Tragedy in Norway

On Friday I was walking down the hallway at work when a colleague came around the corner looking very upset. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he had just been on the telephone with his girlfriend in Norway when the news broke that the government buildings in Oslo had exploded and there were people killed and injured all over the place. Immediate shock set in. How could something like this happen in a quiet peaceful country like Norway? Shortly afterwards we heard that a youth camp had also been attacked and 10 children were killed. What is going on? We were staggered.

I haven’t mentioned before but I work for a Norwegian based company so besides being Scandinavian myself I have an allegiance to this country from an employment perspective.

What sets people off to the extent of murdering innocent people? I cannot comprehend it.

Crime is nothing new nor is evil however one would have hoped that after all these years of education, of invention and of prosperity that things would be improving. Instead we appear to have more violence than ever before. Or am I misinformed? If one reads Charles Dickens stories there was always a lot of crime in England, even murder. How wild was the Wild West? The roaring ‘20’s saw Capone and the rise of Mafia in America. Here we are in the 21^st Century and we have world terrorists knocking down buildings and shooting innocent children. What is the matter with humanity?

We human beings are capable of so much good that it is hard to understand that there are people who have some kind of twisted brain that makes them glory in evil. I well recall a deep conversation that my father and I had some 20 years ago where we were trying to figure out the creation of things and we finally ended up with “but where does evil come from”? Somehow it became part of the equation. We couldn’t really come up with a solution. Later that evening who should knock on my door but a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses with a magazine that asked “Where does evil come from?” Serendipity.

When I was 16 I concluded that there was no such thing as The Devil. 25 years later I was being led down a path that espoused the belief that there indeed was a devil. Something had to explain the existence of evil, but what was it? No, I don’t believe it is The Devil. Is it in all human beings, the potential for evil, or is it only in certain ones?

I don’t have the answer. But we see for ourselves that most of us lead a rather simple life doing no harm and then these madmen appear to disrupt everyone’s lives. We truly are a disappointing species.