Is it Evil or Insanity?

Some notorious mass murderers

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is a radio-TV personality who also happens to be an ordained Christian minister. Since he's from the south, it's a good bet that Huckabee's worldview has always been shaped by the Bible rather than by secularism. Nevertheless, after the recent tragedy that occurred in a North Aurora, Colorado theater where a 24-year-old man named James Holmes shot 12 people to death and wounded 59 others, Huckabee didn't sound like someone with a biblical worldview.

Instead, on his most recent TV program, Huckabee interviewed two psychiatrists who tried to psychoanalyze Holmes and uncover a motive for his violent behavior. Labels such as psychopath, paranoid schizophrenic and clinical depression were tossed at Holmes. One psychiatrist even suggested that Holmes "snapped" which seems farfetched when it turns out that Holmes spent several months preparing for his massacre by purchasing thousands of rounds of ammunition in addition to handguns, assault weapons and explosive chemicals.

One label that has seldom been used so far to describe Holmes and his behavior is evil. It seems that in our over-psychoanalyzed and morally blind society, evil has been shelved as some medieval concept that primitive people with simple minds used to explain away deviant behavior. Today, however, it seems that every type of action considered outside the margin of normal behavior is suspected to be rooted in some emotional malady or "mental illness." And there are labels for everything from excessive-compulsive eating disorder (gluttony) to chronic alcohol-fixation disorder (drunkenness) to sexual addictions, (lust, fornication) gambling addictions (greed) and acute-chronic self-absorption disorder. (narcissism)

During an encounter one day with some self-righteous Pharisees who accused his disciples of violating Jewish law by not washing their hands before they ate, Jesus blasted the blind religious leaders by reminding them that eating with dirty hands doesn't make a man spiritually unclean. Rather, he stated: "Don't you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man unclean; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him unclean." (Matthew 15:17-20) 

With that rebuke of Israel's corrupt religious leaders, Christ revealed that all deviant and evil behavior emanates from the human heart. Certainly, there is precedent for insanity in the Bible. Ancient Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar was struck with madness by God for believing that he alone rather than the Lord was responsible for his ascension to the throne of Babylon. (Daniel 4) And madness was one of the curses that the Lord pronounced against the ancient Israelites for their rebellion against his laws and commandments. (Deuteronomy 28:28-29) 

But nowhere in the Bible do we find insanity as a valid excuse for immoral, violent and evil behavior. Rather, the Bible declares evil behavior to be the product of personal moral choice rather than the result of emotional disturbances or "mental illness." Thus, James Holmes is an evil person who made the moral choice to commit mass murder in a suburban Denver theater. And certainly, there may be a plethora of reasons why Holmes chose evil, such as atheism, involvement in the occult, hallucinogenic drugs or Eastern religions that may have resulted in demon possession. But ultimately, whatever the reason was that motivated Holmes to commit murder, that reason was evil rather than insanity. 

If society truly wants to stop the increasing carnage caused by people such as James Holmes, then it needs to understand that evil is real and it provides the true motivation for violent behavior rather than man-made psychological excuses that sound convincing but accomplish nothing. But then again, evil is a moral choice while insanity opens the door to psychological prognoses that excuse away moral choices and terrible behavior.