The view from above

Kevin Moss | 22:15, 3rd July 2014 

I don't think that any of the Biola Residency students, studying for Prof. Clay Jones' Why God Allows Evil course exactly found it to be a walk in the park. There is always going to be a kind of tension between the 'what we think we know' aspect, and the 'how it feels in practice' aspect.

I suspect that this was at least one of the reasons behind Clay's exhaustive summary of modern-day, 20th (and 21st) Century 'evil'. It left us reeling. The realisation that the human propensity for real, moral evil is the shared experience of every one of us is deeply unsettling and humbling – and when it is not, then perhaps that also is part of the problem.

No sooner had we landed at Heathrow today, checked through passport control, and located our car, than we were receiving our first dollop of UK news, after a two-and-a-half week break. The continuing saga of the UK's venal media filled up a big chunk of the Beeb's broadcasts, but by far the most significant news item (for me) was the revelation that Rolf Harris has been found guilty of twelve counts of sexual abuse. The eighty-four year-old entertainer has been told to expect a custodial sentence.

Now, I've encountered very few folks who were at all surprised when the facts about Jimmy Savile's peccadilloes were made public. All you had to do was look at images of the man, and the historic TV footage, and you thought "Yup. Makes sense."

But Uncle Rolf? The man who played the didgeridoo, who sang 'Two Little Boys' and 'Jake the Peg', who featured in all those great kids programmes of the 1960s and 1970s? The chap who presented 'Animal Hospital' and reduced us to tearful incoherence on a weekly basis? This is the guy who painted The Queen, for heaven's sake!

Yes, I was brought up on Rolf Harris. I admired and revered the man, as a child. I am not sure it would ever have been possible to revere Adolph Eichmann in quite the same way (not that I have ever been tempted!): Eichmann modelled evil in a way that was simply banal and bureaucratic. It appears now that whilst Uncle Rolf was developing his jokey, child-friendly TV-persona, there was something profoundly sinister playing out behind the appealing image. It is certainly true that we do not see things as God does – the Bible tells us that we look on the outside, whereas God perceives us inwardly, to the very core of what makes us tick. Sometimes, even within our own flawed and contradictory culture, 'the truth will out', as it has now done for this coterie of abusers. For the many of us, who engage covertly in a daily pattern of evil mundanities, ultimately the only real answer is that view from above.