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The World is an Evil Place

Here is an example of why I enjoy Dennis Prager. In his recent article he details the last 7 day's headlines from around the world, and then concludes:
"These are only the news items of the last seven days. I purposely chose a period without dramatic headlines. And, of course, no news came out of North Korea, which continues to be the world's largest concentration camp. Cubans continue to have no freedom. Iranians continue to be whipped and killed for sexual improprieties. Saudi women continue to be forced to be invisible in public and live a demeaned status. The world is filled with evil. Always has been. The biggest difference today is that, thanks to communications, we are far more aware of much of it. I am convinced that human evil is so great that most people choose either to ignore it or to focus their concerns elsewhere -- like those who believe that human-created carbon dioxide emission, not human evil, poses the greatest threat to mankind. No one will ever get killed for fighting global warming. Fighting evil, on the other hand, is quite dangerous." This echoes one of the points of my Master's Thesis, which I personally found quite insightful:St. Cyprian wrote to his friend in North Africa in the third century admitting from his “fair garden under the shadow of these vines†that the world looked cheerful. Yet he also knew that if he were to step away from the shade of his comfort, he would see that “It is really a bad world Donatus, an incredibly bad world†(The Good News About Injustice, 40). Gary Haugen, founder of International Justice Mission and chief U.N. inspector in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide, regrettably speaks for many of us when he confesses that in his “domesticated garden the fall is being managed†and the only use for the armor of God is “for fighting weeds, backyard pests and trespassers.†Like Haugen, we also are “caught totally off guard when the true nature of ‘the world’ passes before [our] eyes†(46, 49). All of this brought to mind another quote I saw on the Chesterton blog back on 9/11/06. May we always be as clear about our surroundings as GK Chesterton, who stated: "I am never surprised at any work of hell" ["The God of the Gongs" in The Wisdom of Father Brown].