My wife sat down next to me as we began family movie night holding an absolutely beautiful slice of warm, fresh, pepperoni pizza. It was about 5 pm and I was not planning on eating pizza because it would keep me up. I’ve reached that delightful age where I can’t eat just anything, at least not a few hours before bedtime.
But it looked really, really good. My mouth began to water. Knowing that I should stick to my guns, there was only one thing to do. I holstered those guns and went out and grabbed a slice. It was good.
An hour later, and into the night, it was not good.

Since I wasn’t sleeping, I had time to reflect on my decision and the nature of evil in the world. My decision was a small one, with very limited consequences. I chose what looked and felt good over what I knew was right, but it was such a minor thing, it wasn’t a big deal. Nothing some tums and a later bedtime couldn’t overcome.

We are all like this. There are moments every day when we know better, but the stakes are low and what is before us “looks right in our eyes.” We don’t need to worry or feel guilty because these are small meaningless decisions. These small meaningless decisions can add up. They do add up, and not just in their consequences, but the habit they represent in us. We decide what is right and what we will do based on the moment, and what looks good in our own eyes.

The evil in our world is an amalgamation of millions of these little moments. We tend to want to ascribe evil to the large evil deeds of villains and to be sure those exist too. However, the general atmosphere of evil that lurks around every corner comes directly from our human heart and our desire for one piece of pizza, one moment of indiscretion, one minor indulgence of what looks good to our eyes. Each of these little moments finds us recreating that moment in the Garden of Eden where Eve looked at a fruit that God had said it was not good to eat, and she decided that it was good, that she wanted it and by golly, she was going to have one. Her and then her husband’s small choice was a big one, and my one slice of pizza perfectly recreated that moment as I do my part in perpetuating evil in this world by doing what is right in my own eyes.