Evil, Lifelong Nightmare
I am not a man of God, born only of Evil.
It’s a never-ending nightmare. The terror of it brings me to tears and has done since I was twelve. Sixty years of anger, fear, and frustration. Could I leave those years out? Can I convince myself I never heard it? Can I pretend it didn’t come?
No, I cannot, any more than I can shut down the sun.
It is a visit from evil. In my nightmare, I beg it to stop, pleading, and crying, but in reality, I am silent. It is a silence of submission. Terror, like all emotions, makes people do strange things. In my case, it paralyzes, freezes, and silences me. I don’t scream.
I don’t fight. I struggle, yes.
Evil did what it does and left me lying there. And in some ways, I lie there still.
The more I study philosophy and religion, the more it’s hammered home to me that I am not the only person to shun God and prayer in the face of suffering.
The things we human beings do to each other sickens me. And yet I am a human being. I am alive. There are days when I’m happy about that.
I am many things. Friend, husband, father, grandfather, but these are relationships. Who am I, what am I? I am a writer. Can such a word describe the entirety of me? A writer who searches out the truth is in pursuit of beauty, love, sorrow, anguish, and hope.
Some would insist I have love, truth, and beauty, all of which could easily describe a relationship with God. But I have allowed myself the luxury of dismissing God on one pretext or another, reading the Bible or attending church, growing disgusted and turning away.
I am a writer, which means that I am also a reader. Can anyone who writes not read? Can I list the writing prophets without including the names of Camus, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Potok, Shakespeare, etc.? Of course not.
I am a writer. Dare I be so pompous as to call myself a philosopher, a prophet, like those I have just mentioned. Many times, I have, without thinking, called myself a poet? Perhaps I am, and maybe I am not. But it should give a clue as to my priorities that I have an easier time getting around the word ‘prophet’ than ‘poet.’ A prophet, in my mind, is a definition at which I have arrived, not on my own, but with the aid of prophets — a prophet is a human being with insight into the future course of humanity, not predicted but foreshadowed, like a precursory echo.
I am not so self-righteous as to claim that I am a prophet. On the contrary, I am ambitious, saying that it is not unreasonable for me to strive towards prophecy.
Do you feel your back going up, skin prickling? Relax. I’ve no intention of stepping into the slippery mire of religious prophecy.
I have little interest and no desire to be the next Hosea, Jeremiah, or Mohammed. So how can I prophesy the coming of a God in which I do not believe?
But notice this, also: what interests me, what fascinates me, what I believe in above all else, is having a connection with other human beings, all the unique and wondrous things that we, as human beings, have done.
Yes, I know about the Crusades, the Holocaust, the many wars, infinite murders, injuries, tortures, slights, and injustices, the terrors, horrors, and atrocities we commit against each other against the Earth.
How hypocritical it is to thrust the responsibility for such historic acts upon the concept of evil. But I do. Can there be evil if there is no God? Yes. Because evil is an integral part of humanity.
We are human beings, and that is all that we are, all we can ever be, and it is upon our acts of irresponsibility we pay for in sleepless nights.
For every choice I have made or will make, for every action I have ever done or will do, for every act of love or anger, I am wholly and solely responsible because I am a human being, a man, a son, a husband, friend, lover, and grandfather.
I am a prophet, philosopher, and writer.
© Harry Hogg 2022
