I tell you about a vegetarian former art student with an ironic mustache whose impassioned manifesto about the Zionist oppression of his people sparked a worldwide movement

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 16, 2023

And, for good measure, the follow-up (forgive the language, please):

I feel I'm gonna regret this tweet because these motherfuckers are so stupid the next Tik Tok dance craze will be goosestepping

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 16, 2023

If people cannot realize or refuse to recognize that evil doesn’t usually advertise itself as the “fire and brimstone” caricature of itself, it’s a danger. At a fundamental level, we know this. It’s the reason children are warned of strangers offering candy. It’s why Delores Umbridge is arguably the scariest villain in all of the Harry Potter books. Why, oh, why, then, does it surprise so many that the people who have probably come closest to “pure evil” in history are not merely raving lunatics and that these people had reasons people were listening and following them? Why then, can they not seem to discern that even though a lot of these people had valid points on many issues, they still did evil things and led others to do evil, and that is not to be overlooked? I’m sure all of them would justify what they did. However, even though the choice between following the good and seeking justification is sometimes a fine line, justification is always going to be the inferior goal.

I guess it’s all just a reminder that what each one of us is tasked in doing is training our own hearts to follow the good, come what may. Each one of us has our own journey, our own struggles, and our own joys. Seeking the Good can unite us in purpose, but we don’t have the insight into other’s hearts the way we do our own. Even people who look like they have it all together, who look like their lives are all sorted out and not messy haven’t necessarily made the best choices in life either, and so envy of them is a sad waste of time.

There are so many pieces of this that are related but are slightly different that I’m having some trouble pinning down exactly how I want to close here, but the largest point remains that we shouldn’t be surprised when we see similarities in ourselves with people who do evil things; not only are they not all that different from us, they’re part of us as well. On the flip side, each one of us has the individual decision to follow what is good, and that is governed by a constant training of the heart. That training comes through experience and discernment, but that process begins really early. I’m sure my mom never expected that something out of a Stephen King book would be that memorable or meaningful to her 14-year-old daughter, but these lessons are all around, if we’re willing to pay attention.

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